As a graphic designer, I'm always trying to not only learn new skills but to learn what skills I need to learn. Of course, the demand for these skills is dictated by the market. I recently started an account with Elance.com, and I immediately noticed that they provide numerical data on their Web and Programming page for skills that are in demand. After some number crunching, I calculated the percentage of the total that each skill on that page represents. Here's the breakdown of the skills and their percentages of the total:

1. 10.92% PHP
2. 8.92% HTML
3. 7.98% SQL
4. 6.40% MySQL
5. 6.20% Flash
6. 5.45% CSS
7. 4.72% SEO
8. 4.08% .NET
9. 3.66% WordPress
10. 2.79% C
11. 2.70% AJAX
12. 2.60% Joomla!
13. 2.58% Java
14. 2.18% Web Services
15. 2.18% ASP
16. 2.13% XHTML
17. 2.07% Social Networking
18. 2.05% Windows
19. 2.02% Adobe Flash
20. 2.02% iPhone
21. 1.90% XML
22. 1.88% Facebook
23. 1.60% Twitter
24. 1.56% PayPal
25. 1.37% ASP.NET
26. 1.26% JavaScript
27. 1.16% Linux
28. 1.09% Drupal
29. 0.95% RSS
30. 0.78% SQL Server
31. 0.68% osCommerce
32. 0.59% Apache
33. 0.53% CRM
34. 0.51% DHTML
35. 0.50% Google Website Optimizer
    

So what can I make of these results? Most of what I came up with is not surprising. I'm well aware that PHP, HTML, MySQL, Flash, CSS, and SEO, of course, are common skills that are in demand. It's a good idea for any web developer to be proficient in most of these skills.

I may be just a bit surprised by some of what I'm seeing. JavaScript, for instance, at 1.26 percent is lower on the list than what I thought it might be. I'm also new to some of these technologies such as Joomla and Drupal. Wordpress, a relatively new technology, seems to be really taking off at 3.66 percent.

Anyway, I hope this information is useful to my clients. You can never know too much about what web development tools are available to you, and this information proves it.

Joe Jagella--FreeforAll Designs

To ensure that Google can find every page on your website, it might be a good idea to submit a Google sitemap to Google. A sitemap is an XML file that contains links to the pages on your website. You upload this file to your public_html folder on your site's server and then submit it to Google.

Here are the steps you need to take to get your sitemap to Google:

1. Generate a Google sitemap here  by following the instructions on that page. Generate the sitemap, download it to your local site, and then upload it to your remote server's public_html folder.
2. Log in to your Google webmaster account here. If you don't already have a webmaster account, then start one here.
3. Once you've logged onto your account, click on the My Account link at the top of the page.
4. On your Account page, click on Webmaster Tools.
5. On the Webmaster Tools page, you should see a list of your sites under Sites. Click on the link to the website you'd like to create a sitemap for.
6. A page opens that should include a link to the page that you can use to upload your sitemap. Look for this link on the right side of the page under “Sitemaps.”
7. The “Sitemaps” page should open. Click on the “Submit a Sitemap” button.
8. Enter the name of your sitemap XML file in the box that opens and click on the “Submit Sitemap” button.
   

And you're good to go! Don't expect any miracles from your sitemap. It's not likely to generate a huge increase in traffic to your website, but it's always a good idea to make sure that your website is optimized for Google search.

Joe Jagella—FreeforAll Designs

What are the characteristics of a good logo for your organization? While there may be very many ways to come up with a set of traits that make a logo effective, I've pared it down to the following seven:

1. Effectively Communicates – A good logo says what you want it to say. People who see the logo get the message you intend to convey.
2. Is Unique – Your logo needs to be distinctive to stand out from the crowd.
3. Is Timeless – Some of the best logos, such as the logo of ABC, stay much the same even if used for decades. You don't want your logo to be out of date next year!
4. Is Simple – Complicated artwork is fine for museums, but in the fast world of branding and marketing, you want to have a logo with as simple a design as possible. You want to represent your company with your logo rather than impress viewers with fine art.
5. Is Durable – In all probability, your logo will be used in more than one context. It's common for logos to be used on Web pages, signs, and business collateral such as envelopes and business cards. You should make sure your logo works on all these media.
6. Is Recognizable – When people see your logo, they should think of your organization right away if they already know about it.
7. Is Memorable – Obviously, you want a logo that people will remember years from now. A forgotten logo is no logo at all!
   

Make sure your logo has these traits, and you'll have a winner. I can create such a logo for you.

I love to use a computer both for work and play. After all, a PC is both a tool and a toy, is it not? Sure, computers were originally designed for very serious tasks such as crunching numbers for weapons, but it didn't take long for computer scientists and programmers to make a very significant discovery: Computers are great devices for gaming and other kinds of entertainment.

Now, when I tell people I like to play computer games, it's common for them to grin at me as if I'm a kid (or an idiot). I suppose the image people often have of computer gaming is that it's the past time of a ten-year-old. 

It's not true! Most PC gamers are adults, and I think it's fair to say that most of us are above average regarding intelligence and education.

So what makes computer gaming such a mature and dare I say sophisticated form of entertainment? For one thing, you need to have a good knowledge of computers to make the most of your computer games. Games are some of the most demanding forms of software, and you better have some robust hardware to run the latest games with smooth frame rates. Most games list “system requirements” on the box, and you'll need to know your computer's operating system, CPU, RAM, and graphics card video memory to make sense of those requirements. 

Another reason that PC gaming is such a mature past time is that you'll need to be able to figure the games out! PC games, unlike many of their console siblings, involve a learning curve. On some games this learning curve can be steep and you can expect to put time and effort into just learning to play. Even after all that, you'll often need to know what strategies can help you finish the game. It's common for gamers to get stuck in a game, and many of the games I've played I've never finished.

And one more thing before I go—PC and console gaming is a multi-billion dollar industry. You can make good money as a game developer. And games involve graphics, of course. Has anybody thought about how graphics can be useful for their business? 

One of the most basic questions any client or designer can ask about a logo or other design is: What color(s) should I use? As most of us are aware, different hues are used for different purposes. We're all familiar with the use of color on the road. Red on a traffic light means stop, and green means proceed if the intersection is clear. We've also seen green used for Christmas decorations, and red used for Valentine's Day cards. Yellow is often used for the “police line” tapes that are put up to keep people from wandering into dangerous areas. Black, in this part of the world, is the “color of mourning” and is often used for funerals. How can we use these colors to say what we want to say in a graphic?

Blue is a very common color used by businesses, and packages and labels often incorporate some shade of blue. Blue can be seen as the color of authority. It often has a cool, calming effect. It might suppress the appetite too. As I hope you can see, blue might be used on a government website or brochure. It also can be appropriate for and ad promoting a rest area or park. You wouldn't want to use blue for a restaurant menu, though, because you could ruin your customers' appetites!

If you do wish to increase appetites, then red or green should be more appropriate. These colors have been found to stimulate the palette. You might wish to use some hue of red for candy wrappers or a super market sign. If the food is sweet, though, then avoid green because it won't increase appetites for those kinds of foods.

Green, like blue, can have a calming effect. It might be a good choice for furniture-store signs. It also evokes images of nature, and ads promoting environmentalism might make good use of green.

Yellow might have the opposite effect of green or blue, and research has found that yellow can cause anxiety. Nevertheless, yellow can be a very useful color to gain attention quickly. If you're looking for a design for a bottle label, for instance, you might wish to use yellow as a background for text that you especially want the customer to notice. The text might say something like “New and Improved!”

Like yellow, orange can be an attention-getting color too. Some people see it as a “loud” color. Orange could be useful for an CD cover for a rock band.

One needs to be careful when using these assumptions about color, though. What might be true about red, blue, green, or orange here in America, might be significantly different in other cultures. We often associate blue with boys, but in China, blue is for girls! In Japan, white, rather than black, is a color for funerals, and in South Africa, the color of mourning is red. Although we Americans associate yellow with cowardice, in Japan it's the color of courage. Color psychology, then, is rooted in a culture, and businesses need to understand these cultures to use appropriate colors.

Here at FreeForAll Designs, you're assured that such matters are an important factor in the design of your graphics. What colors I use will be based in accurate and reliable knowledge of appropriate hues and how those hues affect people. There's a lot riding on your logo, business card, or ad, so make sure you hire a designer who knows how to promote your business with appropriate hues.

As many of you may know, Leonardo Da Vinci painted the Last Supper using what artists call a “vanishing point.” If you look closely at this magnificent work of art, you might see that the lines, which are conceptually parallel, converge on the face of Jesus. If you were to place a ruler on a printed copy of the Last Supper, you could verify this fact. By using this technique, Da Vinci created a sense of volume and depth in his painting in effect creating a look of three-dimensional space.

Using the perspective created by employing a vanishing point and other techniques, we, like Da Vinci, can lend a sense of depth and volume to our otherwise flat designs. Overlapping elements in a logo, for example, gives the design a sense of depth. We might also blur some parts of the logo to make them appear farther away than sharply focused parts. If we use elements that are identical except in their sizes, we can make some of them appear farther away than others.

Why bother using these kind of techniques in logos and other graphic designs used for business? Obviously, a sense of depth and volume is not always necessary in an image. FedEx, for instance, has done just fine with a “flat” logo that has no depth or sense of volume. As usual, we need to consider the needs of you, the client, along with the needs of your clients. Some products are marketed to consumers who may favorably react to logos with depth and volume. Packaging companies, aerospace and aircraft businesses, and science-fiction booksellers immediately come to mind as companies that might wish to use designs that incorporate the 3D techniques described above. To find out, you need to research your market to see if consumers want to see such designs on your logo, ads, and letter head.

If you need 3D designs or flat designs on your logos, business cards, or flyers, FreeForAll Designs is willing and able to deliver. We've got the products to benefit your businesses and maximize your profits.

It's easy to come up with traits that a designer needs to benefit her clients. She needs both artistic and technical skills along with a good knowledge of the clients' markets to create work that will accomplish her clients' goals. One trait of a good designer that might be overlooked is that of good communication skills. She needs to tell her clients what she's done, what she's doing, and what she can do. This communication might be hobbled if clients are not familiar with the language designers use to describe their work. To tell your designer what you might want in a logo, for instance, you may wish to be familiar with some of the following concepts.

Symmetry is a very commonly used principle in graphic design. Symmetry might be understood as “visual balance,” and this balance may be achieved linearly or radially. In linear symmetry, the portion of a graphic one one side of a line is reflected or mirrored on the other side of that line. The line of symmetry can be visible or just conceptual. In radial symmetry, the graphic is the same along lines that radiate at equal angles to each other from a center point. For example, four circles of equal diameter might be placed at radii of 3 inches from a center point at angles of 0 degrees, 90 degrees, 180 degrees, and 270 degrees. Linear and radial symmetry is often used in illustrations and logos.

Of course, a mirrored element, like one used in linear symmetry as explained above, does not necessarily need to fall along any particular line and does not need another element that mirrors it. If a line, visible or invisible, cuts across an element of a graphic or lies at some distance from the element, and the sides of the graphic on both sides of that line are switched to the opposite side of the line, then that element is said to be “reflected.” Reflection is often used to achieve linear symmetry but can be used for other purposes.

Perhaps even more fundamental than reflection is the concept of translation. Simply put, translation is moving the element without changing its direction or size. Translation is very commonly used to arrange the elements of a graphic design at various points on the graphic.

If an elements direction or orientation is changed about a point on the element or off of it, the element has undergone rotation. Rotation along with translation is useful to arrange the elements on the graphic. An arrow, for example, might be rotated to point at some other element of the graphic. Rotation can also be used to create common directions among two or more elements to achieve what is known as “common fate” and causes the viewer of the graphic to see those elements as a group. If the directions of elements are horizontal or vertical, they lend a feeling of stability to the graphic whereas diagonal lines may add a feeling of dynamism to the design. A logo for sports cars, for example, should employ a lot of diagonally orientated elements to give the viewer a sense of movement and speed.

Another common way to manipulate elements of a graphic is to resize them or dilate them. Dilation can be used to create perspective in an illustration or emphasize the differences between two elements which may be otherwise the same.

If an element is repeatedly copied and dilated two or more times, and this series falls along a straight line or curve, the designer has created what is referred to as a “gradation structure.” Gradation structures are often used to illustrate gradual changes in the size of an element, but gradual changes in shape or even color can also be applied to a graphical element. Gradation structures have been applied to illustrations of clothing and can create perspective as well. Color gradients or “gradations” are often employed to illustrate clear skies in which the blue fades as it approaches the horizon.

Although I may have just scratched the surface of lingo that's often used in design, what's presented here is a good start to understanding basic design principles. It's good for clients to know and understand these concepts to let them know what they want from a design. Clients can more readily come up with ideas that can work for their businesses.

Tomorrow, January 7, 2008, I will officially start studying graphic design with the Art Institute of Pittsburgh's online division. I'm starting out there studying the basics of office and graphics software along with basic design principles. To me, all of this formal school work begs an interesting question: How will my formal education affect how I serve and benefit my clients?

Obviously, a designer can never know too much or be too skillful. Clients expect and deserve quality graphics. Getting a formal education at a respected school for me means that I can hone my skills and increase my knowledge to increase the odds that I can deliver a product that benefits my clients and meets their expectations.

Some arguments against formal schooling have some validity, of course. Perhaps the chief argument opposing formal schooling is that clients don't care so much what a designer knows—they want to see what he can do. I suppose there's nothing like a nice portfolio on a web site or in print to show off one's achievements. If you've done good work, and as a designer you can easily show a prospect that work, then a portfolio is all that's needed. It doesn't matter so much how you achieved those nice designs—either through self-teaching or formal schooling—as long as you have them then you're good to go.

Although this argument may be superficially convincing, I believe it contains a very subtle fallacy: The argument seems to say that what you have done demonstrates what you will do. Every client and his needs are different, and what may have sufficed for past clients may not satisfy the needs of new clients. Even if you've done good work for a client, you should not assume that future work will always suffice for him.

Knowledge then is important along with past achievements. If I can attain knowledge about graphic design at the Art Institute, then I can assure my clients that I can meet their unique needs and concerns. You can bet that I'll expand and improve my portfolio and make it available to my clients to see, but I'll also let them know I have the knowledge to meet their unique needs. If there's nothing in my portfolio that satisfies the purposes of the graphic that a current client is looking for, and there probably won't be, then I can assure my client that the basic skills I used to create those graphics can be used to come up with a graphic for their needs that need to be met in the future.

For any of you who may not be familiar with search engine optimization or SEO, it is the attempt to get high search-result rankings for a word or phrase on Google or Yahoo. If you're selling antique dolls on your website, for instance, and somebody types “dolls” or “antique dolls” into a search engine, then you'd like them to see a link to your site in the search results. Of course, the closer to the top of the first page of the results that link is the better. Many people may not bother looking for links beyond the first page or two of results. Considering that there may be hundreds or even thousands of websites selling the same product you're selling, getting good results in search engine rankings may be very difficult. What can a business or other organization do to get good search results?

One answer to that question is to put SEO on the back burner until you're ready. SEO is very serious business and can cost thousands of dollars. By all means don't spend that kind of money only to discover that there's little demand for your product or that you're not reaching your target market effectively and through the right channels. Researching your market is very important, and designing your website, logo, ads and other designs for your business or organization must effectively promote your business to that market. Sure, your SEO may bring a lot of visitors to your site, but visitors may click right out of it if they don't find what they want.

One way to solve this problem is to start small with inexpensive ads and other promotional graphics to test to see what works and what doesn't. You can check not only your sales volume but use your site statistics to see if more visitors arrive on your site and if they stay longer. Are there more visits to a product page that contains information about the product you're advertising? Are you seeing more comments about that product on your blog or your forum? If you're not seeing positive results, then try something else. Look before you leap and test to see how you can effectively promote your business before you invest a lot of money.

Once you make informed decisions about what designs seem to garner favorable reactions from your target market, you still may not be ready for investing in SEO. Getting back to the example of the business selling antique dolls, such a business might want certain words and phrases like “dolls,” “antique dolls,” and “antique toys” typed into search engines to bring up a link to their site. These words and phrases are known as “keywords” or “key phrases.” Which of these keywords and key phrases will generate traffic to your website? One way to find out is to use what's known as “pay per click” or “PPC.” When using PPC, you pay a search engine like Google to list your site on the search results in a “sponsored ad.” You bid on keywords, and the more you bid, the higher your link appears on the sponsored ad. Our hypothetical antique-doll business might bid more money than other sites and get the highest ranking on the list on Yahoo. As the name of PPC suggests, the doll business pays for each time a link to their site on the sponsored ad is clicked. Using this technique, the doll business discovers which keywords will bring visitors to their site to buy antique dolls.

Finally, the antique doll business is ready to invest in SEO. It now knows that it can bring customers to the site using various keywords, and more importantly, it can sell dolls to those customers assuming its research efforts have indicated that there is a market for antique dolls. It knows which keywords it can use on its website's copy, page titles, and HTML meta tags to make those web pages more likely to show up on search engines. When people arrive on the site, they'll see a design that makes them want to make that purchase. Make sure your own designs work for your own market before you invest in SEO.

Recently I visited the Small Business Forum and posted a new web page design I'm working on for my web site, FreeForAllDesigns.com. I was pleased to get a unanimous chorus of approvals. Considering that some of the members there are very tough critics, these hurrahs came as a very encouraging development. What is a “professional” design, and how can you make sure your own web page, logo, brochure, business card or other graphic design has a professional look?

Perhaps the most essential ingredient in design professionalism is what you might call the “ooh” factor. Graphic design is more than just art because it serves a practical purpose, but like other kinds of art it usually must please the eye of the beholder or at least not displease the eye of the beholder. When people in your target market encounter your design they should have the kind of reaction you want them to have. When they look at that logo or advertisement, they should be pleased with it and take notice of the care you used to create it. It should tell them that you know what you're doing and are careful to do things the right way. This message is important because you want people to trust your ability to deliver the product you offer the way you promise to deliver. Consider, for example, the UPS ad that tells us they “run the tightest ship in the shipping business.” The tagline tells us that we can rely on UPS to literally deliver the goods to us and we need not worry about that delivery. Make sure your own ads and other graphics lend credibility to your business.

So much for the basic principle of professionalism. What of the details? How do you come up with a professional design? We normally think of a professional as a person who can do something most people cannot do and who does it well enough that he or she should be paid for it. A professional also knows her clients and their needs. A dentist, for instance, understands the most common reasons people seek the help of a dentist. She knows what causes tooth decay and how to prevent it. She has the ability to treat tooth decay which is an ability most people don't have. Graphic designs must also serve their purpose. To be professional, they should go beyond what most people can do when designing. These designs must be appropriate for their intended audience and target market. Research is very important to know what your audience may or may not want in a design. A professional design reflects the results of this research and impresses people with its sophistication.

A design's sophistication is based in part on the technology used to create it. The Internet like most things is evolving quickly. When a designer creates a web page, for example, he should give that page a modern look. A page that may have looked fine in 1997 might look amateurish in 2007. These days Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and Javascript are almost indispensable in web design, and as other technologies arrive they too may become important in adding a professional polish to web pages. Amateurs can get by with older techniques, but professionals need to stay on the cutting edge.

It is important to understand that although newer techniques are often required for professionalism in design, many tried and true design principles are timeless and should always be used in design. A professional graphic should align its different elements properly. Different elements should look very different providing contrast. Repetition adds cohesiveness and helps to unify the different parts of a design. Like elements should be placed closely together. Words should never be unintentionally misspelled. Color should be used with care especially when a graphic is to be used internationally. You may not wish to package medicine in a purple box in Latin America because purple there indicates death!

All such principles can help your logo, business card, or flyer to have a professional look. Your clients will look to your business or organization to serve them well. Professionalism in design is the first step in letting them know that yes, you can indeed serve them well.