Rookieup.com – A Different Form of Online Education

Considering the amazing professional and personal development possibilities along with the large market offered by the online world, it’s no surprise more and more people of all ages are eager to acquire new skills, whether it’s just for earning extra money from a side job or for setting out on a completely new, exciting career path (as a web designer, marketer, web developer etc).

The online education industry is quickly expanding: according to recent studies, in 2015, the e-learning market was worth $166.5 billion. In 2017, it’s been estimated that this will grow to $255 billion. So, can we consider online learning the future of education?

One form of online education consists of the for-credit courses students enrol in for taking online classes offered by higher education learning institutions. But we will now concentrate on the other form of online education, usually targeted at professionals and students interested in getting online professional training and certification preparation to broaden their horizon.

While the number of people choosing to begin an online course is swelling each year, we can’t ignore the boundaries and the challenges of online education. Some interesting research recently conducted by specialists shows that 96% of people who start online courses never finish them.

For example, if you are an aspiring creative, interested in a career in visual design or illustration with no guidance from a specialist who could answer your questions and help you achieve your creative goals, you might feel lost and drop an otherwise interesting online course. On the other hand, studies show that people who receive one on one teaching will perform 2 standard deviations better than people who don’t have a personal coach.

This is why Rookieup is trying to introduce a level of personalization to the “self-guided online education” industry who could help the students finish their chosen online course, reducing frustration and improving the quality of their work.

 

How does it work?

You can search the community to find the perfect mentor for you. Then, you schedule a 30-minute session with your chosen mentor to talk about the industry, ask technical questions or receive quick design critique. In case you need more in-depth explanations, career advice or a complete portfolio review, you can go for 60-minute sessions with your mentor. This could develop into a long-term professional relationship with a specialist who can offer you guidance throughout your journey. Whether you are interested in motion graphics, visual design, UX design or photography, mentorship could be your way towards professional achievement.

How does that help you? Receiving good feedback is crucial, especially when you are a beginner. And, even if you have worked on a number of projects, you might sometimes feel at a loss as a designer. You may lack inspiration or get stuck in the same set of color schemes fonts and design elements that you tend to use again and again, project after project. You need innovation and encouragement to break from the old style you are so familiar with. A good mentor will give you fresh insights, will help you get out of your comfort zone and will recommend sources of inspiration that will jump-start your creativity.

How do you know if your mentor is good for you?

You should choose someone whose skill sets are complementary, rather than too similar, so that you have even more to learn from this person. The perfect mentor will understand your strong points and your weak points and will provide all necessary support for you to overcome difficulties.

I am sure you are tired of the corporate environment, and would rather become your own boss. However, becoming a freelance graphic designer/illustrator can be tough. It takes time and great effort to learn and develop new technical skills, gain self-confidence to take up more difficult, challenging projects, build a partner network and find that successful marketing technique that brings you on top. Successful freelancers also know how to choose their clients, how to quote their work, when to stop working and take vacations.

It may take years to learn how to cope with all these aspects, without the help of an experienced mentor who can offer you industry insights and career tips thay might ease your way up. A very important aspect a mentor could help you understand is how to be more efficient with your time and how to take pleasure in your work. After all, you should enjoy your journey and not let stress take away your happiness.

Conclusion

Finally, it’s extremely important to understand that your mentor just gives you direction; but, at the end of the day, it’s YOU who has to make the right choices. Your mentor isn’t there to tell you which direction you should take, they are their to offer guidance, which will only help you down the path you choose to take.

Who knows, perhaps with a little help, you could become the next Kal Michael (one of the first iOS designers), Gemery Mumenthaler (employee 1 at Noun Project), or Mike Casebolt (freelance designer/illustrator). They all became who they are today with the help of great teachers. So, believe in yourself, find a good mentor, and keep up the good work!

Read More at Rookieup.com – A Different Form of Online Education

from Web Design Ledger https://webdesignledger.com/rookieup-com-different-form-online-education/

4 Ways Designers Can Use Asana to Organize Their Work

Collaboration, organization, and communication are important to making a design process flow smoothly–especially when you’re dealing with multiple stakeholders or cross-functional teams. After all, nothing is worse than having to waste time digging around Google Docs for a product roadmap from last month or not getting enough context for a mockup you’re about to work on.

However, using an easy yet powerful work tracking tool like Asana gives designers and their teammates the ability to collaborate more effectively. It has useful features for designers that, ultimately, save time and hassle.

Designers can leverage Asana for managing product roadmaps, collecting feedback, brainstorming creative ideas, and tracking various requests and bugs from your team.

Ideas and brainstorms

 

There are many tools you could use to capture ideas and brainstorms. However, in Asana, you can easily go from ideation to actionable next steps.

Start by creating a project called “Ideas and Brainstorming”. Set up an “inspiration” section to note down work from others you really like and an “ideas” section to track those ah-ha-in-the-shower ideas that you still need to flesh out. Invite other teammates to the project so they can share their own creative musings or start a discussion.

Of course, if you’d rather just have a personal reference of ideas, you can create a private project to track them.

Capture ideas, collaborate with other team members, share inspiration, and then–when you find a winner–transfer that lightbulb moment into an actionable task.

Create and access product roadmaps

Asana is a powerful tool for creating and managing product roadmaps. Doing so allows product managers, designers, engineers, and cross-functional teams to keep track of high-level goals, assets, tasks, timelines, and feedback in one place.

To better manage your product roadmap, create a new project. Use sections to organize individual tasks by stage of process (planned, in-progress, deferred), and sub-tasks to make sure you don’t forget any of the smaller action points (e.g. “add logo!”). Assign tasks to their respective owners, keep high-level goals easy to access in the project description, and get updates on tasks as they’re completed.

You can also write regular updates in the progress section of a project so that anyone involved can get a quick overview of what was accomplished this week.

Using custom fields in Asana makes product roadmaps even more powerful. Design teams can use them to track creative production by adding fields for type of collateral, channel, and the number of hours it will take to complete.

Track design bug and work requests in Asana

 

Although Asana is incredibly useful for large projects and product launches, it’s also a good way to manage smaller work requests or design fixes–particularly if you get requests from many different people.

For example, you might create an ongoing project called “Design Fixes” or “Design Requests” where anyone on the team can add a task to report bugs or request designs then get notifications when you complete them. By opening up the project across your team or company, you also allow for team members to check and see if you’re already working what they were about to request — which helps reduce duplicate requests from different people — or get a quick overview of what your bandwidth is like.

For designers, it simplifies the process of getting and completing requests. Unlike receiving requests via email or chat, they all live in one place. You can also create a template task with custom fields for teammates to fill out — like device, URL, and browser — so you don’t have to ask the same questions every time. Further, you can let your teammates know you’re on top of it by “hearting” the task and assigning a projected due date for completion.

Meetings, feedback, and clarification

For both designers and collaborators, Asana makes it simple to give feedback and/or clarification about a project directly within the task you are referencing. Not only does it give better context to the discussion, but it makes previous comments or questions easy to discover during the design process.

You can also loop in additional team members by adding them as a follower at any time, or remove them when the conversation is no longer relevant.

For meetings, create a project to set the agenda before the meeting and record actionable tasks and feedback during it. To simplify things, keep one project for ongoing meetings (like a regular status update or check-in) instead of creating a new one every time something pops up.

Create less work about work

As a designer, work can get complex fast. From juggling multiple stakeholders to working across multiple teams, designers need a project management tool that’s powerful enough to track their work but simple enough that it’s easy to manage. With Asana you can manage less and design more.

Web Design Tools You Wish You Knew About Earlier

This post was written by Jessie Beck, a San Francisco based digital marketer, writer, and self-proclaimed “internet geek”. She currently works on the marketing team at Asana, a work tracking software for teams. Follow her on Twitter at @beatnomad and get the latest updates from Asana at @Asana.

The post 4 Ways Designers Can Use Asana to Organize Their Work appeared first on SpyreStudios.

from SpyreStudios http://spyrestudios.com/4-ways-designers-can-use-asana-organize-work/

20 Best Premium Paid Shopify Ecommerce Themes

If you’re launching an online store then Shopify is the simplest platform. It comes with so many features including SSL and hosting. The trickiest part is setting up a great design. Thankfully there are dozens of incredible themes you can pick from, and in this guide I’ve curated the top 20 best paid Shopify themes […]

The post 20 Best Premium Paid Shopify Ecommerce Themes appeared first on Vandelay Design.

from Vandelay Design http://www.vandelaydesign.com/best-premium-shopify-themes/

Improve Your Conversions By Using The Psychology of Color (Infographic)

Color is a big deal when it comes to web design, but it’s not just about looking good. A seemingly inconsequential variation in shade can have a significant impact on conversion rates. That’s because colors have a proven and measurable impact on our attitudes and emotions.

This little crash course in color psychology can help you better connect with your ideal audience and build trust with visitors.

Is Color Psychology Really a Thing?

Yes indeed. In fact, key findings related to the subject have been published in peer reviewed journals. Read one for yourself while science is still legal. Aside from the documented scientific proof, consider all the marketing pros who have split tested countless pages to find that certain color schemes can produce vastly different results in terms of conversion, even when all the content is exactly the same.

You’re wielding a lot of power over the human psyche with your use of colors. The question you need to ask yourself is whether your experiments in emotional manipulation are working for you, or against you.

Grow Your Legions of Minions and Master Mind Control with These Color Rules

Earn Trust by Using Blue:

Even if you’re a grotesquely rich corporate overlord you can help foster trust by using the color blue in your web design. Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook should be enough to convince you of this, but I guess we can look at some actual evidence too.

• Studies have determined that blue is a universally-liked color.
• It promotes feelings of calm and tranquility, according to this credible source.
• Facebook, LinkedIn, PayPal, Twitter and hundreds of other corporate entities use some shade of blue as their primary color.

You’ll see blue a lot in the financial world, particularly among credit card companies. Maybe they’re hoping it will help calm customers down before they call to dispute that ridiculous $200 finance charge.

Red for Pasion and Urgency:

Red gets the blood pumping. It’s a color that promotes passions, energy and urgency. Red is often used to promote clearance sales or to draw attention to CTAs.

Orange Inspires Impulsive Behaviors:

According to the marketing wizards at Kiss Metrics, orange can inspire activity, a sense of urgency and even impulsive behavior. When Amazon tempts visitors with a limited offer, it’s usually highlighted by a bright orange banner.

Black is For Luxury and Sophistication:

If high-end class and sophistication is what you’re going for, black does the trick. Using black is also said to promote a certain edginess, making it a great choice luxury goods, fashion and cosmetics.

White for Clean Simplicity:

White is believed to promote cleanliness, virtue and simplicity. It makes a great backdrop for the healthcare industry – or for anyone who enjoys a clean, minimalist approach to design.

Gray Promotes Professionalism:

Gray comes across as professional and subdued. When used correctly it helps create a balanced and calm effect. Used by white color professionals as well as luxury brands, but works well across a wide span of industry types.

Purple is Powerful on Many Levels:

Purple is seen as a color of majesty, opulence and luxury. It’s often associated with success and respect. This is a go-to color for beauty products, massage, yoga spirituality and feminine brands.

Green for Positivity and Health:

This color is associated with health, nature peace and relaxation. Some experts believe the color green can actually help alleviate depression. It’s also a great color for conversions, as it is said to promote decisiveness.

Yellow Keeps it Warm and Cheerful:

Yellow is a great color when it comes to generating a sense of optimism among your visitors. It’s also a great attention grabber. One rule to keep in mind when implementing yellow is to use it sparingly, as this color can easily become overwhelming.

This Infographic Will Show You How to Use Colors Together and Increase Your Conversions

Are you ready to start using colors to generate more results? Take a look at this infographic to learn more about how to use certain color schemes to drive more participation and action with your web design.

 

Psychology of Color on Web Design

Read About Web Design Conversion Rate Optimization Here

Read More at Improve Your Conversions By Using The Psychology of Color (Infographic)

from Web Design Ledger https://webdesignledger.com/improve-conversions-using-psychology-color/

6 SEO Must-Haves for Web Designers & Developers

The design and development work on a website doesn’t end with setting it live. Having a clean, W3C-validated code and an eye-catching design will surely help you get on the railroad to success. Yet, if you’re looking into building a website that truly stands out from the rest and provides a high-end user experience there are several points of consideration you need to take care of.

Contrary to some popular beliefs, search engine optimization includes a wide spectrum of key processes that go beyond keyword targeting, link building, and raw data analysis. SEO is all about user experience that includes a user-centric design, as well as a personalized browsing experience and website interactions.

Show Your Website to The World

The first step you need to take after launching your website is making sure it’s submitted to Google. To make sure your site gets crawled, you can manually submit your site to Google. There are several reasons why your website could stay unindexed for a long time, some of which include a missing sitemap, slow loading time, hosting downtime, duplicate content, and more. Work together with your developer to see what might me causing the issue and try to submit your site again once you’ve figured it out.

Update Your Content Regularly

A static website that’s rarely updated will hardly grab the attention of the user and the same goes for web crawlers. If you’re keen on improving your position in the SERP you’ll need to refresh the content regularly. Adding new graphical content, including images, videos, and other media types are one way you can update the copy of your website without actually writing new articles and web pages. The new content will let crawlers know you’re still working on your website. Just make sure you’re filling the alt tags and descriptions appropriately to help Google better understand the value of your graphic content.

Increase The Bandwidth of Your Website

As your website starts to build traffic you’ll need to expand the amount of hosting space the site uses to accommodate more users at any one time. Too many users on a server will slow the site down. Expanding your hosting space will allow more users to access the site together. Having an expanded bandwidth also means you can upload more images and content on your site. Running a website with a low bandwidth might be a good initial approach but once you start accumulating more traffic and expanding your website, you’ll see that having less bandwidth can hinder your performance in the SERP.

Create a Captivating Landing Page

No matter if you’re building a web store or a personal blog having a properly designed landing page extremely important if you want to truly make an impression to your visitors. The landing page design and layout should take in consideration the target user’s persona. Creating a great user experience means personalizing the design of your landing page so that it resonates with the needs, style preferences, and content expectations of your visitors.

Building a Responsive Website

As more and more devices are entering the consumer market, traffic starts coming from a variety of sources with a different screen size and ratio. This creates the need for a flexible website design that changes accordingly to the user’s device. While in the past, many websites could rely on a separate mobile version, nowadays, search engines require websites to provide a complete flexibility that supports multiple devices and web browsers.

Don’t Forget the 404 Error Page

There will be times when unfortunately your visitors might stumble upon a broken link or an unexisting page and you’ll need to be prepared for that. Having a well-designed 404 error page will reduce bounce rate and guide your visitors to other pages that might interest them. Some creative approaches towards optimizing your 404 error page are adding a list of popular content to the page or even integrating a mini game that keeps the user interested and blocks his initial autoresponse of bouncing off a broken page.

 

The post 6 SEO Must-Haves for Web Designers & Developers appeared first on SpyreStudios.

from SpyreStudios http://spyrestudios.com/seo-tips-designers-developers/

Best Places to Find Transparent PNG Images

As browser-based graphic design tools gain popularity among amateurs and professional designers there is an increased demand for ready-to-use transparent PNG images. Sure, raster design software, like Photoshop and its free alternatives (GIMP and Pixlr) can help you easily trace and cut out the unnecessary segments of a photo and get a transparent image but who has the time for that anyways?

Today’s resource collection contains several transparent PNG image libraries containing free clip art and premium 3D rendered objects which are going to make your design experience much easier, especially if you’re working with web-based design tools.

Stick PNG

Stick PNG is a community-driven PNG image library. The site contains over 13,000+  transparent PNG images separated into 1850+ categories which range from animals, movies, and celebs to food, furniture, sports, and more. Since its founding in November 2016 Stick PNG has managed to gain a large following of designers, YouTubers and other creatives who use and contribute to the site. New images and categories are added each day and the site expects some amazing feature upgrades in the upcoming months, including multiple language support for Spanish, French, Deutsch and Russian.

Pixel Squid

PixelSquid is a stock image library with 3D rendered objects that’s unlike anything else you’ve seen before. The site currently offers over 10,000+ premium and free 360-degree object renders which are fully spinnable and Photoshop-ready.  The transparent PNG object images can be easily imported to Photoshop via a special plug-in that allows a quick drag-and-drop and rotating and effortlessly translates 3D objects into the two-dimensional world of Photoshop. The objects come as transparent PNGs and layered PSD files with adjustable reflections, shine, shadows and more.

Png Img

PNG Img is an online collection of free transparent PNG images that contains over 19,000 free PNG images in its catalog. The site has a meticulous categorization that includes 26 main categories and countless subcategories which allow an easy browsing. The transparent PNG images in PNG Img can be used for personal and non-commercial purposes only.

Pixabay

The holy grail of free stock images contains over 880,000 free photos, vectors, and clip art illustrations, including transparent PNG images. With over 1500+ free PNG files and more added each day by the site’s creative community of photographers, Pixabay is becoming one of the top places to find free transparent images. A huge perk of Pixabay’s image library is the advanced file filtering system that allows users to select files depending on their type, orientation, category, size, and color. The free photos and PNG images in Pixabay are separated into 20 main categories, including nature, food, business, art, and more.

PNGAll

PNG All is a free transparent PNG image library and blog that strives to provide designers with all the latest resources in the sector. The site currently contains 1125 transparent PGN images. All images on the site are available solely for personal use so if you’re looking for PNG images for a commercial project, you might want to look elsewhere. Despite that, the site is a great place to find free PNG graphics and clip art for your personal projects.

PNG Pix

Pix PNG is yet another great addition to our collection of free transparent PNG resource websites. The site contains over 5000+ transparent PNG images separated into 23 categories. The categories range from clip art, celebrity, people and food with the highest amount of png files being of everyday objects.

Free PNG Img

Free PNG Img contains a large amount of transparent PNG image files. All image files are distributed over a wide range of categories and subcategories which allow easier browsing and filtering of image files. The site contains user-submitted content and handpicked PNG images, including clip art, icons, and photography.

Designer Candies

Designer Candies is a graphics resource website we’ve previously mentioned that’s not specifically focused on delivering transparent PNG images, yet, it contains a lot of useful files in this category. The site won its place among the other websites in this article for its unique collection of 3D rendered objects. Despite being fairly small, the transparent PNG image collection of Designer Candies contains some of the best-looking 3D rendered objects you can use for free for both personal and commercial projects.

More resource websites:

10 Free Photography Resource Websites For Personal & Client Projects

10 Resource Sites For Free Website Background Images

 

The post Best Places to Find Transparent PNG Images appeared first on SpyreStudios.

from SpyreStudios http://spyrestudios.com/transparent-png-images/

How To Use Color Contrast To Get The Maximum Impact

Colors influence our whole life from the very beginning. They could attract or distract attention, set a mood, or even influence our emotions and perceptions. As we know, “an image worth more than 1000 words”.  Therefore, the professionals involved in the communication area use the colors to send, support or to highlight a message.

However, sometimes it could be hard to know where to start when choosing the color palette for your design projects. Which could be the best option? Using the pairing colors or the contrast ones?

Well, there is not just one right answer or a magic formula for this. You should try different color schemes and combinations to see which of them appeal you the most and transmit the right message. But before doing this, you should know the basics of the colors and their combination. In this post, we will focus on the contrast (or complementary) colors and their usage, with some case studies.       

So, let’s start with the basics.

Contrast is more than opposites like black and white or large and small. Contrast is a design principle that should be a part of every design project. Why? Because it helps you organize the design and establish a hierarchy, showing the viewers which parts of your design are more important and help them focus on those. On the other hand, the contrast adds to visual more interest, regardless if we are talking about the logo design, print or online ads, website design, indoor or outdoor signage.     

In the color theory, the contrasting (or complementary) colors are directly or almost directly positioned across one from another on the color wheel. For example, purple and yellow, red and green, or blue and orange. As you can see below, the complementary colors provide the maximum contrast.

 

In terms of contrasting colors, we can also talk about Hue, Saturation and Color’s temperature.

Hue

Hue is a specific term for colors, traditionally one of the 12 found on the color wheel. But the color theory also can provide some handy information for graphic and web designers. Besides the traditional complementary colors, some other options include

• Split-Complementary: any color on the color wheel plus the two that flank its complement; this scheme still has strong visual contrast, but is less dramatic than a complementary color combination.
• Triadic: any three colors that are evenly spaced on the color wheel.

 

Saturation

The saturation of colors refers to the color intensity, comparing to the black – white spectrum (the complete absence of a hue).  A color in its purest and brightness form is 100% saturated. The more you desaturate a color, the closer you are to gray (or black, or white, depending also on the brightness of the color). Therefore, using bright and saturated colors can be a strategic plan to highlight the important parts of a design project.

Temperature

As we know, based on their temperature, all colors can be categorized into groups, based on their temperature: cool, worm and neutral. Reds, yellow and oranges are considered warm colors; blues, and greens are cool; black, white and gray shades are neutral. Depending on how they are used, the beiges and browns can be considered neutrals. You can get a high contrast by mixing the color temperatures in a design, especially warm and cool colors.

Using the contrast colors

In logo design:

The companies use many times contrasting colors in order to underline and emphasize their branding messages. But before choosing your color palette, you should start with the following elements: your brand persona, your brand message, the color psychology and meaning.  Let’s take a look, for example, to the following logo designs:

 

Mountain Dew uses green and red. Right away, a name like “Mountain Dew” evokes images of the great outdoors. Green works for the Mountain Dew’s logo because it nods to the brand’s connection to nature. But the red brings the kick that’s so central to the brand persona.

Visa uses yellow-orange and blue. They are definitely complementary colors. But besides the positions of the colors on the color wheel, let’s have a closer look to the meaning of the colors. Blue is a color often associated with trust, loyalty, royalty, friendliness, wisdom and peace. Yellow evokes positivity. So, the general message is trust, loyalty, positivity and wisdom. What else can we ask from a company at whom we throw wads of cash?

In web design:

On the web, color contrast is about finding colors that not only provide maximum contrast, but also provide enough contrast between content and the background for anyone. This doesn’t mean you have to limit your colors to complementary colors, but the contrast should be kept in mind all the same. You can combine different saturated and desaturated colors, to enhance the drama.

For example, the primary objective for this website is to reflect the adventure and wildness through the design, by combining different colors, textures and layering.  In order to do this, the designer not just used the vibrant orange-red letter on the forest green, but also used contrasting levels of the saturation.  

Using contrasting colors in web design helps you not just add more appeals to your design, but also organize your message and highlight the important parts of the design.

For example, the Mint website. The designer used one of the powerful combinations of contrasting colors. The white text, the orange color used for the call-to-action buttons and the bright green logo contrast with the dark background and stand out. Again, the designer used not just complementary colors, but also played with the dark and bright colors in order to highlight different elements of the website page.

In print design

For print design, the principles of the contrast are the same as for the web design. Whether you are working on a flyer, a brochure, a poster or have to publish an ad into a magazine, establishing the contrast is one of the most important things to consider. If it’s done properly, the contrast should be really noticed. It helps you separate the things, but it’s also the bond that puts the things together. Not only that a page is more attractive when contrasting colors are used, but the purpose and organization of the document are much clearer.

For example, the Hilton/F&B Brochure.

They use contrasting colors in their brochure design in order to highlight not just the pictures, but also the copy. Both of them are important, so the designer created the contrast playing with the colors.

On the other hand, let’s take a look to the Relic’s ad. They used tonnes of complementary and pairing colors in order not to just organize their design, but also highlight the message and create a summer feeling.

As in the web design, using the contrasting colors in print design helps you create a focus. For example, the adverts from the iPod used contrasting colors to focus the viewer’s attention on the music player. The ad featured a black silhouette character on a brightly green background. The iPod and the earphones appear in white and stands out from the black silhouette and the bright background.     

In indoor and outdoor signage

Because business signage is the first visible advertisement for any company’s services or products, you should give a special attention to the colors used for them. It’s true that the colors used have to match to your brand colors in order to provide a unified image of your company, but there are also other things you should take into consideration. One of them is the level of the visibility that will be created. By contrasting a light color on a dark background or a dark font or graphic on a light background, the viewers will be more drawn to your signage.  

For example, Starbucks uses white text on dark green background; and the signage can be viewed during the days and nights. Staples uses white text on the dark red. Although the white is a neutral color, combined with the dark red, it pops up!

With LEDs signs, it’s important to use contrasting colors. Contrasting colors do not only make colors eye-catching and more vibrant, it forces eyes to gaze at it. This is the key to getting the most marketing power out of your color choices – add some contrasting colors in the message that you’re trying to send.

Bottom line

As we said in the beginning, there is no magic formula for using the contrasting colors. You have to try and experiment by mixing different colors, using not just the primary colors, but also tones, shades and tints, because each concept and color combination can drastically change what you are trying to say with your project design.

Read More at How To Use Color Contrast To Get The Maximum Impact

from Web Design Ledger https://webdesignledger.com/contrast-colors-use-get-maximum-impact/