These days, having a website, it's not a dream. Most people have at least one blog. It's good news for web designers. Now web design is a popular job and successful designers have a very high income.
Many bloggers and designers would like to come on their work and being successful. So it's great to know how creative minds think and see. How they get great ideas ,how they solve their problems and where do their work?
To read "1stwebdesigner Question & Answer" is a good source for getting the answer your questions.This eBook drives you through the way of success in web design.
1. Photo of your workspace. How well organized is your workspace? Where do your work?
"It's not where you're at; it's where you're going."
It's not important, where you work: at home, office or outdoor (i.e. library), but it's important to create a simple, warm and comfortable workspace. A neat and good organized office is a place to be creative. Put all things you need right round (i.e. papers for taking notes)
In simple words: your workspace is like your mind. A cluttered office increase stress, so keeping it neat and clean for giving the good output. Of course, some designers prefer a place between clean and a little cluttered. :)
If you work from home, you can set up your workspace any way you like, but keep in mind the key for working at home is sticking to your schedule and not being distracted.
Working outdoor for a change of scenery, to see different things and getting creative ideas can be very fantastic. At public place, like the library, coffee shop or a park your work area is really small, just your laptop and notes. (i.e. Gideon and his Mac book), but anything works great if you feel comfortable , while working.
As I've moved into to designer/developer role these last few years and away from traditional print design- I'm less dependent on computing power and disk space and prefer to have freedom to move around. I split time between my office PC tower, home Mac G5 tower (Shown in Picture) and Mac Book Pro. Most of the content for TYPESETT is started on the laptop at a coffee shop and finished at home setup.
(By Jack Tse, Twitter:@typesett)
I work at the office these days and I'd say it's pretty organized! Most everything is on the computer, so it's not too hard. I think it's really; really important to have good ergonomic setup for your chair and desk it's one of those things that I think is really worth investing in because you spend so much time there. A while back I was traveling and working for a while and ended up working at dining tables and on couches with a laptop for almost a year and it was * horrible* . Over time I found working was harder, I got some strange RSI pains and even my eyes hurt from having too small a screen.
(By Collis Ta'eed,Twitter: @collis)
I don't work at home or in an office. I like working outdoor (i.e. coffee shop) where I see different things every day. I get inspired by my environment and the things I see such as the print ads, restaurant menus, wall decorations, posters, clothing, etc. My workstation is very small: just my Mac Book and some Papers for making notes
(By Nick La, Twitter: @ nickla)
I work at home, which is great because you can set up your work area any way you like! For me, like a mixture somewhere between clean and minimal, and having a little personality. My space is fairly uncluttered, but with a few little personal tokens. All my pens are a pirate themed pen-pot, just because It's cool, I have a skeleton piggy bank, and a dragon-shaped pen, because it's a souvenir from my last holiday. The rest of the room has more little like that; not big enough to be distracting, but enough to make you smile when you look around
Two exceptions to those rules are the bottom of the Joker poster you can see, from The Dark Knight. I loved that movie, but a huge poster right in front of my probably isn't the best ideal! The other exception is to do with the clutter; you might notice my yellow stick notepad? I tend to have 3 or 4 of those notes around me at any time ( But I cheated and moved them photo). The only other things to note are whiteboard I use to keep quick track of where projects are at, and my moleskin , which I use for just about everything else!
( By Michael Martin, Twitter: @problogdesign)
2. Favorite Color Scheme for your designs. Why?
I feel most designers and developers don't have a favorite color scheme. It really depends on their project. They like to play with colors and they think every site needs different colors. It's pretty to mix cool colors with touching warm colors as highlight.
It really depends on the project, so light/dark/neutral is not contingent on what I want, but what's best for a given project. If it was a personal project though, I tend to go for a light/ loud color scheme (such as Design Instruct) or dark color scheme (such as in Six Revisions) , I rarely go neutral. My Favorite color scheme is white, black, red, and gray, but again, I don't necessarily use those colors in all the projects that I work on; I'd use hot pink, my least liked color, if it was the most appropriate color to use on the job.
( by Jacob Gube, Twitter; @sixrevisions)
When my son was a year old (he is now four) he wore a snow jacket with three squares as the logo, and each square was colored differently. I photographed the jacket and color picked the colors, and as a result the color scheme is the three main colors which you can see on Speckyboy Design Magazine. I have no explanation for why I liked that colors, I just did and still is my favorite.
( by Paul Andrew, Twitter; @speckyboy)
I use blue in most of my sites. I like this color. I have seen very cool sites using red or green schemes, but seem that blue works the best with me. I'd hope to use another color scheme on a future project, though!
(by Jean-Baptiste Jung, Twitter; @catswhocode)
3. The first source you have in mind when you're having coding type difficulties?
My best friend is Google. Only, Type the right keywords and get the result.
One of web designers says: "When you get into trouble, create a little video screen cast to help explain your problem in more details than possible in just 140 characters, on Twitter and trust a fellow designer, just don't forget to help others as much as they help you!"
Try also these sites:
http://stackoverflow.com/
http://www.wpquestions.com/
Again, this question is very project specific. I work a lot with Silverstrip, so anytime I run into a problem with coding for that I head over to Silverstripeforums. When I need of CSS of JavaScript help I usually do a Google search, or check out CSS Tricks or David Walsh Blog. If I'm in need of site inspiration I tend to head over to the Best Web Gallery, and for quick advice, I'll often ask the Twitter crowd.
(by Andrew Houle, Twitter; @myinkblog)
Google is a great teacher we often rely on. If we come across coding difficulties, we usually Google for quick solutions. For WordPress related issues, WordPressDocs is a good site to turn to. The WordPress Forum is also a good place to get support. As for JavaScript,JQuery, and if you need any help, their new JQueryForum is a very good resource.
(By Charlotte Lam& Terrance Huang. Twitter:@onextrapixel)
Coding difficulties: for a general, language-agonsitc resource: Stack Overflow. For MooTools, MooTools docs are the way to go; it was started (and curated) by one of the best JS coders in the World: Aaron Newton of Clienticide. PHP docs for PHP.
(By Jacob Gube. Twitter @sixrevisions)
4. Favorite website for daily inspiration?
Many of them don't have a favorite website; they check many sources for various opinions and getting new thought. But smashing magazine and Abduzeedo are the most popular websites for web designers.
There are a lot of awesome blogs out there that have some great inspiration. It depends on the sort of inspiration I'm looking for. I also get a lot of inspiration from the daily exchange of links on Twitter. But I'll break it down into a couple categories, and basically tell you my favorite site in each:
General Inspiration- (They've got all kinds, as I'm sure you all are aware)- Abduzeedo;
Web Design: BestWebGallery;
Typography (I'm a big fan of type) Inspiration; TypographyServed.
( by Nick Pagano, Twitter; @thinkdesign)
For design inspiration: Aside form the Six Revisions Design Showcase category, it'd be Smashing Magazine and Abduzeedo tied as my favorite; it really depends on whether I'm doing web design/ development work ( in which case, I go to Smashing Magazine ) , or if it's graphic design/art work ( then I'll let my self get abducted by Abduzeedo)
(by Jacob Gube, Twitter; @sixervisions)
Twitter has become a more up to date RSS Feed Reader for me these days, I also use iGoogle as well to organize my feeds, but to narrow it down I would say these are my fav's.
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/
http://www.inspiredm.com
http://webdesignledger.com
http://www.uxbooth.com
http://woorkup.com
http://line25.com
(by Chad Mueller, Twitter; @chadMueller)
I've found friends on SU and Twitter suggesting great articles and design inspiration, which is one of the reasons I find SU and Twitter so valuable as a designer. I'm happy to see so many design professionals tweeting some places I enjoy checking out for inspirations include:
http://ffffound.com
http://www.alistapart.com
http://www.designobserver.com
http://design.alltop.com
http://www.cardobserver.com
http://www.smashingmagazine.com
http://logopond.com/
http://delicious.com/tag/design
(by Ashtar Sheikha, Twitter;@2experts)
5. What's your most successful traffic increase event you've done in past?
Writing a quality article and being active in social media are the most effective way to increase website traffic.
Being active on Twitter definitely helped my blog, but I have to say that traffic wise being part of the Smashing Magazine Network has helped quite a bit.
(by Jon Phillips, Twitter; @jophillips)
Digg has always been a big contributor to the traffic stats on Six Revisions. It was my fourth Digg article that became popular that really turned Six Revisions to website that no one knew about but my friends and family, to a big website that many people from around the world read. That article isn't the biggest traffic spike on Six Revisions, but definitely the single surge to the success of Six Revisions.
(by Jacob Gube, Twitter, @sixervisions)
Without doubt joining the Smashing Network gave me my biggest traffic increase, overnight page views improved by 10% Being active in social media (Twitter, Facebook, Digg,Reddit, Stumbleupon…) always proves effective for traffic improvements and at various times in the past Speckyboy has shown huge traffic spikes. There are two problems with relying on social media as a traffic source:
1. It is very unpredictable; you can never tell what is going to be popular and were (Delicious make like it, Reddit may hate it; Stumbleupon may not even notice it and Digg may think its something else).
2.If you rely too heavily on social media it makes it very hard to determine what your core readers actually like.
( by Paul Andrew, Twitter; @speckyboy)
My experience with blogging has been pretty incredible. I started out it late 2007 when I was 15, wanted to see if making money online was possible. Within a couple of weeks I had earned $100 by doing miscellaneous projects that I found on design forum. About a month later, Elite by Design was born! 2008 was kick-ass year. I was relatively early in entering the design niche, as such, it was pretty easy to get traffic from social media sites and get linked to by other bloggers. I wrote several list posts and general resource compilations and other designers immediately picked up. My work and shared it around. I was able to make the front page of Digg twice, reach the front page of Delicious several times, and draw in hundreds of thousands of visitors form Stumble Upon. These were the glory days of Elite by Design. In 2009, I was a junior in high school. If you're in the US, you know that this means it was college hunting season. I took basically the entire year off from blogging in order to focus on my academics. And to make sure that I could get into a good university to continue my education. What surprised me the most, however, was how well Elite by Design continue to grow. In my year off, I went from about 1000 RSS subscribers to well over 5000. My daily traffic remained mostly the same (2-4,000 visitors per day) and my search engine traffic steadily grew. By the end of 2009, over 60% of my traffic was coming from Google to the posts I had written in 2008-quite SEO isn't worthwhile?
Come 2010, I've started working at Elite by Design again to reestablish the site as a reputable resource for designers. These past few weeks have been great. I'm running a project for Called March interview Madness where I am interviewingover 55 of the best designers, developers, and entrepreneurs on the web. This has been and awesome experience to get in touch with truly amazing people. If you' haven't been following the series, check it out and read through the interviews. They are short, sweet, to the point, and offer some invaluable tips, resources, and advice form the pros.
Blogging to me has been all about connections. I've met so many incredible people from around the world since I started way back in 2007. I think that it is a true technological marvel that at 17 years old I'm able to communicate with people on 6 different continents (no Antarctica yet!) on a daily basis. Blogging has opened the doors to some incredible opportunities and mention the pleasure that sharing information and resource brings.
(byBrian Lovin, Twitter; @EliteByDesign)
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