26 March 26, 2017

How to Design and Add a Banner to Your WordPress Sidebar Widget

2023-05-04T00:41:58+00:00By |Entrepreneurship, Graphic Design, Marketing, Photoshop, Website Design, WordPress|

How to Design and Add a Banner to Your WordPress Sidebar Widget In this video tutorial, I am going to show you how to design and add a banner to your WordPress Sidebar Widget along with the HTML code. What should you put on your sidebar? ✓ Mail Opt-In Form ✓ Mini Bio no longer than 2 sentences ✓ Your own banner ads ✓ Blogroll limited to between 10-20 posts. ✓ Affiliate banner ads limited to no more than 2-3 ✓ Search bar (should be at the very top) ✓ Any other text/links that doesn't run too long that are crucial [...]

22 March 22, 2017

Kerning, Leading, Tracking, Widows, Orphans, Rags and Rivers

2023-05-04T00:06:01+00:00By |Graphic Design, Illustrator|

Kerning, Leading, Tracking, Widows, Orphans, Rags and Rivers Ya, the title of this post is pretty funny. What on earth is that you say? Well, if you are a typography guru, then you will understand. In my third year of University, I took a mandatory course in Typography. I'm not quite certain how my professor did it, but he managed to spend half a year just talking about what kerning and tracking was. You will see below my guide to what all this means. But why are all these things essential? Good design requires that all these rules be met. Sure, design software has [...]

22 March 22, 2017

What is Mechanical Paste-Up?

2023-05-04T00:01:22+00:00By |Graphic Design|

What is Mechanical Paste-Up Mechanical Paste-up refers to a method of creating or laying out publication pages that predates the use of the now-standard computerized page design desktop publishing programs. Completed, or camera-ready, pages are known as mechanicals or mechanical art. Wikipedia Here. Way Back When Back in 1994, I applied for the opportunity as a co-op student to work at large bank in their graphics department. For a whole year, I was shown the in’s and out’s of graphic design, “mechanical paste-up” and introduced to the world of designing on a computer. Back then, Corel 3.0 was the program [...]

10 March 10, 2017

How to Design Business Cards + Downloadable Template

2023-05-04T00:39:28+00:00By |Graphic Design, Illustrator, Marketing, Photoshop|

Download my Free Business Card Templates below: Landscape 3.5" x 2" (.ai file) (.0125" margins) (.0125" bleed) Portrait 3.5" x 2" (.ai file) (.0125" margins) (.0125" bleed) How to Design Business Cards + Downloadable Template In this video, I teach you how to set up a business card as well as some tips and tricks in Adobe Illustrator for designing a simple business card that has a front and back element. Why you should NOT design business cards in Adobe Photoshop There are several reasons why you should not design a business card in Photoshop. If you click on my post [...]

8 March 8, 2017

How to Design a Book Cover Mockup in Adobe Photoshop

2023-05-02T13:34:44+00:00By |Entrepreneurship, Graphic Design, Marketing, Photoshop|

How to Design a Book Cover Mockup in Adobe Photoshop Watch my video tutorial below which shows you how to Design a Book Cover Mockup in Adobe Photoshop. A great resource I found was at a website called Covervault. He has a variety of different book cover mockups ready for you to download to insert your own book cover in. This is a great tool if you are an Author, or if you are designing for an Author, or someone who wants to showcase or promote a book or a downloadable Ebook. It actually looks even better than taking a [...]

7 March 7, 2017

5 Best Places to Get Free Digital Assets

2023-05-02T13:33:23+00:00By |Graphic Design, Photoshop, Website Design, WordPress|

5 Best Places to Get Free Digital Assets In any designer's arsenal, lies a stack of digital assets. These can range from social media icons to stock photos, to vector art. If you are a fellow designer, I'm pretty sure that you have your own stash of handy resources.  Here are my 5 best places to get free digital assets: 1. Creative Market Creative Market is a platform for handcrafted, mousemade design content from independent creatives around the world. Picture Etsy but with digital products. Every Monday, they feature 6 free downloads. This can range from custom created fonts, to [...]

27 February 27, 2017

Screen Resolution vs Print Resolution Infographic

2023-05-02T13:11:38+00:00By |Graphic Design, Illustrator, Photoshop, Website Design|

Screen vs Print Resolution Infographic If I had a nickel for every time a dear client sent me a 48 kb file photograph to insert into their business card, I can confidently say that I would be taking a yearly trip to Fiji. Here is my simple explanation on Screen Resolution vs Print Resolution in my infographic. Of course, you can google so many different theories that explain it much deeper and thoughtful than I, like this, this and this. Screen Resolution Purpose: Designing something for the Web (There is less information per square inch) Colours: RGB (Red, Blue, Green) Resolution: 72 [...]

26 February 26, 2017

Vector vs Raster Infographic

2023-05-04T00:39:37+00:00By |Graphic Design, Illustrator, Photoshop, Website Design|

Vector vs Raster Infographic Many of my clients are a bit confused on the difference between Vector and Raster. Just like when my accountant tells me there's an easy calculation to do payroll source deductions. Um no thanks. Find out what the difference is below in my Vector vs Raster Infographic. Take-away: Please do not design your business cards in Photoshop. Vector Image is made up of straight paths - think of drawing a line from A to B. Programs: Adobe Illustrator, Corel Draw File Output: AI, EPS, PDF Attributes: Great for illustrations, small file size, scale to any size, infinite resolution, can easily convert [...]

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