I remembered the first time Skillpages came to life when I was updating my status page at my social media site. Thereafter, it did not take too long to capture my attention and attracting me into using it.
Skillpages makes a great tool to freelancers for personal and skill exposure. I do admit there are plenty of other social media tools out there for such proposes as well. However, Skillpages distinctively stand out to the crowd with its extremely easy to use and clean User Interface (UI); in fact, I fall in love the moment I use it. Not to say that the other social media are not as good; every tool has its own good and bad but I personal feel that Skillpages really suit my need.
Network with People
Now the fun part begins – you get to know a lot of great people and freelancers nearby your places or somewhere far from you; the choice is really yours. As a starter, you may either invite friends from your email or your Facebook account. That’s a really quick way; it does not work too well for me though and that is when I start venturing it by searching the people with the right skills and location I want to know and Bang! There you have it.
Base For Portfolio
Skillpages makes a great base for showcasing freelancers’ portfolio. It allows them to update the latest project they are currently working on and even update its progress. By the end of the project, the freelancers can choose to upload the final work to show it to the world. In addition to that, they can as well, share the finished work to their LinkedIn/Facebook/Twitter accounts! Now, that what we called it multi-tasking.
Get Recommendation
Everyone loves feedbacks and recommendations; I love them and I bet you would love them too. Feedbacks are great for personal improvement and a recommendation would mean an acknowledgement from the clients whom the freelancer, are working with. Furthermore, people who like your work get to send their recommendation too. Do not shy to ask for recommendation if you have friends who really like your work. Every recommendation counts.
Create Opportunity
Whenever a freelancer needs a specific skill to get a job done, fret not! Skillpages has a great feature known as Create Opportunity. It allows the freelancers to post the skills they are looking for on Skillpages and those opportunities are visible to everyone in Skillpages related to their professions. The world just gets smaller and smaller.
What do you think about it? Do let me know your thoughts =)
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Saturday, September 17, 2011
Friday, September 16, 2011
Design's Tips: Clients' Direction
No matter how much creative sparks a designer can produce, there are times when a designer can totally at lost even at their own professional field. A good communication is crucial to understand the requirement of the client and it is up to us, the designer, to present them to our client's prospectives in the most simplest yet informative way.
Having had direction from the clients, it allows the designer to get more ideas on how the information should be presented to the audience. The designer may have the knowledge and skills to produce great design but if couple with the marketing expertise of the clients, it can deliver something that will take your breath away!
I believe that most of the designers choose this profession because they like what they are currently doing. However, the egoistic part should not have taken its toll - that is being too self-center and believing that they are the greatest in everything they do. Do note that even the greatest person will also make mistakes and having someone to guide us will lessen such problem.
Therefore, as to say, it is always better to have a client who are willing to voice out their opinion, desire and expectation rather that letting the designer to decide everything on their own. Few years back when I just started as a Junior Designer, I had this experience where I have to come out with all the design and the client just keep rejecting it without saying anything much. When asked what was wrong with the design, I was backfired with the statement that I am the designer, not them. It was sad experience but I definitely learn a lot from it. Now and then, I always show my appreciation to my clients who are willing to share their opinion and expertise.
Listen is the key here. Always give opportunity to the client to talk. Some clients may feel uncomfortable to talk and that is when we need to go into their comfort zone and show our interest in their business. Let them know that we are here to help and solve their problem. We solve it by understanding their problem through listening, analyzing it and propose for a solution. The solution may not be the best at first but it will be further refined through collaboration between the designer and client.
What do you think? Do you feel that client's direction helps a lot in your project? Do let me know about it.
Having had direction from the clients, it allows the designer to get more ideas on how the information should be presented to the audience. The designer may have the knowledge and skills to produce great design but if couple with the marketing expertise of the clients, it can deliver something that will take your breath away!
I believe that most of the designers choose this profession because they like what they are currently doing. However, the egoistic part should not have taken its toll - that is being too self-center and believing that they are the greatest in everything they do. Do note that even the greatest person will also make mistakes and having someone to guide us will lessen such problem.
Therefore, as to say, it is always better to have a client who are willing to voice out their opinion, desire and expectation rather that letting the designer to decide everything on their own. Few years back when I just started as a Junior Designer, I had this experience where I have to come out with all the design and the client just keep rejecting it without saying anything much. When asked what was wrong with the design, I was backfired with the statement that I am the designer, not them. It was sad experience but I definitely learn a lot from it. Now and then, I always show my appreciation to my clients who are willing to share their opinion and expertise.
Listen is the key here. Always give opportunity to the client to talk. Some clients may feel uncomfortable to talk and that is when we need to go into their comfort zone and show our interest in their business. Let them know that we are here to help and solve their problem. We solve it by understanding their problem through listening, analyzing it and propose for a solution. The solution may not be the best at first but it will be further refined through collaboration between the designer and client.
What do you think? Do you feel that client's direction helps a lot in your project? Do let me know about it.
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Logo Design: FOSS
Here's a really quick logo design for the Free Operating System Software I did in quick succession. I just get the inspiration and everything start moving on its own flow really really fast. Let me know what you guys think ^_^
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Illustrator's Tips: Rasterizing Image
It has been a norm for most of us, designers, to work on very high resolution images in our work. The least thing that we likely want it to happen is to see our artwork/design printed out in blown out or jagged, catastrophe quality.
In such scenario, most of us would choose to embed all the image files on our final design, which is not favorable by the printing shops. The file normally will end up to few hundreds of MB and it is the arch-rival on lower-end computers. The computers are crashed, the whole operation is delayed and you see unhappy faces starring back at you.
An alternative solution, other than embedding your image files, would be Rasterize... Contrary to Embed, Rasterize resizes the image at its appropriate sizes and resolution as defined by the designers. The Embed, on the other hand, merely flatten the image files at its original high resolution size, which makes your final printing file at infinite file size.
In such scenario, most of us would choose to embed all the image files on our final design, which is not favorable by the printing shops. The file normally will end up to few hundreds of MB and it is the arch-rival on lower-end computers. The computers are crashed, the whole operation is delayed and you see unhappy faces starring back at you.
An alternative solution, other than embedding your image files, would be Rasterize... Contrary to Embed, Rasterize resizes the image at its appropriate sizes and resolution as defined by the designers. The Embed, on the other hand, merely flatten the image files at its original high resolution size, which makes your final printing file at infinite file size.
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Illustrator's Tips: Increase Performance
There are times when freelancers have to work with really huge files without sufficient computer memory (RAM) at their disposals to load these files or perform certain crucial actions in Illustrator.
Here is a quick tips on how performance can be improved in Illustrator.
Here is a quick tips on how performance can be improved in Illustrator.
- Go to Illustrator > Preferences > Plug-ins & Scratch Disks...
- At Scratch Disks, leave the Primary: as it is. Meanwhile, select the bigger disk you have for Secondary:
- There it is; it might not improve heavenly and earth but it does make a difference when working on large files in design
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