CreativeTechs Tips

Here we are on New Year’s Eve. In honor of this annual time of introspection and planning, we've collected links to a few clever calendar templates to help start your new year off right.

David Seah’s Compact Calendar

"The problem with traditional calendar design," says designer David Seah, "is that they chunk time in months, not continuous days." In answer to that problem Seah created a long, thin calendar (at right) that is perfect for project planning. Download as PDF or choose an editable Excel document.

David Seah’s Compact Calendar 2008

Adam Sporka’s Thumb Calendar

Here's an ingenious 2008 calendar shrunk to the size of a standard business card. Focus on the dates directly below each month’s header.

Adam Sporka’s Thumb Calendar 2008

Juliana Halvorson’s InDesign Template

Finally, a bit more traditional calendar. Here is a clean InDesign template for you to create and customize your own 2008 calendar. The template uses style sheets for dates, holiday, and other details. So swapping out your own font choices is easy.

Juliana Halvorson’s InDesign Template 2008

Posted by Craig Swanson at 06:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In April 2007, A List Apart conducted a survey of people who make websites. Close to 33,000 web professionals answered the survey’s 37 questions, providing a treasure trove of data on the business of web design and development as practiced in the U.S. and worldwide.

The Web Design Survey 2007

If you are a web designer, hire web designers, or engage web development firms, this is a fantastic business resource.

Continue reading "A List Aparts' 2007 Web Design Survey." »

Posted by Craig Swanson at 04:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Curious how your website traffic compares to your competition? Alexa.com offers a fascinating ranking measurement that lets you pull up the traffic history for any website you wish.

http://www.alexa.com/

Think of Alexa.com as a form of Nielsen Ratings for websites. Alexa collects traffic data from users who have the Alexa toolbar installed on their web browser. The resulting traffic data is flawed — yet while not completely accurate, this information does provide a useful tool for designers tasked with improving their client's competitive web positioning.

Continue reading "How does your website rank on Alexa.com?" »

Posted by Craig Swanson at 03:10 PM | Permalink

Lately I've noticed more studios placing self promoting displays in their client reception areas. This is a fun, simple way of exposing visiting clients to your studio's changing portfolio of projects.

These portfolio theaters can be cheaper and easier to create than you might have guessed. Examples range from using a new Apple TV, to repurposing an old design station with an Acrobat slide show. Pull it off with flare and you have a great environment for visiting clients and vendors to discover and appreciate the breadth of your studio's portfolio.

Continue reading "Use an Apple TV as Your Portfolio Theater." »

Posted by Craig Swanson at 06:12 PM | Permalink

We've been getting a lot of calls and questions this last week about CreativeTechs' "official" recommendation to wait until June 2007 before upgrading to Adobe CS3. This recommendation was part of our presentation on March 28, 2007: Getting Ready for Leopard, CS3 and New Macs!

Now that Adobe CS3 has actually started arriving at many design studios, we've begun relaxing our initial cautious recommendations. As with all major new software releases, we've seen a number of odd bugs and issues that need to be addressed. However we underestimated the pressure in many studios to upgrade to CS3. Especially in studios struggling with the stability of InDesign CS2 or Illustrator CS2 on new Intel Macs.

Continue reading "When to Upgrade to Adobe CS3?" »

Posted by Craig Swanson at 01:39 PM | Permalink

If you manage a creative team with even a few designers, we strongly recommend that you take advantage of Adobe's Transactional Licensing Program (TLP) when you purchase Adobe software and upgrades.

Link: Adobe volume licensing made easy.

You'll probably save money. Far more importantly you'll prevent a future of serial-number headaches.

Continue reading "Avoid serial number headaches with CS3!" »

Posted by Craig Swanson at 01:24 AM | Permalink

Around this time of year, many freelancers and other small creative businesses in the United States start receiving requests for a lot of W-9's and other tax-related forms from their clients.

Tax advice is well beyond the scope of this tips newsletter. However if you are getting a lot of requests for W-9's this month, you can streamline things by using the editable PDF Form provided by the IRS:

http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/fw9.pdf

Pre-fill all your company's details and keep a copy of the form handy for when clients request it. Other tax forms can be found as PDFs on the IRS's Forms and Publications site.

Continue reading "Send all those W-9's using PDF Forms." »

Posted by Craig Swanson at 06:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Many years ago Seth Godin wrote a small book called The Bootstrapper's Bible. It is no longer in print.

More recently Seth updated that book, divided the ideas into short sections, and released it as a free ebook:

Seth Godin's Bootstrapper's Bible - Free PDF.

The original version was published before Permission Marketing, Unleashing the Ideavirus, Purple Cow, and his other big hits could firmly plant Seth Godin's name in the minds of entrepreneurs and marketing managers. Otherwise this Bootstrapper's guide would certainly be a best seller.

Continue reading "Read Seth Godin's Free Bootstrapper's Bible." »

Posted by Craig Swanson at 02:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This is the oddest line item in the CreativeTechs marketing budget for 2006. 55 bucks for our message on a digital piece of toast?

Link: Your Name on Toast

I'm a Seth Godin junkie, and he mentioned this site on his blog. I would have dismissed this out of hand from any other source.

Continue reading "CreativeTechs Tips on Toast?" »

Posted by Craig Swanson at 11:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

A couple years ago I was checking to see if CraigSwanson.com was still available. It was not. In fact to drive that point home, I found this blog entry by another Craig Swanson commenting on being one of thousands of people with the exact same name:

"'Craig Swanson'" is quite possibly the 'John Smith' of the late 20th century."

Somewhat sobering to be just one in thousands of Craig Swanson's out there. Too bad I wasn't the first one to register the domain. If your name is still available, grab it.

Continue reading "Is your personal name URL still available? Get it!" »

Posted by Craig Swanson at 01:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Almost every creative studio uses written contracts of some form with their clients. Many studios invest time and legal fees in developing their own custom contracts, while other designers will borrow contract language from the back of a design business book (or from a studio where they used to work).

However your studio developed your current client contracts, you might be interested in looking through a free, downloadable contract template from the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA).

Continue reading "AIGA's standard client contract." »

Posted by Craig Swanson at 01:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The October issue of the Creative Business newsletter has a valuable two-page white paper titled “How To Answer: I’d Like The Computer Files”, which discusses the legal and business issues involved when a client requests a copy of the original files used to build a recent project.

This increasingly common client request can pose a dilemma for many creative studios. Should you give them up? Do you have to? How do you respond to your client's request?

Continue reading "How to Answer: "I'd Like the Computer Files."" »

Posted by Craig Swanson at 11:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Here is a tip that came up during the hour of Q&A after last week's "Blog Your Portfolio" talk at Seattle's School of Visual Concepts: "What are some of the best tools out there for keeping track of my studios's online buzz?"

Here's an easy tool we like: SocialMeter.com

Type in the URL of your website, blog, or client's website. SocialMeter queries eight of the more popular social bookmarking sites to see how many links are pointing to your site.

Continue reading "Score your online buzz using SocialMeter.com" »

Posted by Craig Swanson at 03:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Thanks to everybody who came out to SVC last Tuesday for our free "Blog your Portfolio" talk. Every seat in the house was taken, and we ended up staying almost a hour after the presentation answering questions and talk with people.

As promised, here is a PDF of the slides from our talk:

Blog Your Portfolio - 09/18/06

Continue reading "Blog Your Portfolio Notes (September 18, 2006)." »

Posted by Craig Swanson at 03:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Every graphic designer who earns part of their living designing websites should be required to read at least chapter 14 of Dave Taylor's book Growing Your Business with Google.

Tip: Copywriters who want to learn to craft search engine-friendly copy should read this book too.

Craig's note: That's my own copy shown at right. I read it on vacation in early 2006 while we were planning our own CreativeIQ blog. I thought I knew a fair bit about web design. The dozens of post-it notes and highlighted sections are a testimony to how much I was missing about designing sites that work well with search engines.

Continue reading "Growing Your Business with Google." »

Posted by Craig Swanson at 12:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

This week we reviewed (and highly recommended) the book Growing Your Business with Google by author Dave Taylor. If you like to watch video instead of read, we've added a link below to Dave's presentation on business blogging at a recent summit in Florida

Continue reading "Growing Your Business with Google - The Video." »

Posted by Craig Swanson at 09:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Who is viewing your website? How do they find it? And what do they look at while they are there? Those are three important questions every creative team should know. Not only for their own website, but for their clients as well.

Google Analytics is a great tool for uncovering the answers to those questions. Colorful charts and graphs make traffic information accessible to visually-oriented types who might feel lost in a sea of raw data. Even better, it's free.

Continue reading "Who visits your website? Use Google Analytics." »

Posted by Craig Swanson at 07:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

About a year ago Seth Godin published Who's There? -- a free ebook about the evolving art of marketing with blogs. (This was a follow-up to his previous ebook Knock Knock which discussed how to make websites do their job better.)

This 45-page PDF is a quick read:

Seth Godin's Who's There (PDF)

Seth's book provides a good introduction into the world of using blogging as an effective marketing tool.

Continue reading "Read Seth Godin's Free eBook about Blogs." »

Posted by Craig Swanson at 02:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Should you ever lose your laptop while traveling, StuffBak property identification tags increase the chance that your lost item will be returned to you. StuffBak offers a wide range of label shapes and sizes that affix to any electronic device, such as a laptop, camera, iPod, cell phone, or external hard drive.

Continue reading "StuffBak Device Recovery Stickers." »

Posted by Craig Swanson at 01:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Ever wondered how you might use a blog for your studio? You can see how hundreds of other designers answered that same question at Designers Who Blog.

This site (a blog itself) provides a constantly growing list of over 400 blogging designers. Also included are illustrators, photographers, and professionals in advertising and marketing, etc.

Continue reading "Designers-Who-Blog.com" »

Posted by Craig Swanson at 12:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Providing computer support for a busy team of graphic designers, account managers, and other creative pros is a challenging job. It demands an odd combination of long-term planning and short-term crisis response.

A new book published by O'Reilly does a good job addressing the real-world, interruption-based environment most system administrators find themselves working in:

Time Management for System Administrators.

As author Thomas Limoncelli says, "A System Administrator's life is divided between putting out fires and building new buildings."

Good time management is crucial to keeping creative teams happy. There aren't many mentoring opportunities that teach these crucial skills to professional system administrators.

Continue reading "Time Management for System Administrators." »

Posted by Craig Swanson at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Seth Godin has published a quick list of ideas on how to generate blog readership.

Seth's Blog: How to get traffic for your blog

The ideas come rapidly and sometimes appear to be contradictory. But it is a great idea list -- and certainly worth a quick read for people interested in generating more traffic for their own sites.

Continue reading "Seth Godin's 56 ways to get traffic for your blog." »

Posted by Craig Swanson at 02:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Seth Godin has posted some eye tracking test results for Squido -- a web service he helped found that allows individuals create and maintain specials "lens" that focus on particular content.

You can view the raw unedited results in this YouTube video, or jump over to Seth's full blog entry "What I learned from eye tracking" and read his takeaways and thoughts.

Continue reading "Examples of Eye Tracking tests at Seth Godin's Blog." »

Posted by Craig Swanson at 10:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)