Graphic Design Blog - An Ultimate resource of Graphic Design

It’s high time to redesign your Graphic Design Blog - Wake up!!

Charlie B. Johnson — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 13:26:32 +0000

Latest facelifts of top blogs from the Graphic Design World like “Smashing Magazine” and “Pro Blog Design” have left me puzzledL Undoubtedly, both the blogs have come up with classy minimal changes but the question is how to know it’s time to make-up your blog face? Surely, there comes time when a change has to arrive on our blog but important is that this progress happens at the right time.

Lately, twice I planned to get my blog revamped but a second thought held me back “Now or later?” A blog redesign certainly has its own benefits, for which many bloggers are quiet active with their redesign activities but I think it’s a very critical decision.

Therefore, today I decided to list all the points which would hint us that it’s time to redecorate our blog. Beautiful and sophisticated redesigned blogs are constantly appearing in the blogosphere; let’s see if we can also get our blog on the lists.

1 ) Improve the functionality of your blog: Many things which are seen on other design blogs but are missing from our blog like Social Bookmarking Buttons, Feed Subscription Form, Subscriber Stats, RSS Buttons, Portfolio Showcase and lot more. Redesign is an opportunity to have them on your blog.

2 ) Cleaning up the mess: You will agree that after every 3-4 months we decide to arrange our cupboards and dispose the unnecessary items. Similarly, if your blog appears to be stuffed up, it means you need to get rid of irrelevant material.

3 ) Removing old-fashioned features: Graphic Designing is a field where innovations are introduced every day. Your blog’s bounce rate can explain you that your visitors are not staying longer on your blog. So, include trendy stuff in your blog redesign.

4 ) To save regular visitors from boredom: If your design has been up long enough than your readers would be certainly bored by now of viewing the same old theme. By adding some interesting features, you can well entertain your regular visitors.

5 ) To attract new visitors: waiting for a shoot up in your traffic stats? Come up with a classy redesign and you will see the difference.

6 ) Establishing a brand: If you were not much satisfied with your logo or blog color scheme, after its aunch…here is a chance to come up with a design that reflects the true identity of your niche.

7 ) Making more sales and conversions: If you have an appealing and catchy blog, your visitors will most likely stick to YOU instead of your competitor. However, we can’t ignore the fact that design plays a major role in making a blog successful. As a matter of fact, loyal visitors make up for most of your blog traffic every day.

8 ) Adding trendy components: Being a graphic design blog, it is dedicated to the latest trends of the industry, so it is important to have a modern design.

9 ) To introduce new segments: Adding new section on your blog, like a weekly compilation of design news with some grasping graphics will add more color and demand to your blog.

10 ) Want to give your competitors a tough time: If you redesign your blog following all the latest trends of the blogosphere, I am sure your competitor will reconsider his blog design too.

Anyhow, all these reasons don’t mean that you have to get your blog redesign ASAP. It’s your blog, and you have all the authorities. Think about it and if you really want to redesign it, then go for it.

But I need your suggestions….I want to redesign my Graphic Design Blog, do you think it’s the high time??

Typographic Logos VS Graphical Logos - A fiddly comparison!!

Charlie B. Johnson — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 12:38:07 +0000

Don’t you ever wish to know the secret recipe of a successful logo design? I know it’s a lame question as there is none . We keep experimenting with our logo designs to come up with eye-catching and interest-grabbing logos. But in the end, we still don’t know which type of logo design will be a hit….

A black & white logo or a colorful Logo
A weird logo design or a playful logo
A typographic logo or a graphical logo

Yes…. Today I bring an interesting comparison between the Typographic Logos and Graphical logos. I have put 20 logos in each category, for you all to see how creatively designers have played with their logo designs. Enjoy these logos but don’t forget to tell if impressive typographic logos can give the clarity about your enterprise or it is important to have an icon added to the logo?

Which logos are more creative and convincing – Typographic Logos or graphical Logos?

Graphical Logos

Typographic Logos

Bearly Awake

Coffeenerd

Bikey

Fatherz day

Facial Surgery

Frankenstein Films

Dove Church

Gandhi

Geek

Play Ground

Greedy Geeks

KFC

Gooday Cafe

Kika

Ms.Behave & Mr.Lucky

LG

Seven Sparrows

Imported Mexican Foods

Ouch!

People PC

Quote Kid

Wunder Kiddo

Zoo Zagreb

Ponder

Ant

Bend

Exit

Fish

Fake logos

International Bicycle Museum

Hero

Neck & Body

Look

Alan Hodges

Luna

E2 Consulting

Lift

Pipes

Wrong Right

Seo Solution

Ludos

Slim

Steps

Tweenty-four Seven

Vote

Wire

Great White Productions

Jill

23 Impressive Graphic Design Logos – Creative minds at work!!

Charlie B. Johnson — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 04:41:48 +0000

While tootling around the blogosphere yesterday, unconsciously I started observing the creative logos of different graphic design blogs. It is always fun to see how artistically these creative gurus play with their logos. The best part of designing a logo for your blog is that you are not bound to follow an endless list of instructions (like the one given by your client

Well, here is an inspiring compilation of logos from the magnetizing world of graphic design. Surely, you must have appreciated many of these logos earlier but trust me it was hard to skip them from the list. However, I tried to highlight some new logos rather than repeating the pet ones which we are always praising

The logo collection below was simply limited by time. If you are sure someone is missing, let me know and I’ll be glad to add it!

Pro Blog Design	Positive Space


Swiss Miss	Out Law Design Blog


Creative Behavior	Randa Clay Design


Just Creative Design	Creative Latitude


Brown Sugar Design	Smashing Magazine


Lea Lea Design	Fuel Your Creativity


Design Sojurn	Cameron Moll


Woork up	Logo Log


Design View	Core77


Noupe	Bittbox


Creative Bits	The Dieline


Graphic Design Blog - Don’t forget it

What matters more for Graphic Design Blogs: Search Engine Traffic or Social Media Traffic??

Charlie B. Johnson — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 11:44:47 +0000

Have the stats on your “Traffic Analytics Tool” ever made you question your blog’s worth without the social media or search engines? Well, the growing craze for social media has dominated the internet world with its viral effect. The bandwagon is growing with the brands discovering the value of social media.

To make big profits and win special place in the busy blogosphere, we are spending endless hours on our laptops, making power accounts on numerous social networks like Digg, Twitter, Face Book and many more to be named. Although there are endless graphic design blogs which completely rely on social media traffic but we can’t ignore the fact that these sites wouldn’t have existed without search engines.

However, with this target of driving big traffic to our blog we are least bothered which traffic is better: social media or search engines?

Therefore, today I have listed the Pros and Cons of Social Media and Search Engines traffic, to help you get a better idea of your targeted customers.

1) Social Media Traffic – The Positive Aspect:

It brings in loads of traffic in short span of time by making your posts viral;
Your blog is exposed to more unique visitors, readers, clients while early adopters find it more appealing;
You get more advertisement offers for your blog;
A single post with huge exposure on any of the famous social media sites gets good ranking of your blog on search engines;
It helps you find people of the same industry and then share direct messages;
Social media is a strong channel for communication & branding.

2) Social Media Traffic –The Negative Aspect:

You have to put in lots of time and effort to have power accounts on social networks.
The traffic coming from social media sites is not stable…you might receive highest visitors in one day but the next day you might have least traffic.
Social traffic is made up mostly of webmasters and geeks…these sorts don’t click ads, and when they do, they don’t buy things . . . social traffic doesn’t convert.
The sudden increase in traffic eats up lot of bandwidth with almost nothing in return.
Social media it’s a valuable, powerful tactic, but the time investment often makes it much less valuable

3) Search Engine Traffic – The Positive Aspect:

If you rank well in one of the major search engines (Google/Yahoo/MSN), you will most likely show up in the majority of the search engines worldwide.
You get visitors which soon turn out to be potential customers.
The traffic is more converting, though less in number.
Search Engines bring targeted visitors to your blog.

Unlikely, the social media traffic, the search engine traffic is unwavering and predictable.
Visitors coming from search engines usually spend more time on your blog and explore it thoroughly. They stay longer to deeply analyze the company’s worth so they can pack a deal
With visitors staying more on your blog, the bounce rate of your blog stays low.
The smaller doses of traffic help you earn healthy subscribers on daily basis.

4) Search Engine Traffic – The Negative Aspect:

Frankly speaking, we rely so much on search engine traffic but if your blog is not searched on first 3 pages, it’s more likely that you won’t be found.
Results (rankings and traffic) start slowly. You will normally see results within 3-4 months.

The ranking your blog earns through search engines is very unpredictable. As the search engines have the final say so you never know for how long your blog stays on first pages for a particular term.

To cut the long story short, one single interesting post on social media can give life to a dying blog while on the other hand Search Engine traffic is a long term productive strategy.

However, I cannot conclude without highlighting another aspect of this comparison…many people think both of them are entirely different entities and cannot be interlinked, except Internet being the common medium. Do you agree that they are apple and oranges and both of them have their own powers and significance?

24 Numerical and Punctuation Logos – The Unusual Logo Designs!!

Charlie B. Johnson — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 07:11:19 +0000

Have you ever wondered your life without some of the big contributions of technology to the mankind? Your Internet and broadband, PC and laptop computers, Mobile and Iphones, Emails…are just a few to name. But have you ever pondered the minute things without which these prominent technology inventions wouldn’t have been of any use either. The alphabets, punctuation marks and digits placed on our keyboards are never accredited and we all regularly use them without imagining life without them.

So, here is a collection of 24 numerical and punctuated logo designs showing how creatively designers have played with these ignored features. It will be real fun to see how exclamation marks, brackets, semicolons, question marks and digits have decorated these logo designs.

While compiling such unusual logo designs, I clicked with an idea to launch a Logo Design Contest where you guys will only drop “Number and Punctuation Logos”. Yes, I think it will be an interesting task to come up with logo designs using punctuation marks and digits. How many of you want to explore your creativity skills…raise your hands

Graphic Design Blog - An Ultimate resource of Graphic Design

It’s high time to redesign your Graphic Design Blog - Wake up!!

Typographic Logos VS Graphical Logos - A fiddly comparison!!

Graphical Logos

Typographic Logos

23 Impressive Graphic Design Logos – Creative minds at work!!

Graphic Design Blog - Don’t forget it

What matters more for Graphic Design Blogs: Search Engine Traffic or Social Media Traffic??

24 Numerical and Punctuation Logos – The Unusual Logo Designs!!

Digits

Studio 45

Eleven

Curious

Imagine

Review Code

live 42

Godpress

Re-Styling

Evolutions X

2+2

Panda

Numbereleven

Code Fish

Eighty Three

N How

Gobo

Luvtalk

No One

Schizophrenic

Design Mark

Theater in de Steeg

Happy Quote

Talk more

Earth Branding

Spell Checker