.PNG, .CDR are the formats of this illustration. Its resolutions are 764 x 657, 1593 x 1369, 3186 x 2738. Being a vector image, it can be printed in different formats without losing its high quality. Downloading is affordable and easy. It is possible after the registration at Templates.com. This registration is completely free.

! You can use this free vector illustration only for your personal or educational purposes. Do not use it for commercial purposes, it is forbidden.

Here is the link to get this goodie.

Become a mature web designer with Templates.com!

As a designer, I know that many designers see logo design as just any other kind of design work. Businesses and organizations feel that they are hiring an expert; so, they seldom take an active role in the process of logo design. Ideally, a logo design should be based on a strong client brief. All crowdsourcing and low-budget logo design can be compared justly with shooting in the dark – if enough care is not taken in logo design, you end up getting a logo that looks superb and has nothing to do with your brand.

I wish to make a case for more personalized and better-thought-out business logos. Businesses and even design companies have the tendency to rush through the logo design process. Let’s see why it is absolutely important to spend a good amount of time and energy for designing the perfect logo.

You are your Logo, Your Logo is EVERYWHERE

Human beings instinctively latch on to images before they start reading text; therefore, the importance of pictures in books or blogs. Your company’s communication in any form – digital or print – will carry the logo. Before reading any text, it is the logo that will notify the reader of who he/she is dealing with.

Image Source: Stock Photo by Shutterstock

Does the image of your logo inspire trust and goodwill? Is it unique and memorable? Is it aesthetically pleasing? Does it convey the personality of your company? These are all important functions that your logo needs to fulfill. Remember: the logo that you create will be on your letterheads, email, products, advertisements, brochures, and internal communication. It is your calling card: it can be your most effective tool, or it could be your biggest weakness.

Most professional web designers have the ability to create powerful and aesthetically pleasing designs. But they miss the personal touch. Your challenge is to strive for a logo that captures the very essence of your business.

You already have a Brand, Your Logo can Complement It

Perhaps, you are smart startup and you have decided to get a fantastic logo before you start making a splash in the market. In that case, you are in a minority and I congratulate you for your foresight. Maybe, you do not need a logo, but it shouldn’t hurt! But most businesses decide to get a business logo once they are performing well and growing bigger.

Image Source: Stock Vector Illustration by Shutterstock

By the time your business begins to grow, you have an impression in the market. There are certain aspects of your work that set you apart from competition; there are certain positive values that you, your employees and your customers associate with you. Maybe you have a website or a brick-and-mortar store that has a unique history and a recognizable appearance.

These are the building blocks of your brand – in fact your business, your work environment and physical premises are your brand. Your logo should be rooted in your existing brand features and it should also take into account your future plans. Such a business logo can stand the test of time. And creating a logo like that needs investment of time and effort from the designers as well as the business owner.

To Wrap it Up

As noted above, a good logo design can help your business grow organically. A well-designed logo can help you create a memorable and favorable impression. It can also ensure that you do not end up getting a logo that alienates your existing clientèle. You need to find dedicated and intelligent designers who are willing to go the extra mile for you. You need someone who can care about your business, understand your vision, and create a symbol that represents your uniqueness. And all this requires you to invest time and energy in the process of logo design.

Author’s Bio:

Skylar Barret works for PLAVEB, a web design and development company that also provides web portal development, online store creation and logo design services. He has been associated with hundreds of logo design projects and holds strong views on what every logo should achieve. When he gets the time, he likes to share his views about designing with the world.

Summer is the season when we plan the most venturesome memorable adventures. By hook or by crook we escape from the stuffy city to breathe in the fresh salty air of the sea coast. We bask in the sun rays, which make our skin tanned. When the heat becomes unbearable, swimming in caressing waves gives the desirable crispness. Have you ever noticed how happy such simple things like sand running through the fingers can make us, adult, sober people? To my mind only summer is able to submerge us into the atmosphere of motiveless joy. Maybe this is the reason of our travels to tropical countries in the middle of the winter. We just want to get the energizing portion of warmth and happiness.

Fortunately, summer is almost here and we even feel its hot breath. Let’s get ready for the season’s coming and let the sun into our office. Here is a bunch of summer desktop wallpapers for your sweet dreams, plans and high spirit. All of them are of HD quality and absolutely free for downloading. So, choose the wallpaper that stirs the most pleasant summer associations in your mind and set it on your desktop right now!

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Dandelions Drops Wallpaper

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Underwater Coral Fish Wallpaper

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Starfish

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On the Beach

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Grass on Beach

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Sailing Over Indian Ocean

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Japan Digital Rain Fall

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Japanese Garden Washington Park

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Beach Sun Nature

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Pearl in Clam Shell

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Caribbean Drinks

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Summer Beach Cocktails

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Message Bottle

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Starfish on the Beach

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Shell on the Beach

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Hot Summer

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Melon on the Beach

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Tropical Wallpaper

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Summer Wallpaper for Desktop

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Sunset in Maldives

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Yacht, Clear Blue Ocean

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Tropical Beach Resort

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Boats

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Butterfly Fish Sea Wallpaper

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Stairs Over The Clouds Wallpaper

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Blue Butterfly Wallpaper

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Amazing Sea Resort Wallpaper

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Ocean and Waves Wallpaper

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Colourful Parrots Wallpaper

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Curious Birds Wallpaper

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Panda Bears Wallpaper

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Image Source: Stock Photo by Shutterstock

Your Page Logo

Your blog page logo is one of the first elements a visitor to your blog or website sees. As a result, a professionally designed logo is worth the financial investment necessary. An amateurish logo not only does not enhance your blog or your company’s brand, it can actually detract from the impression visitors form of your company. After all, if your company’s website or blog page logo is carelessly executed, what does that say about the quality of your company’s products or services, let alone the blog itself?

The Price of Cheap (or Free) Design

Chances are, your blog faces stiff competition. Unless you’re writing about an extremely obscure subject, it is unlikely that your blog is the only choice available for interested readers. Attempting to pinch pennies by bypassing professional web design can be a costly decision. Poor website design can actually put off visitors before they even have a chance to read your sparkling copy. Poor back end coding can cause your website or blog to load slowly. Garish colors or overly busy elements can be distracting to visitors.

On the other hand, professional web design helps your blog stand out in a crowded field. A professional web designer can make the most of your blog’s available real estate, with optimal placement of text, visual elements and ads to guide visitors to featured content while making your blog memorable. Professional web design also frequently features top quality web copy and makes maintenance and updates simple.

Image Source: Stock Photo by Shutterstock

SEO and Navigation

Search engine optimization is designed to help your website place high in keyword search results. Professional web design can unobtrusively weave relevant keywords into your blog’s copy, boosting its position without resorting to clumsy keyword stuffing or other “black hat” SEO tactics that can land your blog on the outs with search engine administrators. Once visitors land on your blog site, professional web design can encourage them to linger by making navigation logical and user friendly.

The Process Behind Professional Web Design

A major element driving the expense of professional web design is the professional behind the design of your website or blog. He or she considers your company’s or blog’s mission, niche and target readership. The design process is based on the designer’s expertise, your input and research conducted by the designer into visual and other features of successful blogs addressing similar topics and market research to help position your blog. A first class web designer is worth every Dollar, Euro, Yen or Pound Sterling you spend to obtain his or her services on behalf of constructing your blog.

For Further Reading

• Adam Scott: Why Professional Web Design Isn’t Cheap
• Just Creative: Why Professional Logo Design Does Not Cost Five Dollars
• LP Legal Practice Pro: Why Your Law Firm Blog Doesn’t Need a Professional Designer (Until It Does)

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About the author:

Frank Ashton writes regularly on the topics of blogging and SEO. Helping others achieve their personal and business goals is his passion. Ever seen a fast loading website and wondered WhoIsHostingThis? Click the link to see a web hosting search service.

Easy on the eye design in sappy colors creates a positive tone and attracts attention. Large jQuery slider images in the top show the delicious dishes from the menu and work up an appetite. The “best choice” section features the pleasant discounts and the hot offers. To place all the possible dishes the restaurant offers, use Menu page. Change the texts into the needed, change photos into the bright ones from the collection, add a bit of customization, and you’ll get an attractive website for a restaurant business. Free template live demo will show you how it will look like.

Free Website Template for Restaurant Site:

If you can’t make up your mind at once, please try to consider the following questions, listed to help with the decision:

• How high do you expect your sales to be?
• Are your products digital or physical?
• Do you need to combine the ecommerce platform with other tools?
• What is your budget?
• How many SKUs have you got?

This table, identifying the most important points of each platform, will let us briefly overview 10 most popular e-commercial solutions according to Alexa rating.

• Shopify

Shopify offers elegant storefronts with user-friendly tools, so you are able to customize the website yourself or buy a premium template. The software is promised to do almost everything instead of you, except money handling and products shipping.

• BigCommerce

BigCommerce is one of the most popular e-Commerce solutions targeted on small business market. The software helps to sell on eBay, Facebook and even from your iPhone or e-mail services like MailChimp. It’s worth mentioning that customers support service of the company is friendly and easily accessible.

• CoreCommerce

CoreCommerce is a SaaS e-Commerce platform founded in 2008, Tennessee. This shopping cart software is used by more than 13,000 online stores in almost 70 countries. CoreCommerce is appreciated for excellent customer service and social media integration. The company offers 5 different pricing plans ranging between $19.99 and $149.99 per month.

• Americommerce

AmeriCommerce was founded in 2005. Since then, their team has increased to nearly 30 employees working in two US offices. AmeriCommerce numbers over 5,000 of operating online stores. AmeriCommerce is known for its multi-storefront option allowing merchants run multiple online stores from one backend.

• Big Cartel

This ecommerce software is good for small businesses. Artists, designers, bands, jewelers and crafters are their main customers and owners of nearly 200,000 of live online stores. Big Cartel draws its huge number of clients due to the free plan providing you with simple online store that’s easy to maintain. Three paid plans from Big Cartel range from $9.99 to $29.99 per month.

• 3dcart

Over 15,000 of online stores utilize the software from 3dcart. Here are some examples of online stores powered by their software: The New York Times Store, Candy.com, Lukie Games, Ideal Baby & Kids. 3dcart is known for its easy usage, modest prices, and terrible customer service. Five different pricing plans are available for small businesses owners.

• Volusion

The company is the best place to work according to the poll carried out among Volusion employees. They offer options for mobile commerce segment as well as social commerce options.

• Magento

Magento is considered the best open-source shopping cart script. It provides you with advanced stats, customer group management, lots of payment gateways, nice admin interface and many other goodies.

• LemondStand

This e-Commerce web software application was launched in 2010. LemonStand is not bad Magento alternative.

Here are some major features of the software:

• Supports unlimited products and categories;
• Multicurrency support;
• Support for physical (shippable) and virtual (downloadable) products;
• Object oriented PHP backend;
• Web Browser Install and Plugin support.

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In order to summarize everything mentioned above, let’s make up a short list of aspects, utterly important for every e-Commercial store. We are sure that keeping them in mind will help you take deliberate decision, which will turn into profitable online business.

• Large product images
• Product reviews
• Layered navigation
• One-step checkout
• Full text search
• Coupons and discounts
• Ability to import and export products
• Integration with third-party services
• Analysis and reports of sales.

We offer you to download this illustration in two formats (.PNG, .AI) and three resolutions: 787 x 1097, 1639 x 2285, 3279 x 4571. As a vector image, this item keeps its high quality while being printed in different formats. Downloading is affordable and easy. It is possible after the registration at Templates.com. This registration is completely free.

! You can use this free vector illustration only for your personal or educational purposes. Do not use it for commercial purposes, it is forbidden.

Here is the link to get this goodie.

Become a mature web designer with Templates.com!

Visual identity embraces large variety of elements that can represent a product – logotype, signatures, marks, business cards, etc. Nicely executed, they become real masterpieces that are enjoyed by the audience.

It’s always interesting and inspiring to see the existing examples of great works, and this is the very thing that I offer you to do in this post. Here I’ve compiled several wonderful examples of visual identity projects for you to enjoy, and even derive inspiration from.

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Mylene Poisson Sommeliere

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Blurb Productions

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Baker & More

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Butterfield Market

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Cafe Ritto

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Driven Marketing

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Glasswear Industries

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LuckyYou

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1:1 Arkitekter

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Portfolio

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Sleep in Hostel

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Waldo Trommler Paints

Let’s refresh the most essential of them in our memory:

• As simple as possible

  Remember that the users don’t like to strain reading the obscure wordy text, so make your page clear, understandable and convenient for scanning.

• Evident difference between the options

  When you offer several plans, emphasize the difference between them so that the user could quickly grasp the essence and make the choice.

• Be convincing

  Use solid, trustworthy words to dispel all customers’ doubts and persuade them to sign up for your service.

• Provide FAQs and Testimonials

  This way you will reply all possible questions and show the customer that lots of other people are happy with their purchase.

• Free Trial

  This option tells the buyer that you are so confident in blameless quality of your product, that you are not afraid to give a free trial.

• Prominent call-to-action

  Suggest the next step, make your call-to-action button easy to notice, large and contrast against the background.

• Currency switch

  You know, prices in foreign currency may seem rather confusing to the buyer, so several options of the most popular ones will considerably help hesitant users.

• Limited choice

  It’s much more efficient to narrow the number of plans to four or less as vast variety of offers may cause the opposite effect and petrify the customer.

• Creative touch

  Don’t go too serious as playful creative elements and visual effects form positive users’ impression and engage them.

• Let them know what happens next

  Let your customers think that the process is completely under their control. People feel safe and pay money more willingly when they know exactly what happens after the transaction.

Don’t you think that it is enough theory for now and time to pass to practice has come at last? Here follows a collection of best pricing pages we were able to find on the web. Their fresh modern designs will serve you live examples of awesome approach to the matter. You are welcome to view them all and pick out the most winning tricks and methods for further application in your own projects.

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Tonx

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Mixpanel

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Geckoboard

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Fundrise

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Layervault

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Done Done

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Epic Body Designs

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BuySellAdsPro

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Shoplocket

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Shopify

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Pikibox

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Vintage Hope

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Square Space

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Map Box

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Rdio

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Jess Marks

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Tvornica Bannera

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Gather Content

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Layer Space

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App Figures

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Vzaar

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Campfire

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Podcast People

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Talker

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Chargify

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Hudl

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Dropbox

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Wufoo

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Idea Scale

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Point Kit

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Launchlist Pro

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Slide Deck

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Yast

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If you wonder how old this hobby is, we can answer that collecting of matchbox labels emerged together with matches. Some collections contain labels from chemical matches, produced in 1810 – 1815, long before the modern matches were invented.

It’s hard to believe, but the most enthusiastic collectors can be rather ingenious when they want to get hold of the next matchbox. Sometimes even check out of the neighboring trash cans is OK in this hunt. However, today, in the era of internet, such “reeking” methods are gradually replaced by the innocuous theme web surfing, where phillumenists collaborate and replenish their collections with new precious examples.

By the way, Teiichi Yoshizawa from Japan was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s top phillumenist.

Continuing our inflammatory talk, it should be mentioned that collectors are especially passionate about the following match-related items:

• Single-Top Labels (one-panel labels affixed to the top of matchboxes);
• All-Round Labels (labels wrapped around the matchboxes);
• Skillets (labels which design goes around the box and is printed directly onto it);
• Packet-Size Labels (also known as the dozen or gross labels);
• Matchcovers (sometimes erroneously referred to as bookmatches, which in fact are matches inside a matchbook; while the matchcover is actually an empty flattened out matchbook);
• Hardware (match strikers and containers that were in public use from early 19th century to the middle of 20th century);
• Complete Boxes (entire matchboxes including fiery contents).

Now, when we have finished with the types of match-related items collected by the phillumenists, let’s skip to the variety of their designs, which we believe are much more interesting for you. Below we’ve collected 30 + beautiful vintage matchbox designs from all over the world. Have a look at their fonts, images and placement of elements on such limited area. From our viewpoint these labels are rather inspiring, aren’t they?

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