MyBackgrounds Blog

How NOT To Design A Logo at Webdesigner Depot has good reminders for designers and great points for any company looking to get a logo designed.

Your logo is important! People may toss a business card, but a memorable logo will likely stick in their brains. Typing text in Arial over a clip art image is not going to make a good logo! Sure your neighbor’s cousin’s son’s friend that took a graphic design class can hack something together in Photoshop and send you a JPG. What about when you need a crisp vector of that image for your signs or vehicle graphics?

Take the time and, yes, the appropriate financial investment, to do it right the first time!

Pattern Tap has scores of inspiration for designers. The collection of creative 404 pages is particularly fun. Check out the awesome ways other designers are styling breadcrumbs, lists, tags and more!

While some designers feel limited by Twitter’s background image specs, I do not miss the tiled animated GIF backgrounds so popular on MySpace. If Photoshop isn’t available to you, check out www.FreeTwitterDesigner.com. This web-based tool gives you a lot of neat drag and drop options to create a custom Twitter design. You can even upload your own images. When you’re done, just save your image and upload to Twitter.

While nobody like the idea of more paperwork, having checklists for routine development tasks can streamline projects and prevent errors. 45 Incredibly Useful Web Design Checklists and Questionnaires is an essential read for any developer. You can’t remember everything, so don’t be afraid to start checklists!

A design questionnaire is a great place to start. Many clients know they need a website, but they have no idea about how it should look or what it should do. Helpful hint – when asking about a client’s likes, don’t forget to ask about dislikes. “I like Google.” is not very useful. “I hate purple and pink, and that Flash stuff is really annoying!” gets you somewhere.