elbowruminations | Graphic Design Trends, Tips and Reviews Graphic Design Trends, Tips and Reviews

Is the economy letting you down because the economy getting your clients down? If this is the case, you might be looking for other means of employment. Even if you are not in a position where you need to look for new work, this post provides some hot tips where to look and where not to.

Recruiters
Graphic Designers don’t fit the mold, they tend to run solo or congregate in like-minded groups. With this being the case, recruiters don’t typically deal with designers on a regular basis and as a result, don’t understand how to find work for them. Unless you are lucky enough to have a good connection with a recruiter who knows you personally and feels confident placing you, don’t bother going this route.

Job boards
Your first stop when visiting online job boards should be The Society of Graphic Designers of Canada. Jobs from across Canada are available from a variety of industries. You will also be assured that the design of this website is pleasing to the eye which I’m sure is something you’ll appreciate. Continuing on the tour of job boards, be sure to drop by Freelanceswitch.com and Krop. Both of these sites list design opportunities, however they may or not have local relevance for you.

The Classifieds
It’s important to scour the classifieds, as archaic as that practice may sound, some of your best leads could come from kijiji.ca or craigslist.org. On Kijiji, you will discover the best results by searching your city for graphic design positions. On Craigslist, the well organized categories will allow you to visit art/media/design or web/info design for jobs that may be up your alley.

Career Finders
Perhaps the most traditional of online sources for jobs of any sort are websites like monster.ca, workopolis.com, and regionalhelpwanted.com. Monster.ca is seemingly the most useful of these as it provides you with the ability to save searches and receive frequent email updates that match your specifications.

Outsourcing Sites
The ubiquity of world wide internet accessibility has given rise to the concept of easy online outsourcing. Finding work, or finding talent is as easy as visiting sites like getafreelancer.com, elance.com, and odesk.com or even crowdspring.com (which is more a contest website than a job website). You will find a lot of work on these websites but you will also find a tremendous amount of competition as you are bidding against like minded professionals from many different economic situations . If you are planning on finding work via any of these sites, be prepared to work for a lot less than you may be accustomed to.

Aggregation Sites
Without a doubt, your most useful tool in fighting unemployment is the rise of aggregators in popularity and functionality. These are websites that do the searching for you, visiting all the websites you’d want to check and assembling the results for your review. There are three websites that do this job quite nicely. SimplyHired.ca, Indeed.ca, and Eluta.ca are great places to continue your search without expending the effort of clicking from site to site.

Good luck! Your dream job is out there somewhere, you just have to find it.

Popularity: 23% [?]

See that little icon at the left side of your URL bar? What you’re looking at is a favicon.

The word ‘favicon’ is short for ‘favorites icon’. Favicons were originally introduced with Internet Explorer 5. To install a favicon, developers could place an image file in the root of their web server with a specific name. This image file would then be used as the favicon for the website, and would be displayed in the user’s ‘favorites’ toolbar alongside the domain of the website.

But why?, I hear you ask.

There are many reasons why you may want to upload a favicon for your website. Firstly, if your site will be aggregated by content providers, or if your sites main feature is RSS, the favicon you upload will be displayed by your RSS feed, making it easy for users to identify your website quickly. It’s also the same case in a user’s favorites list, where there are many sites. You to stand out in that list and provide a quick graphical reminder of your sites.

Also, people DO notice favicons. For example, when Google recently changed there favicon, the blogosphere picked up and all of a sudden there were hundreds upon thousands of posts about the switch.

Your next question will most likely be: How do I create a favicon?

One of the best ways to create a favicon is to visit a website such as Favicon.cc. Favicon.cc provides you with a large square, comprising of 256 smaller squares. On the right hand side of the page there is a Color Picker box, which allows you to choose a color for the box you are about to fill in.
Then, once a color is selected, hover over a box and click it to fill it with that color. You can fill all the boxes with colors of your choice, and when you are finished, click the ‘Download Favicon’ button at the bottom of the page. This will download a file named “favicon.ico” to your computer.

Now, all you have to do is upload this file in to the root of your site’s web server. Once you have done this, the favicon will be available in the URL bar, beside the web address of the site.

Favicon.cc also has a gallery of the top rated user created favicons. The gallery can be viewed here.

Popularity: 25% [?]

The abbreviation FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol. FTP is a system that enables website owners to upload and delete files easily on web servers. Typically, the website owner downloads ‘client’ software, and uses this to connect to a server, the details of which are most always provided by the host of the site.

However, there are many different FTP client software packages. Some of them are paid, while some of them are free. This list will narrow all the tools down to five which you should really consider using.

FileZilla

FileZilla is one of the most popular FTP clients. One great thing about it is that it’s cross platform, meaning that it is available for a number of operating systems. FileZilla has some cool features, such as “Site Manager”. Site Manager allows you to save all of your FTP details, rather than having to re enter details every time you want to connect to an FTP server. There is also a log shown at the top of the screen, and a transfer queue at the bottom. The transfer queue allows you to see failed and complete transfers, as well as how many files are left to be transferred. Finally, FileZilla has a File and Folder view, which shows the folders of the PC you are using on the left, and the folders of the web server you are connected to on the right. FileZilla was originally started as a class project in 2001, and it has clearly evolved a lot since then.

Notepad++

Notepad++ is a great free source code editor. It has many great features, but one of the lesser known is the fact that you can easily install a plugin which will integrate an FTP client in to the software. The plugin can be downloaded free here. Many other free plugins can be downloaded for Notepad++, all completely free of charge.

FireFTP

FireFTP is an FTP plugin for FireFox. It’s available in over 20 languages, has support for a large number of character sets and has many other features. However, my favourite feature about it is the fact that it can be opened in a tab and you can run it while you’re surfing the net, meaning directories can be in synch without having to have 2 windows open. It is built for seamless integration and is available for all operating systems.

Cyberduck

Cyberduck is a Mac only FTP, SFTP, WebDAV, Mosso Cloud Files and Amazon S3 browser. It features a slick interface, with file editing features, as well as a bookmarking system. You can synchronize the bookmarks with your Mac iDisk if you wish, as well. Best of all, it’s open source. A great option for Mac users.

Coffee Cup FTP

Coffee Cup FTP is very similar to FileZilla. What sets it apart however, is the user interface. It’s very friendly and easy to use. With big status panes, as well as a ‘shiny’ feel, it makes for a better experience. It has a very “Apple” feel; works right out of the box.

Dropbox

If you are looking for a great way to share or store files, Dropbox is an easy way to do this. Using software as well as a simple online interface, Dropbox enables you to drag and drop files from the web to your computer and vice versa. It also gives you the ability to store files privately or share them publicly. I use it all the time!

What’s your favourite FTP client or transfer tool? Let us know!

Popularity: 13% [?]