What you need to start a graphic design business

man working from home with laptop

It pains me to think of the $3000 I spent on a Mac Performa 6400 complete with a huge monitor and in-built 28K dial-up modem in the mid-90s. The machine chugged along like an aging donkey and the information super-highway felt more like a traffic jam. I wish I was starting now with readily available [...]

Free 2011 Calendars to download in PDF, InDesign and Illustrator formats!

Download Free 2011 Calendars!

Here’s a present for my visitors and subscribers as a BIG “thank you” for all the support and encouragement I’ve received over the year! Every year I send Christmas cards to all my clients with a calendar of the next year on the back. Putting something useful like a calendar on the back of a [...]

Make PowerPoint and Excel documents look good with Adobe Illustrator

How to make Excel and PowerPoint documents beautiful

There are two different worlds. There is the world of business and commerce which is fast-pace, practical, utilitarian. And the other is the marketing message which needs to be simple, easily digestible and attractive to the customers. Graphic designers sit between these too worlds. Often our clients will supply documents from the world in which [...]

Free open source alternatives to Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator

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A guest post from Louise Baker of Zen College Life For web designers, developers and amateur creative types that work with a lot of graphics and image manipulation, the decision of which software to use is an important one. While Adobe Photoshop and its related Creative Suite programs are well respected throughout the world, open [...]

Creating icons and illustrations using custom brushes in Illustrator

simple bike icon thumbnail

If you ever need to create a simple but effective illustration or icon and are bored of the effect you are getting with just an outline, it may be an idea to use custom brushes in Illustrator to give your lines a bit of character. Here is a simple trace of a motorbike that was [...]

Free 2010 Calendar in PDF and Adobe Illustrator file format

Acrobat-icon

Every year I send Christmas cards to all my wonderful clients with a calendar of the next year on the back. You never know, somebody may pick one up and think of putting some design business my way, that’s the idea anyway! I’m a bit late this year but I’ll be artworking it up this [...]

Exciting business card design

f1-steering-wheel-business-card-thumbnail

This is an illustration I did for a business card which I designed and created in Illustrator and Photoshop for a motorsports development fund. Rather than the standard old 86.6 mm by 53.98 mm rectangular thing they asked for a graphic representation of a Formula One steering wheel. It’s great when clients come up with [...]

Using vector illustrations in designs to deliver your message

vector-illustration-of-man-and-woman

Do you ever wish you didn’t use stock photography so much? Recently I’ve found myself trawling through pages of stock images from sites such as Shutterstock, iStock and Fotolia, usually looking for a well-presented young professional smiling to camera. These sites contain some good photography but I’m always worried that the stock approach lacks creativity [...]

Doing eye-catching designs in Illustrator

Eye-catching-swirl-spiral

I’m always on the look out for simple eye-catching ways to communicate a message. I think this is a great example of a visually appealing background that could be used when there are no images, graphics or other ways to improve the typography. This is especially useful in direct marketing (email or mail shot). How [...]

American flag inside country map outline

American flag inside country map outline

A while ago I did an article explaining how to create a country’s flag inside its map outline and I used as an example the Australian map and flag. I’ve since had a lot of interest from Australians who wanted to use the image so I thought I’d do one for Americans as I get [...]

Download the free e-books "How to Market Yourself Online" & "Starting An Online Business"

How to get clients online and advice on starting up online!

  • Creating websites
  • Setting up WordPress
  • Writing blog posts
  • Getting links
  • Driving traffic to your site
  • Using social media
  • Getting clients
  • Getting found on Google
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