101 Reasons to follow me on Twitter:

1. Twitter is a great way to get in touch with me.
2. You can ask me a question about something that isn’t in my FAQ.
3. It’s a great way to request a tutorial.
4. I can help you Digg stuff.
5. I’m more likely to respond to a tweet than an email.
6. You can send me links to stuffs around the webs.
7. I have Twitterfeed set up, so you will know every time I publish a new post.
8. I can answer questions in real time.
9. I can help you Float stuff.
10. You can see random pictures I upload to TwitPic, like pictures of my cat puking because he eats too fast.
11. Twitter is awesome.
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1. You’ve had a client that thought they knew more about design than you.

2. Your clients pay you for your professional expertise and skill, yet you’ve run into one of ‘those’ clients, that refuses to take the advice from the very person he/she is paying for advice (you).

3. You’ve had a client that insisted on using the font “Papyrus,” and you had to hold in your barf as you prepped it [the design] for printing.

4. You’ve requested a vector logo from a client, and instead, they email you a 72 dpi image they grabbed from a website.

5. You’ve used typography as a texture.

6. You don’t have a favorite font because you love “Typography.” Not Fonts. Choosing a favorite font would be like choosing a favorite child, it’s just wrong.

7. You collect as many free stuffs from the interwebs as you can on your hard drive, hoping that one day, that cool project will come along that you can actually use some cool shit on.

8. You’d rather have a free font than a free gallon of gas.

9. It’s hard to talk about frustrations at your job with a group of friends because they have no idea what “Vector” or “DPI” is, just to name a couple.

10. You’ve had a client ask you to “Make the logo bigger.”

11. You’ve had a client that insists on “filling up the space.”

12. You’ve learned to over-price web design projects because most clients are more picky about their websites than a high school girl picking out a prom dress.

13. You feel like you’re “On Call” half of the time because clients procrastinate so much.

14. You know keyboard shortcuts that require 4 fingers.

15. You’ve lost hours of work because an application crashed, and you had to start over from scratch because you were in the “zone” and forgot to save. Basically, you were having so much fun being creative that saving was the last thing on your mind at the time.

16. You’ve “Live-Traced” something.

17. You spend more hours per week looking at CSS showcase sites than you do at the gym.

18. The only thing that would make you happier than the demise of IE6 is world peace.

19. You’ve done everything but give up a body part to talk a client out of a “Flash Intro.” Yeah. I said it. Flash Intro. Sad, so so sad. (goes along with #2)

20. You have enough fonts on your hard drive to last you for: 1 font per day for about a decade, give or take a year or two.

21. You know, explicitly, what a “Flourish” is.

22. You worry about negative space as much as the content area.

23. You get phone calls from friends and family members on a regular, sometimes annoyingly-frequent basis, wanting your services for free or extremely cheap. (and the “portfolio” line makes you want to throw something across the room)

24. You’ve had a client that wants a website they can “update” on their own, but doesn’t know shit about websites.

25. You’re never more than 99% happy with your final product because you believe that EVERYTHING can be improved upon. (especially with those tight-deadline projects)

25 Reasons You Might Be A Hardcore Graphic/Web Designer

(In no particular order)

1. You’ve almost rear-ended the car in front of you because you were analyzing a font on a billboard.
2. You get pissed when a free Photoshop brush you download is less than 1000px in size.
3. You’d rather study the paisley pattern on your boyfriend/girlfriend’s shirt than listen to what he/she has to say.
4. You can use keyboard shortcuts at light speed, blindfolded, but you can’t type a paragraph of text without staring at the keyboard.
5. You’ve had “Software Nightmares,” when you’ve been working way too much.
6. You consider meals interruptions.
7. You’ve learned your lesson and stopped using the word “final” in any file name when saving.
8. You clean your keyboard more often than you wash your car.
9. You’ve intentionally given up trying to explain your projects to non-designers.
10. You see CMYK and RGB like Neo sees the Matrix.
11. You’d rather organize your desktop than your sock drawer.
12. When you heard that Adobe was acquiring Macromedia, you had a Design Orgasm.
13. When you look at Album art all you see are grunge Photoshop Brushes. (Then you see the album art a couple minutes later)
14. You’ve Photoshopped out a watermark for a comp or mock-up.
15. You’ve actually $paid for a font.
16. You’ve totally slaughtered a great design concept because the client thinks he/she knows best. (everyone thinks they are a designer)
17. The amount of words you’ve written with a sharpie labeling burned discs total more than the amount of words you’ve read in novels.
18. You’ve had to explain to a client that a layered file wasn’t part of the deal.
19. You’ve kept a ragged concert ticket just so you could scan it.
20. You’ve nicknamed the OSX spinning wheel. (and not affectionately)
21. You bookmark a resource more often than you have a fun night out on the town.
22. You’ve intentionally overbid a project because you can sniff out a bad client from a mile away.
23. You can’t go to a restaurant without secretly critiquing the menu design.
24. You have an amazingly huge font collection, and an amazingly short temper.
25. If you had a penny for every mouse click, you would have been a trillionaire 3 years ago.

It’s been a wild ride the past 3 months, and I think I can honestly say I’ve never been busier. I’m just like you. I work a normal 8-5 design job, and blog on the side in my spare time. I started this blog so I could share what I know about design with the rest of the world, but I was surprised as to how much I’ve learned just from blogging.

Blogging as a Designer makes you a better Designer

Yes, I said it. I’ve not only been sharing what I know with all of you, but all of you have been teaching me at the same time. I’ve learned keyboard shortcuts I never knew about, parallel techniques, easier ways to accomplish a similar effect, and lots more. Not to mention links to great sites that you all know about, and I’ve made a few friends to boot.

The Hurdles

1. Starting a blog as a designer wasn’t easy, so if you think you’re up for the challenge, I have a few words of advice.

First of all, you’re a designer, not a programmer, so installing a blogging platform and setting up a mySQL database might seem completely alien to you. It took me quite a few calls to my host, and a lot of reading to understand how it all works. I can design and produce a website in both Flash and HTML, but the programming side of web design is over my head. I don’t know s*#t about PHP or mySQL, and the set up process was especially confusing, because all I wanted to do was start a blog and go! It’s not that easy. First you have to choose your blogging software, hosting, set up a database, and all that jazz. There is no way I can possibly explain it all here. I chose WordPress as my backbone, and I have my own hosting. I’m not sure if wordpress is the best, but it’s widely used, and it’s fairly user friendly.

When you first start, frequent the forums. There are pleny of generous people willing to help, and others with the same questions.

Don’t be afraid to email a blogger for help via email. You will be surprised at how fast you make friends. (from my experience, programmers and designers often trade skills to help each other out)

2. Coming up with good content on a regular basis

This is probably the biggest hurdle, because your blog depends on it. (I hope I’m doing a good job folks) People want new, fresh, interesting, and relevant. I have a slight advantage in the fact that I design 99% of the content I produce here on BittBox, but when push comes to shove, (like they say) Content is king. It’s a serious challenge to produce great content on a regular basis, and I do my best. The thing I like about content is the fact that if you stay focused and fill a role or “niche, ” people can relate your blog to a certain purpose or “subject.” This allows people to find what they want faster, if blogs they like have content on particular subject they want information about. There is never a niche that is full. If you are passionate about something, start a blog, and be better than everyone else. The readers will come.

I like writing my own content because it gives me the freedom to design things I wouldn’t normally get to design at my day job. I can use my blog as an outlet to get my ideas down on pixels, and share them with the rest of the world, without having a client that needs such a design.

3. Your blog design

When I first started BittBox, I was obsessed with the design of my blog. I started reading, and soon realized that It might be better to keep it simple. So, I went for simple over fancy. Yes It’s a design blog, but it also needs to functional, and as fast as possible. (again, I know nothing about PHP, so I try to use only the plugins I really want, or need.) I still have much to learn about page loading and speed (hey, I’m a designer) but for the time being, I tried to keep it simple, and I’ve received a few generous emails from fellow bloggers on how to improve my site. My point here is that people aren’t visiting your design blog to see its “design” over and over. They want information. So make it subtle, even simple, but don’t lose readers because your blog is too fancy. I’m personally going to wait to spice up the design of BittBox until I learn more about load times, and what affects load times. Like I said, lots of hurdles still ahead.

4. Pleasing the crowd

It’s no secret, your visitors will be diverse and from all over the globe. I provide a lot of Free files, and in the beginning, I got a lot of requests for multiple file formats. It was not a challenge to provide the formats, but where I was lacking was my ability to expect the unexpected. Anybody in the world can read your blog, and that’s a lot to wrap your head around. It’s often difficult to think about your visitors in the big picture. Luckily BittBox readers have been kind enough to comment when they have a request, and I try to accommodate as much as possible.

5. Accepting Criticism

Putting your own creations and opinions up for review by the entire world means you will most likely run into some people who find your designs disgusting. If you are like me, you have strong opinions about your own work, and you take pride in it (designers can be extremely competitive), but in the blogging world, you have to shake it off. Whenever someone hates my designs, or sends me a hate message, I just stop and think about why I started BittBox. To design things I’m interested in and share those designs with the world. It’s only natural that some people will either hate some of my posts/opinions or they simply don’t understand them. I’m OK with that. I Keep Blogging. (most of my readers defend me in the comments, and it’s much appreciated. This makes me think that the “haters” don’t stick around long anyway.)

6. Copyright

Decide how you want to share your designs/knowledge and stick to it. You have to protect yourself, but at the same time you want to share. Personally, I like the sharing part. Creative Commons offers a great service if you want to protect your original content while sharing at the same time.

The Perks

1. You learn more about design

Like I said earlier, you will be surprised at how much you learn by trying to teach. A good blog is essentially a community in itself, with frequent readers and commenters. These are people who are passionate about the same thing you are, and are also anxious to share knowledge.

2. You get to influence design on a global scale

It is extremely rewarding as a designer to help someone halfway across the planet. I’m going to be bold enough to say that most designers probably learn more after college (or on their own if they didn’t go to school for design) by helping each other online, and reading tutorials. I know I did. The design community as a whole is wired now, so we network, and learn from each other on a daily basis, and this is very cool.

3. You learn more about the web as a whole

When you start a design blog, you are going to be constantly trying to keep on top of networking venues like Technorati and MyBlogLog. These kinds of activities will lead you in new directions, away from general design, and help you to understand the web as a whole a little better, as well as a better understanding of what the “blogosphere” actually is. This, in turn, helps make you a better web designer. Knowledge is power.

4. You meet people from all over the globe and have access to resources you never thought possible

I’ve only been blogging for a few months, but I have met quite a few people through my experiences, and not just normal people. I’ve always wanted to get in touch with a programmer that I could rely on. I’ve met a couple top notch programmers willing to help me with problems I may encounter. To me this is priceless. I don’t have access to these talents at my day job, and I’m very curious about the programming side of the web, so I consider these contacts immensely valuable.

5. A little extra income

I make a little extra income from my blog, but it’s not the reason the blog exists. If you start a blog for money, you are blogging for the wrong reason. I do know that If you are passionate about something, and you start a blog, you will be more successful. (that’s what I’ve read, and it seems to be true) I like designing, so I design and share. I have readers who share my passion, and I’m here to help when I can.

In a nutshell. . .

I’ve ranted enough, but in a nutshell, I recommend starting your own design blog if you think you want to share knowledge. BittBox has been around for 3 months now, and it’s been a great experience. Thanks for all of your feedback, and I will continue to try and feed you freebies, tutorials, and random knowledge in order to help you along your way. I learned 99% of what I know from the web, and it’s my turn to give back. Cheers
~BittBox

As you all probably know, adding the word “free” to a Google search can increase your crappy results exponentially. This sucks when all you want to find is a free button, badge, pattern, or anything else that you’re looking for. Nothing out of the ordinary, just quick and free. It doesn’t need to be this hard, and it shouldn’t be because there are plenty of sites out there willing to share free designs but don’t necessarily rank well on Google. This is where we take advantage of both Google, and the social media sites in order to get instant highly relevant results, and quick access to freebies. It’s like using every social bookmarking site at once. Here’s how it works. . .

Thanks to site’s like Digg, Del.icio.us, Slashdot, Reddit, etc. which rely on users submitting the best content from around the web, there exists an easy way to find the best of the best using a quick Google search trick. I’m not saying it never happens, but most of the urls submitted to these popular social bookmarking sites are better than average, when it comes to freebies.

It differs from site to site depending on robot behavior, but Google indexes these pages on the social media sites. Why does this matter? Because we can use Google to search ONLY the sites we choose for links containing certain keywords, or “search terms,” just like a normal Google query, giving us keyword results for “freebies” (or vector, or PSD, or whatever) from the best submitted urls on the most popular sites on the web.

How it works:

Google provides us with a list of “operators” that can restrict your search results by a given criteria. You can type these operators before any search from any google search bar, even your browser. The one we well be using is “site:”

A complete list of Google search operators

To find freebies fast, all you have to do is restrict your Google search to the best sites that are known for housing links to good stuff. This way we can use Google to retrieve a list, instead of having to browse those sites ourselves. Go to a Google page or search bar somewhere and type “site:digg.com” -space- “free icons.” So it looks like this:

Now hit enter to get your results. Google only gives you results from that site, in this case, Digg. This technique probably works the best with Digg because Digg allows each of its story pages to be indexed by Google. On other sites, Google might give you a page that has all post with a “tag” that matches your search terms. Either way, you are getting to some pretty good links, really fast.

Another reason this works is the fact that even if you don’t get directly to the source from the Google results, chances are you will stumble upon a blog entry with a collection of links to freebies, like thisTutorialBlog entry, or this SmashingMagazine entry. Sites like these are getting famous for collecting links to good stuff, and usually get submitted to sites like Del.icio.us, Digg, and Slashdot, etc. on a regular basis.

Take a few seconds and try a site: search on Google with a popular social media site, and see what you can come up with. I hope you find what you are looking for!

Here is a list of a few big social bookmarking/media sites to search:

• site:digg.com
• site:del.icio.us
• site:slashdot.com
• site:reddit.com
• site:stumbleupon.com
• site:netscape.com
• site:clipmarks.com

Some big blogging networks:

• site:blogmarks.com
• site:technorati.com
• site:bloglines.com
• site:mybloglog.com

You might even think about trying to search some of the biggest/best/your favorite blogs themselves (iI tend to like the tech stuff), if you have your topic narrowed a bit:

• site:lifehacker.com
• site:boingboing.net

Update: The Google Co-op Social Media Search Engine:

Created by illovich, or you can go to this page and bookmark it. Try a search for a freebie that you want to find and see what you get by only searching the biggest social media sites. (Thanks to Illovich) Or you can get the code and put it in your blog like I have here. (click on “Social Media Search”)

I’m a Graphic/Web Designer blogging in my spare time. I haven’t quite come out of my shell yet, so lets leave names out for now and just call me BittBox, but the reason I started this blog is to share knowledge. The best way to do that is source files in my opinion, hence all of my freebies. I love designing, and I love helping people learn. A pretty good reason for starting a blog I think! I give all of my work away for a number of reasons. One of these reasons is to help everyone else (you) learn what I already know. I’ve spent years reading tutorials only to find that if I had a better college professor or two, I wouldn’t have had to waste 300 hours of my life searching for an answer that’s so simple it hurts. I hate the fact that colleges and universities continuously fall behind in educating designers for the ever-evolving world of web design. But they are pretty damn good at making you buy the latest editions of a useless textbook! WTF.

In a nutshell, I was supremely disappointed in what my web design education had to offer me (I know there are decent web design programs out there, but I wasn’t lucky enough to be in that situation, and I don’t believe I’m alone on this) so I was forced to teach myself everything I know. This blog is my way of trying to help some of you skip the unnecessary steps that many of us have to take, and get right to the good stuff. (illustrator especially) I’ve only been around for about 2 months, but I’m not going anywhere, and thanks for all of the positive feedback.

Cheers

~BittBox

The first thing that crossed my mind was SEO. “If ONE Flickr picture labeled with my url ranks well on Google, why not upload some more?” The second thing that crossed my mind was “Wait. Is that going to be considered spam? Uploading a bunch of pictures with links to my site.”

I thought about it, and I can see how this can be used in a non-spam way. One word: Bandwidth. Let me begin by saying that BittBox was “dugg” into the dirt at the same time I was transferring it to a new server (AHHHH!), which was not only a huge unfortunate coincidence, but also hugely annoying to diggers, and other social bookmarking visitors. I have a terabyte (100,000.00 MB) of bandwidth/month but the quickness of a frontpage social barrage of visitors can do some serious damage on the short-term, no matter your monthly bandwidth allotment. Lets say that your site gets dugg, and the story/post is mainly some hi-res pictures. This would be a perfect excuse to host the hi-res version on Flickr. Your story could house the thumbnails or previews as a collection, and point your visitors to a Flickr gallery to view the entire collection, or one at a time if you like.

I see this as a double positive. First, your server doesn’t have to handle the data transfer of your visitors that want to view your hi-res images. And second, you now have a gallery/image on Flickr for any of the millions of their visitors to find, and possibly visit your site. This is another way to take advantage of tagging. On Fickr, you can put any tag you want on your images. This makes me think that the more unique, or focused your topic or image is, the more likely you are to be discovered on Flickr.

Here is an example of hosting your full size image on Flickr?

I tried using standard HTML to display the link back here, but it didn’t work. So I just put the full URL in the description, and it worked. I’m not sure if there is another way to do it or not. I really don’t use Flickr very much.

The one bad thing I can foresee is that you run the risk of social bookmarkers finding your Flickr gallery/image BEFORE they find your article/post. Then all of your visitors bypass you, and go strait to the source. So be careful on how you engineer this if you try it. Man If you could only put your ads on your Flickr pages? Wouldn’t that be awesome? Yeah, Right. Rewarding the users that get them traffic. Never!

When I say programmer, I mean anyone from a legit software developer to a fresh-out-of-college fireball that knows nothing more than how to make a contact form send an email. When I say designer, I mean anyone from a professional graphic/web designer to a self-tought-tutorial-addict-freelancer. Programmers and designers try to please the same set of clients on a daily basis. But in todays “website as a faceplate” world, neither profession can offer a complete list of services to satisfy even the mildest small-to-mid-sized growing company.

The result is a spiderweb of outsourcing and virtual personas being displayed by companies in both fields, striving to meet clients’ needs, and trying to appear capable even though they are not. Graphic design firms rarely hire programmers, and programming companies rarely hire designers. They would rather outsource than hire a full-time employee whose skills are only used on occasion, because most of their business is derived from their core services. This is part of the problem. Designers and Programmers work in different arenas more often than not.

Education Can Take Some Blame

First of all, Designers and Programmers, although (today) their client base is very similar, have almost no overlapping educational requirements at most universities, excluding Gen Ed. I speak from experience when I say that the word/s “programming” or “web applications” are hardly ever mentioned by a web design teacher, if mentioned at all. I’m almost certain the same goes for student programmers and learning about “Typography” or “Form and Negative Space.” – Correct me if I’m wrong.

The fact is, two professions that are forced by clients (“The real world”) to work together, get no preparation by the universities supplying the skilled workers. A designer doesn’t need to know the skills of a programmer (and visa versa), but it would be nice if he/she were at the very least, prepped about the reasons programmers and designers need each other.

Two Different Animals

Programming and designing are two completely different animals, but together in harmony, can make a killer site or online app. The average web designer (This article refers to university-educated designers, but is meant to also refer to self taught professionals) starts off in college taking drawing classes as gen ed courses. And most universities require a series of Art History courses as well. Most University Art programs are hard-pressed to even recognize web design as an integral part of a designers education. Instead, Graphic Design majors are stuck learning the deeper meanings of Buddha hand gestures in paintings by somebody whose name you can’t even pronounce, when all they want is to learn how to design for the web. Universities simply aren’t embracing web design as it’s own distinct sector of the degree structure. What I’m trying to say is, Art programs educating the web designers of tomorrow, are not educating web designers. They are trying to deny a focus on digital media as an art form. The Art world doesn’t take much heed to the web, oh but they do like to play with flash.

On the other side of things, Programmers aren’t taught much about design, or how to work with a designer. Do they teach basic Photoshop to programmers? Maybe, I don’t really know. I do know that programmers are a different breed of web-problem-solvers than designers. Programmers learn about code, properties, values, keys, arrays, if, if else, else if, if what? Exactly. The very backbone of a simple contact form is completely and utterly alien to a graphic designer. You know, those people you outsourced to “skin” your php based website. They like to use the words “slices” a lot.

The demand is there and increasing every day, let’s work together.

When working together across both the design and programming disciplines, the best results and happiest clients are directly related to how well the (sometimes deceptive) design/programming companies work together. The best way to move forward and stay ahead of the game is to find a reliable partner, be it programmer or designer, that is willing to wear your hat and even go to meetings with you when needed. Once you develop a relationship, which most do eventually, it’s easy to get comfortable in your situation. This is one of the major reasons designers and programmers are so baffled by one another. No one interacts and shares knowledge, they just do their part and that’s it. This isn’t constructive enough to satisfy me, sorry.

Designers and programmers should be constantly looking into new ways to help each other out. And if you’re a small and growing company and have the demand, hire someone to compliment your team. Your designers will learn 100 times more information from an on-board programmer than emailing an outsourced “friend.” The same goes for programmers. Having one Graphic Designer on board could save you thousands in outsourcing, and teach your team priceless information about the layout in front of the code, and how the scripts manipulate what the user sees. Website interfaces should be designed for usability and accessibility, and that involves both what you see, and the programming that powers it. Make an effort to understand your complimentary discipline.