5 Mistakes New Web Designers Make

Posted on February 16, 2007
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The difference is in the details.

I admire anyone willing to take the plunge in business and set out to achieve their goals and dreams often with little more than a single wing and a prayer. Many of my Photoshop students, fresh out of school frequently find themselves in risky situations in web design that can easily be avoided by simply understanding a small inventory of fundamentals. Simple things to remember what to and what not to do. We all know that solid fundamentals regardless of application really never die, they last in spite of change or advances in technology sort of like a trusty ole axes in a forest full of chain saws. So what are these mistakes web designers frequently make?

1) Tragically Ugly Web Designer Sites

Its difficult for anyone to pass themselves off as a serious web designer while brandishing an ugly web site featuring an even worse looking portfolio yet we encounter this on a daily basis.

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New Template Design Kit!

Posted on February 15, 2007
Filed Under Template Design Kit | 1 Comment

What is the template design kit?

Some of you may recall my Template Design Kit v1.0 that I released free about two years ago on my old site. For those who didn’t see it, the Template Design Kit is a design tool for newbie Photoshop users breaking into the web design business and provided a sort of quick start guide. The kit basically included flash video tutorials built using Macromedia Captivate® and a few hundred support files, actions and other Photoshop elements wrapped into a nice download package of about 50 meg. It was intermediate, quickly assembled, and far from truly complete and would have likely been abandoned had it not been for two important reasons I demonstrate below.

I hate when things disappear

We’ve all bookmarked something we intended on visiting again and again only to discover that the site is gone, the resource has been removed or the account has been suspended. I kick myself many times for not just CTRL + S and saving the page in a folder. Well jaredritesigns.com has fallen to similar fate now that I accepted an offer to stop using my former site from a large jeweler of the same name we turn a lemon into lemonaide and move on. So that was my first reason or motive to keep the Template Design Kit available. Tossing jaredritesigns.com I can live with even though it had a high PR rank but the one thing I knew I’d regret if I tossed was the Template Design Kit. So, two of my associates and I decided to rework the original concept and build the kit into something all together new or should I say newer yet. With an estimated final release being VERY LARGE in size, my major concern was how to distribute such a large inventory of thousands of files and videos effectively, or should I say CO$T effectively.

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