In the world of graphic design, web design and branding – photography can make or break your campaign. Often, scheduling a photo shoot is the best way to create a unique image that cannot be replicated, but in the beginning stages of developing a business, stock photography is a great option that saves money. Now that royalty-free stock photography has become so readily available and affordable, it’s easier to create a stunning brand identity without breaking the bank. Even better, there are many websites that offer free stock photography – either their entire collection is free or they will offer a portion of free images with others that can be purchased. Be sure to read the fine print because many photographers will allow usage only if you give them credit. Also be sure to check if the photography is available for commercial or personal use.

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1. Stock.XCHNG

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2. PhotoXpress

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3. stockvault

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4. Photo Laboratory

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5. Free Pixels

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Meetup.com is an extremely powerful resource for people in all industries looking to collaborate on a wide variety of topics in a relaxed meeting setting (the groups often get together monthly or bi-weekly).

Skybox Creative recently attended a Meetup for Refresh SD, a group that includes web developers, internet marketers, techies, etc.. The topic: discussing client management and client requests – yes, a complicated matter. This topic often comes up in the web design and branding industry, because it is important to clearly define project scope and rounds of changes before starting a project that has been estimated out.

A few good tips and resources:

• Give clients a questionnaire prior to starting a project (Skybox uses a Branding Analysis Questionnaire, which discusses demographics, target market, competition, look & feel – and more!)

• Project Management tools can be key to balancing work flow – Action Method is a good one, VUE is a good way to describe logic or the development of a back end system

• OfficeTime is a great tool for tracking hours

• Clearly define client deliverables (copy, photos, feedback)

Many people may not realize that iStock gives away 4 free stock photography images each week, in addition, they also give away 4 free vector images, 4 free videos and 4 free audio tracks every single week! Hey, everyone likes free stuff!

iStock Photo has rapidly become the number one online source for royalty free stock images at reasonable prices. iStock is not only an expansive resource for stock photography, but also provides an online community where designers and photographers can connect.

Don’t you just love the internet and the unlimited possibilities!

You can review the free archives here

They recently added The Vetta Collection, where the best-of-the-best photographers sell their top shelf stock photos for between 20-70 credits. The average credit is about $1.50 each, if you pay-as-you-go. Their standard collection ranges from about 1-22 credits. Click here to learn more

If you are a designer looking for some online recognition, you are able to submit your designs (that utilized at least one element from iStock) to their Designer Spotlight Showcase. If your design is selected, it will show up for other members to review and critique. In addition, your design will have the chance to be selected as the “Design of the Week” which is displayed on the front page of the Designer Spotlight section. If that’s not enough to motivate you, you earn free credits on iStock for every submission they accept! Skybox Creative has submitted and showcased several designs on iStock, to view them, click here

Click here to learn more about iStock Designer Spotlight

Happy Friday all!

-Angelina

When creating a new website, a key item to keep in mind while organizing your brilliant brainstorms is a sitemap. That illustrious tool – the sitemap – is a representation of the architecture of a website (according to Wikipedia). It can be either a document in any form used as a planning tool for web design, or a web page that lists the pages on a website, typically organized in hierarchical fashion. This helps visitors and search engine bots find pages on the site.

Sitemaps are especially useful in planning your site. By formulating what each page should be and what should link to where, you’ll be able to streamline some of the web design process. Just like starting a business, starting a site (most definitely if it’s sales driven) requires a detailed business plan so that it can start working for you!

But even if you are just creating your own blog, you’ll want to figure in a sitemap. (Do you want a photo gallery, archives, links to related/sites?) After all, a blog or personal website is a reflection of yourself.

Don’t miss out on the big sale or lose your dream clientele because you didn’t strategize your sitemap.

View some modern sitemaps: http://www.webdesignerwall.com/trends/modern-sitemap-and-footer/

Contact Skybox Creative if you have your sitemap in hand and want to create with us. (619.381.3825)