I often stress about the importance of logo design when getting your business or online website started, however year after year I notice that some people still under estimate the significance of branding and identity, so this post is going to be dedicated for logo design, and how to chose one wisely.

First off, forget about free logos that you can download online, the last thing you want to see is some other company chasing you with Trademark violation complains. You need professionals to do this for you, in order to guarantee this will be your unique, one-of-a-kind design you can start branding, register trademark for and promote as your own brand. If this is what you are after, go with LogoBee. This Canadian company has been online for 10 years, and has won multiple awards for the logo designs they have created. If you need professional branding and business identity for your website, The guys behind LogoBee won’t only supply you with a remarkable logo design, but also be able to provide you with web design, stationery and other related products, for affordable prices, with money-back guarantee and lifetime logo design support (who else will offer THAT?).

How to get started?

• First of all, go and see their impressive portfolio, to get an idea of what they are capable of.
• See what other have to say about their work. Testimonials from happy clients really speak for themselves! I was really impressed to see Kendra Todd, winner of  “The Apprentice”, being among LogoBee’s clients; she sought logo design services for her real estate firm.
• Have a look at their special offers, various packages (each one has its own advantages), and — place your order and become yet another satisfied client!

LogoBee accepts payments from all major credit cards together with paypal, making it extremely easy and flexible for anyone to avail of their service. Contrary to most online competitors, LogoBee’s designers are working in-house, you can reach them by online chat, fax, phone and even use their toll-free line in order to get in touch.

Important Information for affiliates and site owners: you can earn money referring clients to LogoBee, as they also run an affiliate program, which will help both parties benefit from new clients. Register today to start earning on new referrals! You might be a bit hesitant about joining the referral program, but rest assured, referred clients will have a great motivation, because they also receive a $20 discount on their logo design purchase, and additionally, when ordering a stationary design, the client gets 500 business cards printed in CMYK for FREE. That’s a great way to start a brand-able business you can trademark, don’t you think?

You really should not think twice, as LogoBee is a place where you get everything done under one roof, which means paying less to 3rd party companies who handle separate requests (like web design or printing your business cards out).

Probably one of the most popular services available today is offered by talented coders who are ready to chop psds and turn them into fully functional websites, however when you are searching for such a coder, you will have a hard time picking the right one as the competition is very touch and most services appear to be quite similar… But they aren’t. When choosing a person or a company who will code your design, it’s important to keep in mine a few aspects:

• Turnaround
• Code Quality
• Price
• Money Back guarantee policy

Even if you are not in a rush, it’s always better to choose a company that delivers the final product fast, and this is what I like about http://www.codemyconcept.com — they deliver quality code, fast, and offer full refund in case of dissatisfaction. When you work with professional, chances that you will end up being unsatisfied with the result is extremely slim, however I personally prefer to KNOW that in the unlikely event I will not lose my money.

So what makes them better than the rest of the sites?

First and foremost, it’s obviously the price, 1st page coding is only $75, which is extremely low and what I like about them is that it allows me to outsource their services if I am running behind the schedule and need a coder to do the job for me fairly quick. The code is guaranteed to work in all browsers, be valid in according to W3C standards and all the tweaks will be done BEFORE you pay, which means you are not actually at risk of losing money until they make sure you like the work.

Another big plus is the flexibility of payment, CodeMyConcept accepts all major credit cards as well as Paypal and Google checkout (on request), therefore clients from all over the world can avail of their services, which is a great advantage in my opinion. Also, when you will come to place an order, you will notice that the submission form is very easy and flexible, allowing you to add CMS implementation (converting your code to Wordpress is only $99 on top of the price!) choose turn around that suits your needs (expedited tasks can be taken for a small additional fee).

Overall, I’d say (after seeing dozens of similar services on the web), that it’s probably the cheapest and most flexible service around, so I highly recommend to have a look on their website, if you are looking for a reliable coder!

There is something magical in black and white photography. There is something truly inspirational and thought-provoking in the absence of color. Maybe because it makes you imagine the same picture in color, maybe because your eye is accustomed to seeing everything in color and thus the absence of it seems so amazing.

One thing is clear: if you want to get inspired, you need to dig into black and white art, and here’s the list of tools and resources to find most inspirational black and white images on the web:

1. Pic Search

Pic Search is a great image search engine that has black and white filter in its advanced search section. Besides that, you can also enjoy other handy options of the tool:

• Search by image type (portrait, landscape, squire, all);
• Search images by size (wallpaper, tiny, medium, large, huge);
• See relevant search suggestions:

Note: thanks a lot to Edward Khoo who shared the tool in his overview of best image search engines.

2. Google Image Search

It is funny that plenty of people search Google without having the slightest idea about all its search options. Black&White image search is just one of such lesser-known possibilities. The option hides behind “Show options” link:

3. Yahoo Image Search

Yahoo! image search deserves a mention here for two reasons: (1) it does support black-and-white search and (2) its main source of images is Flickr, so its like search Flickr but on steroids. The “black-and-white” filter can be found in advanced search along with other cool filters:

• Filter by size (small, medium, large, wallpaper or custom size);
• Restrict by type (search only from Flickr or exclude Flickr images all over);
• Filter by distribution license type:

4. Bing Image Search

Bing has a very lovely image search engine: besides usual filters (like color, size, type, layout, etc), it also offers a really handy interface that allows to see multiple images at a time (details will be displayed on mouseover):

5. Multicolr

Multicolr is a Flickr-based tool that allows to search by color; thus if you want to find only black-and-white photos, all you nee to do is to select colors from white to black:

6. Flickr groups:

• B&W: currently contains over 1, 400K images and more than 80K members. The group has very active discussion boards as well where you will be able to find cool collections like this High Contrast B&W thread for example.
• Black and White: currently includes 2, 120K of images. The group also has a very active forum that has plenty of cool discussions like this one: what’s your best black and white sunset scene
• Black and White Photo Award: currently contains over 76K high-quality black and white photos.
• Black & White with a Touch of Color: one of the best Flickr groups I ever came across: it contains B&W photos with only one color;
• Black and White Artwork: a group containing B&W non-photography illustrations.
• Life in Classic Black and White: the group that helps to see “the life around you from busy city street to a quiet calm landscape, nature, people, etc” in black and white.
• Macro In Black & White: the collection of black and white macro-photography

7. More sources:

• Photobucket Black & White (sorted by popularity)
• Black and White Club at Deviant Art: an awesome group of creative photography and imagery.

Any more? Share your sources of black and white inspiration!

The guest post was provided by Ann Smarty, a search blogger and social media enthusiast. If you love guest posting (like Ann does), join MyBlogGuest, the community of guest bloggers.

I remember when I was still a freelancer, a few years ago, I often faced these typical freelancer’s problems — tight deadline and the design for a client isn’t yet ready. Go find a designer who will do the job for you just 1 day before the deadline… Sometimes it ended up in losing a client, sometimes in staying up all night. These days are definitely history, not only because I am not a freelancer anymore, but also because today we have a website called DesignCrowd. This is probably the ultimate place for outsourcing any part of your job as a designer or developer, from whole and complete web design PSD to small graphics, logos, illustrations, business identity design and more. This business model allows you not only to outsource parts of unfinished jobs when you are unable to complete the task on time, but also visit DesignCrowd on a regular basis, looking for designers who will compete against each other, bringing you the best possible design, which you can proudly to show to the client. Not only you won’t need to work hard, question is — do you need to bother working at all?

I have already mentioned that Design Crown is the ultimate place, and allow me to explain why. First of all, there are currently over 12 thousands of designers and web design companies registered with the website, which means you will have a very big variety of top quality designs to choose from, and they all will try their best to impress you (of course you won’t have to work though 12k submissions, but just imagine how many ideas and possibilities it opens in front of you!) Average project gets between 50 to over 100 creative  submission –  naturally, depending on the price you offered.

The second advantage of designcrowd.com is that you have everything under one roof; you can outsource whole job, or small bits (for example, you need an original and unique vector, so instead of paying for a non-unique license in any of the stock sites, you can simply order one and have it custom made for YOUR needs). Everything here is designed to make your life easier, all you need to do is post your project, view the submissions, provide feedback and when you chose the right entry — complete the payment and download your source files. Yes, it’s that simple.

Creating a post costs only $30, you decide on the reward for the winning entry and the best part is — you can keep your post private, so your client will never know you have, actually, outsourced the design.

This business model also, now that i think of it, is very beneficial to designers who don’t have clients queuing up behind their door; there are dozens and dozens of new contests — enter and make hundreds of extra cash. This is really a website where everyone benefits, thumbs up to the creators for useful and creative way to make everyone’s life easy. Have a look!

Occasionally I get to see how successful, apparently professional websites, undervalue the importance of logo design and branding. Let’s face it, it’s almost the year 2010, and you absolutely can’t build your name and your business without a highly memorable, elegant and professionally pit-together logotype. However, I can understand the business owners, most web design companies charge a great deal of money for unique design, and not only you have no ideawhich company to turn to, you also cannot know what sort of design will they come up with and in case you are unsatisfied, you are likely to still be charged for wasting their time.

This is why logo contest campaigns are gaining more and more popularity. Today, if you need a logo, all you need to do is launch a contest, announce a prize and see dozens of world’s top designers working for you. During the contest you will have over a hundred of entries to chose from, and the best advantage is that you can preview all the designs, give feedback, request modifications, communicate with all the designs altogether or personally. the winner with the prize… get it tweaked, fixed and polish before you pay; or in other words — award. Minimum prize amount is set to $200, while the  max prize is $1000. Now, if you are a designer reading this, just imagine how many extra hundreds you can make per month, simply entering a few logo contests weekly — you might be luckier than you think! Let alone joining is free so you lose nothing by trying.

Logo My Way dot com is the ultimate place to get started. With new contests created every day and option to hide your contest from the www viewers, you can have your logo designed fast, discreetly and professionally by any of the leading designers in the industry. I highly recommend to have a look at their website and bookmark it, because this business model allows you to save money and hassle, as well as participate in plenty of daily opportunities to earn money with your skills, if you are a designer.

Many people like Craiglist, and use it daily, but let’s face it: the amount of scam, especially scam that comes from “international” users, can turn any user away and I know personally a few people who stopped using craiglist because it’s hard to rely on its content anymore. If you are an US resident, one of those who got fed up with browsing iffy classified ads — Fruzo Classifieds is exactly the website for you.

This is a new, better and improved version of Craiglist, that took over 2 years to build — as Richard Fox, Fruzo’s co-founder, told us. We can indeed see that they took this project seriously, and  included a great deal of handy features that will beat competition with any similar websites. The innovations include a very easy user interface, advanced security features and most important:  this site is only available in the US and all IP addresses outside of the country are blocked.  I personally really loved the rich-in-icons interface, posting a ad or finding one, was extremely fast and easy. All you need to do is click on “post ad”, click on “category” (nicely illustrated with icons as well), choose sub-category, location, and post your ad. That’s it! Ads are 100% free to post, free to browse and would stay online for 30 days, unless prolonged or deleted prior to deadline. Anything that is illegal, or remotely not “safe” is disallowed by the administration, which guarantees a clean and family-friendly environment for all the ads.

I believe Fruzo.com Classifieds is going to be a huge competition to Craiglist now that they heavily promote their website and I can see many bloggers actually express their positive expectations from this project. I also noticed a great deal of positive feedback from users, and that comes as no surprise — this is by far the best classifieds website you will come across, just have a look!

As you might have noticed this morning, after 6 months of thinking, designing and coding, ThemeForest.net finally launched their new design. it’s awesome and I must say I was speechless when I logged in this morning to check graphics my sales volume. All the marketplaces have been upgraded, including GraphicRiver and FlashDen. Go and have a look at their new design. What I love about ThemeForest is that you can now also buy php and java scripts, not only designs. Prices start at only $5, so it’s affordable for any pocket and if you check this week’s top sellers, you will understand why TF is becoming the biggest wordpress marketplace in the world..

For my new projects, I am going to purchase these files, which I personally find to be incredibly beautiful and even more incredibly cheap. Check them out, maybe you’d like to have them too?

Live Demo | Download Details

Live Demo | Download Details

Live Demo | Download Details

Today, especially in a world of web 2.0,  where online presentation of your product is essential,  it is extremely useful to be able to place your logo, product name or a photo on a highly memorable shape, such as… A carton of milk, dvd case, book, or even a front of usb stick. Can you imagine it being easy and possible with just one click in Photoshop? Yes, imagine you need zero skills with Photoshop to be able to create gift boxes, credit card designs, software boxes, CD’s and everything else, including of course –  e-book covers. All this in 3D highest quality, 300 DPI, design? Yep, it’s possible, and just yesterday when I searched for yet another semi decent plug in to make my life easier when presenting screenshots of wordpress themes to clients, I came across photoshopactionscripts.com.

I must admit, that with all my comprehensive knowledge in PS, and after seeing almost all the actions available today on the market, I was truly impressed. I stayed all night playing with them and dozens of creative ideas passed through my thoughts when I browsed their blog. Anyone who is making money off their ebooks, is going to love this set. Not only, upon your purchase, you get plenty of bonus graphics and 40 pre-designed ebook covers, but also it’s a proven fact that high quality graphics sell better, means when you present your product in such a unique and high quality way, you have a good chance of increasing your sales. Isn’t it worth it? Just look at the top selling ebooks, they all have a very clean 3D visualization design to help the sales going.

The example above is just one of the 50 Photoshop actions available in the set. The quality and size of graphics is superb beyond imagination, weather you are looking to have fun, searching Google for ebook software or looking for a way to present your product in the best possible way, in 3D — this set of actions is an absolute must have.

As you can expect, such an incredible set of actions will not come for free but it’s definitely worth every penny, not to mention the valuable bonuses you get with your download absolutely free. There is a 60 days money back guaranteed policy, so you have nothing to lose and there is no risk. Bear in mind that the download link you are redirected to, will only be valid for 72 hours, so download and make a backup right away. Creating product bundles has never been easier, and like I said already, these actions will be perfect for people with no Photoshop skills, as you can avail of their pre-designed graphics and just run the action with your own text in the cover, but it will also be a perfect addition for an advanced graphical designer. Stop paying others to do this kind of work for you when you can earn money making quality graphics and presentation for others. Another way to make money off these actions is to join their affiliate program, which seems to me must be very profitable considering the volume of sales they harvest.  Check them out, you won’t be able to resist them!