Servage Magazine

Web designers are human and carry attributes a human being should have. Therefore, we naturally believe our work and perspectives are the correct one. Whatever we design, we believe that we are doing the right things in the right manner. If we were to allow anyone to make changes, it would be our supervisor or senior colleague. This way of doing things is essential to maintain self-confidence and avoid indecisiveness. On the other side of the coin, this can be fatal for our creativity and growth in our career. If someone critiques our work, there are some possibilities to get good insights through their criticisms, whether they are an end user ...

The freelancer’s recipe for success has many ingredients: designing skill, technical ability, marketing capacities, networking, customer service and so on. In this post, we concentrate on customer service because the freelancer community has a bad reputation when it comes to quality service. People, by and large, think freelancers have no permanent professional identity nor an actual physical address, like a company has. Others think the main intention of the freelancer is to draw money from their customers once and then forget about the client forever. There are plenty other misconceptions, or myths, surrounding freelancers. If you are a good freelancer and wish to continue as one, it is mandatory for you ...

If you intend to deliver good user experiences, you need to take care of some tiny usability mistakes. As these errors add up, they may contribute to a highly annoying user experience, particularly in the user’s encounter with the interface design. In this article, we will pay attention to the common, small mistakes that are made during our web designing process. Usability on Blank Slate Many times our web application begins with a blank slate, particularly for data driven or data oriented websites or web applications where we are always waiting for some inputs from users (i.e. posts, comments, links, hours, sidebar info, etc). During the design phase, we generally encounter screens ...

If you want to be a true professional web designer or software developer, you should do everything the professional way. Therefore, when a client is knocking on your door, you shouldn’t be emotional, nor overly excited to give her a warm welcome and be ready to start project immediately as she agrees on. Good Habits Dealing effectively with a prospective client is a test of your emotional level. You should set up all steps carefully before beginning the project. The first step involves carefully listening to the requirements of the client. If your client is available for face-to-face conversation, keep a notepad and pen with you or open your laptop/tablet to note ...

No doubt, Flash is obsolete in the current web development community, but splash page designing is not. Entertainment and children related websites still need to design splash pages. Therefore, I have decided to convey a few words with you on this topic; so here are some insights about splash page designs. Flash Era I still have good memories of the early 2000s being the Flash era. At that time, web audiences were willing to wait a few extra seconds to see some astounding displays come on the screen. Web designers then were competing to make the introduction page or opening page of a website more visually appealing via Flash. Modern Era Today, the audience ...

When I look back, I see more clearly the complexities and difficulties when starting out as a web developer. I also better understand the frustrations I sometimes ran into at my early career stage - and therefore have a natural sympathy towards newcomers. Hence I've decided to share some good tips to address the problems of earlier stages of web developers or web designers. Self-Confidence In college days, techies are learning coding through theories and examples provided by professors and books. This is enough to get started in learning coding, but not enough to do programming in a real life project. Therefore, when we face the real life exposure during our interviews ...

The internet is full of web design and development software, for all levels of skills and knowledge. For startup designers, it can be a bit challenging to find highly useful, yet free or low cost, software. I have written this post to introduce various design and programming software, which are well established and meet modern needs. CoffeeCup Editor In most web programming projects, HTML is at the core. Therefore, we all need HTML editors, likely with different capabilities. Dreamweaver (made by Adobe), is an often used tool among the diverse community of web developers. However, its ever increasing prices prohibits many who wish to purchase this tool. Therefore, I have found some ...

Content is king on the web and this topic strengthens that further. We always talk about the big copy or big text blocks, but not so much about microcopy or small text located on the buttons, form fields, instructional sentences, etc. Today we will talk about these small pieces of text and its repercussions on our web designs. Now, a fundamental question arises here, whether micro texts on our website has any impact on user experiences or our final achievements? And the answer is yes; they definitely have great impact on the users’ experience or journey through our site. As they are part of navigation and website guidance, they play a ...

Freelance web design and programming is good for some extra income, but it is not a career or for long term gains. For that, we have to plan for and establish a business and should take approaches accordingly. In this post I will discuss some big and small things to consider before opening a web design business. Marketing You may have noticed those ads on the web, offering to create a website within a fraction of time, by using their DIY software. Most of these ads offer their DIY platform online for a onetime fee or let you download it. Awesome! Just like a commodity, you can do web design without the ...

Most designers think designing sites for non-profits and charities is different from sites for commercial purposes, since we aren’t selling anything or because we don’t have typical customers. In fact, web designers need to take the same approach as we do for other business websites. So let’s dive into non-profit website design. Differences & Similarities In non-profit web design, the same principles apply as we have in commercial website designs. If you think charity websites don’t have anything to sell, that would be inaccurate. For instance, a charity organization running a literacy program has to show the importance of literacy in the region where it operates, plus present the low level of ...