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  • Featured Designer - Mel Ndiweni of Acuity Designs
    by Alex
    Posted June 29th, 2009

    Hey Mel. Thanks for taking the time to be interviewed on CrazyLeaf Design Blog. Could you please introduce yourself to our readers ?

    Hi, my name is Mel Ndiweni, design alias Acuity. I’m a 22 year old freelance designer in London, United Kingdom

    How long have you been freelancing & why did you decide to freelance ?

    I have freelancing at what I would call a serious level for roughly 18 months but I did my first freelance job about 3 or 4 years ago and dabbled since then, making a gradual progression to where I am now; having set up Acuity Designs with my partner in crime Ashley Bloom.

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    How did you market yourself (find design work/new clients) in the beginning ?

    I began by doing painted murals and scenes at local schools and by doing CD/DVD print artwork for musicians within local urban music scenes. Marketing in the beginning was definitely reliant on a referral scheme. i.e completing work to the highest possible standard and having other musicians call me about my services.

    For the murals, I took photos of completed work and created a brochure of work and respective school testimonials. this worked great, as headmasters and principles want what every school around them has. I think a big factor, which I can only see in hindsight for finding the amount of work I did at that stage was due to under-pricing my services. That I think came with a certain naivety  as to what one could charge for design work, due to age and inexperience.

    How do you market yourself (find design work) now ?

    Finding work now and promotion is a militant routine of weekly and daily tasks. We split the workload. At least once a week, we have a cold calling routine; where we call around 15-20 local small businesses offering service and around 10 design agencies asking if they need to outsource work.  Furthermore engaging in the online community of designers has a good unexpected advantage of work.

    Engaging in the online community is also essential to us. Posting on forums and blogs and generally just interacting is a big part of letting people we know we exist. A lot of jobs come from friends in the community who are looking at outsourcing work, or who know our strengths and refer people to us. Last month, we printed approximately  150 letters in custom envelopes and hand delivered them over the course of a fortnight to local businesses; that worked out absolutely brilliantly.

    The key for us was phoning before pretending to be customers and finding out the names of their heads of marketing/advertising/IT/promotion and who the owners where. This enabled us to place a named addressee on the envelopes! Personal touches! We’re big believers in the power of google; around 40% of our work comes from google. Thus seeking out ways to get ourselves higher in searches is a big part of our strategy.

    How did you decide what to charge ? What was the process ?

    Working out what to charge came with a solid week of research after receiving a client from a mid-sized corporate office astounded that we could do the work they required at such a cheap price. Looking at forums and online resources about the subject helped. I compiled a list of online resources that we used to determine my pricing structure. Furthermore, good old fashioned sneakiness was a key. Sending out e-mails for fake projects to various agencies and freelancers helped us to ensure we were competitively priced as well…

    What type of work do you do? (design for print, web, multimedia etc)

    We offer a variety of services including logo design; design for print; illustration; web design (flash and html); aswell as recently adding photography to the list.

  • Pligg 9.9.5 Email Validation Module
    by Alex
    Posted June 17th, 2009

    If you own or are familiar with Pligg then you know it has a huge problem with spam robots. This is mostly due to the fact that it hasn’t got an email validation module included.

    Email Validation Module for Pligg 9.9.5

    Description

    This module implements a mechanism for email confirmation on all the new registered users. The module doesn’t affect users registered before the plugin was installed. If a user doesn’t provide a valid email address or doesn’t activate his account he can’t submit stories.

    The plugin doesn’t affect your template and works with any Pligg template you may use.

    We use ourselves this plugin on our design social media website, zaBox. Actually the plugin was designed for zaBox. The results after applying the plugin were spectacular, virtually eliminating those nasty Pligg spam bots.

    You can test the module on our website before installing it. Just go to http://www.zabox.net/register and create an account.

    If you have any more questions see our FAQ section.

    How does it look for a user that registers ?

    A user hits Register and is directed to the registration page where he fills the details (user name, email, password).

    Pligg Email Validation Module Demo - Step 1

    After he hits Create User it gets redirected to a page where he is asked to confirm his registration by clicking the confirmation link he received in the email inbox he provided on registration.

    Pligg Email Validation Module Demo - Step 2

    Pligg Email Validation Module Demo - Step 3

    If the user tries to login and submit stories without validating his account he gets an error message.

    Once the user clicks the email validation link in his email he gets redirected to the login page and a message is displayed informing the user that his account was activated and he can start submit stories.

    Pligg Email Validation Module Demo - Step 4

    How can I get the module ?

    The module is available for selling on our website. Just go here for more info and purchase.

  • 50+ New and Beautiful Free Wordpress Themes
    by Alex
    Posted June 12th, 2009

    Some time has passed since we didn’t put together a free Wordpress themes compilation. Our previous free Wordpress themes compilation was a huge success, but most of the themes we presented then have now become obsolete. We’ve seen a lot of beautiful theme designs over the last year, a lot of worthy candidates, but we’ve narrowed it down to about 50 New and Beautiful Free Wordpress Themes.

    Intaglio - Free Wordpress Theme

    Intanglio Free Wordpress Theme

    Details : 2 columns, widget ready, XHTML and CSS standards compliant, Gravatar, Flickr and Twitter ready, SEO optimized, tested with IE 6+, Firefox 2+, Safari 2+, Opera 9+.

    Requires : Wordpress 1.5+

    Gamezine - Free Wordpress Theme

    Gamezine Free Wordpress Theme

    Details : magazine style grunge design, 3 columns, multi-level drop-down javascript navigation menu, featured post section with javascript gallery, featured video section, site wide customizable 125×125 banner ads, Adsense enabled, random news display with mini thumbnails, Mini posts with thumbnails.

    Irresistible - Free Wordpress Theme

    Irresistible Free Wordpress Theme

    Details : WooThemes back-end, 9 different color schemes, integrated banner ad management and video player, Flickr and Twitter ready.

    Scarlett - Free Wordpress Theme

    Scarlett - Free Wordpress Theme

    Details : multi-level dropdown javascript navigation menu, custom sliding elements with images, site wide customizable 125 x 125 custom banner ads, adsense 728×15 link unit on the index page, 468×60 ad unit sitewide on header, 300×250 ad unit on single posts, tabbed content area, featured video, flash tag cloud, popular posts, Flick ready, Related Posts enabled,

    Black Perl - Free Wordpress Theme

    Black Perl - Free Wordpress Theme

    Details : widget ready, 2 columns, right sidebar, threaded comments ready, Page Navi included, Adsense ready.

  • 5 Tips for Drumming Up New Business in Hard Times
    by Alex
    Posted June 11th, 2009

    When times are tough even designers employed full-time aren’t safe from companies hoping to trim the fat and cut costs. Those working freelance face still tougher circumstances, with increased competition and fewer clients looking for design work. So what can a designer do to find new business and keep busy during an economic downturn? Here are just a few suggestions that can help you find new clients and set yourself apart from the crowd.

    5 Tips for Drumming Up New Business in Hard Times

    1. Self-motivate. Finding freelance work in the best of times can be a challenge, so finding it when things are a bit slimmer requires a sufficient amount of self-motivation to get started. Set your will in steel and just get out there and do it as it’s unlikely that work will just show up on your doorstep unannounced.
    2. Ask for referrals. If you haven’t already been doing this, now is the time to start. If a client is happy with your work, why not have them do the work of spreading your name around to other potential clients.
    3. Go local. A simple search through the online yellow pages may help you find some local businesses that either don’t have a website or haven’t updated it since the late 90’s. Since the web is where it’s at for business, take advantage of this available market and send them your personal info.
    4. Promote your website with social media. For many designers these days, this can mean adding a blog or a Twitter feed to their online presence. These services provide an avenue to get new people looking at your work and if you become successful with them you’ll likely have a steady stream of clients to work with for some time to come.
    5. Scour the web. These days, the web can be a great source of potential design work. Try out online associations, job boards, and even craigslist to see if you can’t find a little something to keep you busy. You may not find your ideal project, but you will almost inevitably find something to keep you afloat.

    Here are a few job sites you might find useful :

  • How to Make an Eye-Catching Logo
    by Alex
    Posted June 9th, 2009

    Anybody can mock-up a logo but only good designers can make it stand out and make it a good branding tool. Here are a few tips on how you can be a better logo designer.

    Determine company needs

    This is the most important step in developing a logo for your company: what does your company want to display to the world? And even more important, in what way are you going to advertise this logo: billboard, magazine, fliers? Once you have established these facts, it becomes integral to figure out what way will best display the company message. Sometimes using animal graphics is the best way, although now it is difficult to find an animal that is not in use. Depending on your company and the general audience it reaches out to will help in acquiring a specific logo, whether it be a graphic or some type of vector design.

    Maya Logo

    Establish what customers want

    Another important criterion in making a company logo is determining what will appeal to the customer. If your customers are typically senior citizens, then you need to make something that will appeal to that demographic. Determining what age group and demographic you are reaching out to will additionally help in establishing what your customers are looking for. It is the logo and the advertisement that is going to draw them in and it is thus important to create a logo that will be memorable to a passerby.

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  • How To Design And Style Your WordPress Plugin Admin Panel July 2, 2009
    The great thing about WordPress is that it's highly customizable and flexible. Within a WordPress plugin, almost all of the fields could be change to your desire results
    How To Design And Style Your WordPress Plugin Admin Panel
  • 25 Beautiful And Creative Photography Sites July 2, 2009
    Two months ago i created a showcase of flash e-commerce sites, which was very much liked by my blog readers. Now i have collected 25 beautiful and creative photography sites.
    25 Beautiful And Creative Photography Sites
  • 13 Tips To Skyrocket Your Marketing Campaign July 2, 2009
    Sometimes, it can be quite time consuming to work out exactly what you need to be doing with regards to marketing as a freelancer. Here are some ideas to really take off your marketing campaign.
    13 Tips To Skyrocket Your Marketing Campaign
  • How To Run Multiple Gtalk Messengers July 2, 2009
    If you are big fan of Google Talk, you might have got multiple accounts and if you want to login to all of them at same time, then you might look at this simple tutorial. :)
    How To Run Multiple Gtalk Messengers
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  • 16 Sets Amazing Social Networking Icons Free Download July 1, 2009
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