Original Source: http://justcreative.com/2017/11/05/6-tips-for-selecting-a-great-freelance-designer/

This article was contributed by Nicole Letendre.

Finding a great freelance designer can seem like Forrest Gump’s box of chocolates: You never know what you’re going to get.

It doesn’t have to be that way. With some self-education, a little research, and a clear idea of your needs, you can find the perfect graphic designer for your project.

You see the efforts of graphic designers all around you. If you notice a design or style that speaks to you, prepare to share it as you search for your freelancer. It can start the conversation rolling for both of you to learn more about the other. You are looking for a partner to help your business succeed; the better you understand and communicate with each other, the more smoothly your project will run.

How to choose the right designer

Here are 6 six tips for selecting a great freelance designer, before you begin your search.

Determine project needs
Determine required skills
Determine budget
Do your research
Interview your shortlist
Understand the contract

Tip 1: Determine Project Needs

Develop a creative brief to show freelancers under consideration. The creative brief should contain information that will help designers understand the project and whether they have the pertinent skills at their disposal.

In your creative brief, include the following:

Details about your company: what you do or sell, your culture, and your mission
The objective of the project
Specific qualifications and skills required
The project deadline
Any potential obstacles

It’s easy to forget that freelancers won’t have the same depth of knowledge or sense of your business as you do. Providing this information at the beginning will keep both you and the freelancer from wasting time on a project that isn’t a good fit or that does not fit into your schedules.

Tip 2: Determine Required Skills

Graphic designers have many applications to select from when building their designs. If you have a reason for requiring a specific application, such as Adobe Illustrator or Visual Design, make sure your candidates have experience with those tools. Get to know their expertise, specialisations and what they can offer you.

Will you provide stock images for designers to work from or do you require them to take photos to integrate into the design? Some graphic designers have preferred image sources or can help you locate appropriate resources.

For logo design, make sure the designer can provide the design in fully scalable vector format to ensure image quality across mediums and size variations.

Tip 3: Determine Budget

How much should you budget and how much can you budget? There is little in the way of standard pricing between designers, but you should be able to find someone in your price range. Many designers will negotiate their listed prices in return for consistent and ongoing work.

On the other hand, don’t stint. You get what you pay for, and this is an investment in your business. Treat it as such. Good design performs well into the future as a critical marketing tool in today’s business environment.

Be flexible in your payment options. Paypal is a popular method for freelancers as are some other payment applications. Cover the logistics of payment to set expectations of when payment is expected and what form it will take.

Tip 4: Do Your Research

An important part of identifying candidates is looking at their portfolios. Use the opportunity to look at their versatility and creativity.

Development of a concept across various media and platforms
Optimal formatting of print advertising, video, and web pages
Use of the latest web coding protocols and the ability to test a web page across multiple browsers and mobile devices for proper display

Looking over their portfolios can help you understand how each designer works creatively and whether it will complement your ideas and sensibilities. Do the graphic elements used in their portfolio designs mesh pleasingly? Does the designer pay attention to detail and demonstrate stylistic and visual integrity?

As you consider various styles and designs, be open to something edgier than usual; it can make your images and logos last longer before being refreshed in the future. If you can find a designer with some experience in your industry, it will reduce the learning curve and allow the designer to connect with your ideal customers more easily.

Tip 5: Interview Your Short List

Assemble a short list of the graphic designers that most closely match your needs and who have indicated interest in your project if you received responses to a creative brief. If you can, interview in person or via video chat so you can get a better sense of the person and how you both communicate.

Video chat and screen sharing also give you a chance to share images and sketches more interactively. You get a better idea of how it is to work with each designer, an important consideration if you want a long term partnership.

If the designer persists in using jargon you don’t understand, the behavior will probably continue. If you don’t understand what the designer is communicating, you will be frustrated throughout your relationship.
The designer should be deeply interested in your business and will dive deep to learn your needs.
Language comprehension is another important element in successfully communicating and collaborating on design.

Ask them about the inspiration for specific parts of their designs; learn why they made particular choices. Discuss different brands, websites, books, or artists that inspire their work. Their key motivations will give you a sense of their style and may uncover more ideas or unique design elements for your project.

Professional affiliations may play a role in how a designer performs. Some organizations require their members to follow specific ethical standards regarding trademarks and copyright infringement. Also, ask for references and follow through by contacting those references. You need to know if the designer you are considering conducts himself or herself professionally, hits deadlines, and is easy to work with.

If you decide to ask for a small trial project, make sure to pay the designer for the time and effort. Never ask for free work from any creative professional; after all, you would expect to be paid for any of your products or services.

Tip 6: Understand the Contract

If the graphic designer has a contract, read it and make sure you understand everything it says. If the designer does not have a contract, you should write one yourself. A contract can stave off unpleasant surprises including additional expenses and scope creep. You want transparency in all your business dealings. AIGA provides a contract for free here.

Ask if the timeline and budget you are proposing are reasonable. Also, understand who retains ownership of the work.

The graphic design for your marketing, packaging, and website is the first impression your target audience has of your company. Invest in a designer who performs quality work to the highest standards. Hiring an amateur may sound like a recipe for saving money, but if the design of your website or logo looks cheap, your company will look cheap.

You dress your best when meeting with a client; dress your sales collateral, logo, and website in its best for the public to see.

Do you have any further advice for choosing the right designer?

Original Source: http://justcreative.com/2017/11/06/10-ways-to-increase-interactivity-in-your-emails/

This article was contributed by Kevin George.

Emails are constantly evolving. What began as an interdepartmental communication channel is now a vital marketing tool to reach the masses. Unlike a social post which is lost in a sea of updates, your emails reach your subscribers’ inbox, ready to be opened and read.

But the steps every email goes through are almost similar. Your subscriber receives your email, opens it, spends roughly 8 seconds to go through it, decides to either respond or move to the next email and repeats the same steps. Every email marketer struggles to make their emails interesting enough for their subscriber to spend more time and this increased time spent can be really pivotal in converting them into customers.

To make any email engaging, you have two options:

Make your email content engaging
Make, how your email content is presented, engaging

Email marketers have been using best practices and experimenting with email elements such as layouts, colors, email copy, visually appealing hero images, since long. Now, what if we tweaked the method of presenting the above-stated email elements so that your subscribers interact with your emails to unfold the message?

See here for the anatomy of the perfect email and how to use personalization in email.

Would you like to remind your subscriber about limited sale via text (a) or have a countdown timer (b) in your emails?

Presenting Interactivity in Emails…

Ever since the amalgamation of CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) into HTML emails, the scope for including keyframe animation in emails became possible. Using keyframe, any specific element from an email can be moved, expanded, reduced, flipped, etc. The end result is super amazing elements that change according to the user interactions.

We shall look into some of the interactive email elements that are being included by brands to make their emails STAND OUT. With some minor exceptions, the below stated interactive email elements are supported well in most of the widely used email clients.

Countdown Timer

Countdown, in any form, triggers the fear of missing out in the minds of the reader. Leveraging this sense of urgency, email marketers use countdown timers in their sale promotion/ announcement By using CSS, you can enable the timer to countdown from the time the email was opened to the deadline time. Unfortunately, this is currently only supported in Apple devices and Thunderbird, but fortunately for the non-supporting email clients, a GIF of the countdown timer can be a good fallback option.

The E-commerce industry can use countdown timers to depict the expiry of an ongoing offer or even for the abandoned products in the cart.

In the above example, the countdown is right in the first fold. 

Scope of Application:

Ecommerce sites can create ‘limited period’ urgency while offering discounts on different products and in their cart abandonment emails.
Attendees to an event can be sent reminder by event companies
Automobile industry can send emails to enthusiasts with a countdown before the launch of a new car model.

Navigation Menu

Most of the brands now feature a navigation menu in the header or footer of the email. But when the email is opened on a mobile device, the content stacks up to make the email unintentionally long. This can be overcome by hiding the navigation menu within a collapsible menu so that only those interested can click on it. Moreover, the navigation when placed at the footer, shall not force the email content to shift down, as with the case in the navigation menu on the top.

This is compatible currently on Android native and Apple’s Native email clients.

As you can observe, in the above email the mobile layout features the navigation menu at the bottom

Scope of Application:

Links to extensive tour options can be offered by brands in Travel and hospitality services, neatly tucked behind menus within emails.
E-commerce websites can provide links to different product sections to showcase new product launches, recommendations and cross selling within the navigation menu.

Rotating Banner

When you need to showcase different products or variation of the same product, stacking them into columns is not a very wise decision in terms of email length. In such cases, integrating all the images into a rotating banner can be really helpful. Rotating banners automatically loop between different images, separated by a preset time interval – one image at a time. This doesn’t require any manual input from the user’s end and it keeps on running in a loop, being especially helpful when viewing on mobile devices.

Adventure Gear retailer REI’s email features a rotating banner at email header explaining their featured product

Scope of Application:

Tour and travel companies can showcase various tour packages in limited space.
Academic and educational institutes can have a slideshow of their awards and achievements.

Sliders

Counterpart of rotating banners, sliders perform a similar function but the only difference is that in sliders the subscribers can rotate the banner in either direction, based on their interaction. Moreover, you can have separate CTA buttons for individual frames to help monitor user interactions.

Home Automation Nest email features the slider showcasing their products.

Scope of Application:

Technological companies can display their products/services offerings, customer feedbacks, etc. through a slider.
Retailers can show all their newly launched products in one email, courtesy sliders in email.

Scratch & Flip Effect

For a dramatic effect, coupon codes in emails can be hidden behind a silver strip that a subscriber needs to virtually scratch or click in order to reveal. This is helpful in creating a sense of mystery and raises the subscriber’s curiosity level.

In desktop, both effects will work well in Apple Mail & Thunderbird; in mobile devices, it will work in native apps only.

EmailMonks have implemented a flip in their email for Easter offer

Scope of Application:

E-commerce websites can create some drama by sending a coupon code that is revealed by a scratch effect and flip-flop a product’s image and information.
For a research company, providing stats and a brief about a research can be done successfully through a flip effect.

Accordion Effect

You can reduce the overall email length by hiding the email content behind tabs. When the subscriber clicks a tab, the content expands and any other tab shall get collapsed automatically. Really helpful when you need to share secondary information on a single product that’ll remain hidden until tapped. Although supported in desktop clients, its applications are best enjoyed in emails opened in mobile devices.

In the above email, the content is neatly stacked into tabs when viewed in the mobile layout

Scope of Application:

Publishers and bloggers can implement accordion to accommodate more content in their email newsletter.
eCommerce retailers can provide secondary information about a product that’ll remain hidden until tapped.

Integrated Forms

Instead of redirecting your subscribers to a landing page, you can embed in-line forms within your emails for lead generation purposes. By having an integrated form in email, you increase the form filling efficiency manifold. But what needs to be noted is that only Text box, Paragraph, Checkboxes, and Radio Buttons are supported currently.

These come very handy when you need to conduct surveys or collect feedbacks. The data collected in the form field can be redirected to any search engine or your website database to enable search right from your email.

Scope of Application:

E-commerce websites, in their post purchase email, can add a form in which the customer can review the product.
Restaurant owners can send promotional emails to get subscribers for filling form to process the specific order or for reviewing their experiences.

Tooltips

Similar to the tooltips you encounter on websites and desktop applications, you can integrate a tooltip within an email. This can be really helpful for e-commerce emails, where subscribers can get additional information about a specific product by clicking or tapping on the overlay. Combined with embedded forms in emails, it can be used to provide helpful information.

Scope of Application:

Apparel and retail stores can show elaborate information on their products when the user clicks on the tooltip box.
Tourism companies can share the details about amazing destinations with related package details displayed on correct word.

Video

The most engaging content since the popularity of Youtube and Snapchat, you can even include a video that is embedded in the email. Upon user interaction, the video can play right inside the email. Currently supported in Apple devices, Outlook for Mac and Android native clients.

In the above email, Eurostar has added a rotating banner using GIF as well as an embedded video right in their email.

Wrapping Up

Email marketing still manages to bring the highest ROI, and innovations such as these interactive elements, keep email at the top as the preferred marketing tool by most marketers. Moreover, those with non-supporting email clients are not left in the dark since all the above interactive emails designs come bundled with appropriate fallbacks in order to not ruin the user experience.

Have you ever received or sent any interactive email? Share your experience in the comments below.

—

About the author: Kevin, the Head of Marketing at EmailMonks – one of the fastest growing Email design and coding companies, specializes in crafting beautiful email templates, PSD to HTML email conversion and free master email templates. He loves gadgets, bikes, jazz, and breathes ‘email marketing’. 

Original Source: https://webdesignledger.com/marketer-cheats-field-design-creates-15-logos-15-days/

Robert Katai’s first contact with the design was back in the days when Photoshop was a fun tool, used essentially for liquifying friends’ faces. We’ve all been there, on either one of the teams – the liquefiers or the liquified.

The first time I opened a design program was way back when Photoshop was only for liquifying your friends faces and edit some photos of  your crush’s in high school.

Since then, he has come a long way and today he’s a visual marketer and content strategist at Bannersnack. Even though he didn’t follow the design path as a career, he finds joy in creating something visually beautiful from scratch from time to time.

He enjoys experimenting and challenging himself, hence, he decided to start 15 days dare: to create each day a logo for a marketing buzzword.

“As every marketer who wants to do something new, something different and crazy, I thought about starting a 15 days challenge and design some marketing logos.”

Throughout the process, Robert has asked for the opinion of his fellow designers but even though he received some suggestions he decided to leave his logos chiseled.

“Well, I don’t want to make them perfect. Because I’m a marketer, not a designer!”

Check out Robert’s gallery of 15 marketing logos! Let us know what you think.

Read More at Marketer Cheats his Field With Design – Creates 15 Logos in 15 Days

Original Source: http://blog.teamtreehouse.com/active-record-without-rails-app

When you want to work with Ruby on Rails models, even if you’re just playing around, you have to go through a few steps:

Create an app directory
Create a database
Generate model classes
Run migrations

But sometimes you need something much more lightweight. When I was creating code challenges for our new Active Record Associations in Rails course recently, I needed to simulate a full Rails environment without actually loading Rails (which would have been too slow). So I created a setup that:

Loads just the Active Record library, not all of Rails
Creates a database entirely in RAM, not on disk
Sets up the database without running migrations

I wanted to share my results with all of you, so you can experiment with new Rails models without having to create full Rails apps.

Start learning to code today with a free trial on Treehouse.

The Code

The bulk of our simulated Rails app resides in a single file. This particular setup mimics an app for a veterinary office, including an Owner model that has_many instances of a Pet model. (But you can substitute model classes of your own, if you want).

Create a file named vet.app, in any folder you want, and paste in this code. (We’ll explain all the code in a bit.)

File: vet.rb

# Instead of loading all of Rails, load the
# particular Rails dependencies we need
require ‘sqlite3’
require ‘active_record’

# Set up a database that resides in RAM
ActiveRecord::Base.establish_connection(
adapter: ‘sqlite3’,
database: ‘:memory:’
)

# Set up database tables and columns
ActiveRecord::Schema.define do
create_table :owners, force: true do |t|
t.string :name
end
create_table :pets, force: true do |t|
t.string :name
t.references :owner
end
end

# Set up model classes
class ApplicationRecord < ActiveRecord::Base
self.abstract_class = true
end
class Owner < ApplicationRecord
has_many :pets
end
class Pet < ApplicationRecord
belongs_to :owner
end

Now to actually use these models. In the same folder, create another file (you can name it anything you want).

File: your_code.rb

# Load the above file
require ‘./vet’

# Play around!
owner = Owner.create(name: “Jay”)
owner.pets.create(name: “Max”)
owner.pets.create(name: “Chai”)
p Owner.first.pets

If you run the above file from your terminal, the model objects will be created and saved to the in-memory database!

$ ruby your_code.rb
— create_table(:owners, {:force=>true})
-> 0.0193s
— create_table(:pets, {:force=>true})
-> 0.0008s
#<ActiveRecord::Associations::CollectionProxy [
#<Pet id: 1, name: “Max”, owner_id: 1>,
#<Pet id: 2, name: “Chai”, owner_id: 1>
]>
$

And when Ruby exits, the database will be removed from memory, leaving you with a clean slate again. You don’t need a Rails app directory or a SQLite database file; all you need is these two Ruby code files.

How it Works

If we’re just playing with Active Record models, we don’t need all of Rails, we just need a database adapter and Active Record itself. These two lines load the necessary libraries:

require ‘sqlite3’
require ‘active_record’

If you use the special value of “:memory:”, SQLite3 can write everything to a database in RAM, rather than a file on disk. Sure, everything disappears when Ruby exits, but that’s actually preferable when you’re just playing around. These lines set Active Record up to use an in-memory database:

ActiveRecord::Base.establish_connection(
adapter: ‘sqlite3’,
database: ‘:memory:’
)

Your model classes won’t work unless the database contains the appropriate tables and columns. A Rails app maintains its database setup in a file named db/schema.rb, and that file can be used to recreate a database from scratch, without running migrations. But the schema doesn’t have to be kept in a separate file; we can just throw it straight into our single-file app!

ActiveRecord::Schema.define do
create_table :owners, force: true do |t|
t.string :name
end
create_table :pets, force: true do |t|
t.string :name
t.references :owner
end
end

And then we need the actual model classes. These lines set them up:

class ApplicationRecord < ActiveRecord::Base
self.abstract_class = true
end
class Owner < ApplicationRecord
has_many :pets
end
class Pet < ApplicationRecord
belongs_to :owner
end

Now to load your makeshift Active Record environment, and set up the database. This line looks in the current directory for a file named vet.rb, and runs the code it contains:

require ‘./vet’

Once that’s done, you’re free to create new instances of your model classes, save them to the in-memory database, and load them back out again!

owner = Owner.create(name: “Jay”)
owner.pets.create(name: “Max”)
owner.pets.create(name: “Chai”)
p Owner.first.pets

Other Stuff to Try

You don’t even have to create multiple files for this – you can house all your code in a single file. For example, here’s a mini-app that lets you play with Post and Comment models from a blog.

The next time you’re troubleshooting an issue with your models, or you just want to show off your code, you don’t have to share a whole Rails app. Instead, you can create one of these miniature apps, and share everything you need with a single file!

P.S.: If you liked this post, you should try out our new Active Record Associations in Rails course!

The post Active Record Without a Rails App appeared first on Treehouse Blog.

Original Source: https://css-tricks.com/css-attr-function-got-nothin-custom-properties/

Normally, the connection between CSS and HTML is that CSS selectors match HTML elements, and the CSS styles them. CSS doesn’t know about the actual content in the HTML. But there is a way CSS can get its hands on data in HTML, so long as that data is within an attribute on that HTML element.

It’s like this:

div::after {
content: attr(data-whatever);
}

That’s certainly interesting. You could use it for (rather inaccessible) tooltips, for example:

<button data-tooltip=”Information only mouse-having sighted people will see.”>
Button
</button>
button:hover::after {
content: attr(data-tooltip);
/* positioned and styled and whatnot */
/* ya, a :focus style would buy you a tad more a11y */
}

But you can’t put HTML in the attribute value, so those tooltips are limited to a string value, and couldn’t have a title, link, or anything like that inside them.

Here’s a better use case. There is an old print stylesheet chestnut where you use attr() to add the URL’s to links, so you can actually see what a link is linking to:

@media (print) {
a[href]::after {
content: ” (” attr(href) ” )”;
}
}

That’s clever. But what else? Could you pass a color down?

<h2 data-color=”#f06d06″>
Custom Colored Header
</h2>

That’s not invalid, but it isn’t useful.

h2 {
/* Not gonna work */
color: attr(data-color);
}

The value from attr() is a string. Even though that string is in the same format as a hex code, it won’t be used as a hex code.

Nor can you pass a URL that can actually be used in something like background-image(). Nor you can pass a unit like 3, 20px or 4rem or 0.8vw.

CSS’s attr() function is only strings, and strings are only really useful as content, and content (being unselectable and somewhat inaccessible) isn’t particularly useful anyway. You can’t select the text of psuedo content, for example, nor search for it, making it rather inacessible.

You know what can pass any sort of value and is equally easy to implement as attributes?

CSS custom properties!

You can pop them right into the style attribute of any element. Now those values are available to that element:

<button
style=”
–tooltip-string: ‘Ug. Tooltips.’;
–tooltip-color: #f06d06;
–tooltip-font-size: 11px;
–tooltip-top: -10px
”
>
Button
</button>

We’re passing a string to CSS above, but also a color and length values. Those values are immediately usable as-is:

button::after {
content: var(–tooltip-string);
color: var(–tooltip-color);
font-size: var(–tooltip-font-size);
}

Here’s that demo with some fiddly “logic” (would need to be improved a lot to be actdually useful) to allow variations:

See the Pen CSS Custom Properies Mo’ Betta’ than attr() by Chris Coyier (@chriscoyier) on CodePen.

This really isn’t any more accessible, for the record. If I were implementing tooltips for real, I’d probably read the heck out of this.

What about some other “good” use cases for attr()?

One that comes up a lot is responsive data tables. Imagine a table with headers along a top row and rows of data below:

<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>First Name</th>
<th>Last Name</th>
….
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>Chris</td>
<td>Coyier</td>
…
</tr>
…
</tbody>
</table>

Rows of data like that might become problematic on small screens (too wide). So in a reponsive data table, we might hide that top row, and show labels on a per-cell basis instead.

@media (max-width: 500px) {
thead {
display: none;
}
/* Need to reveal another label now that we’ve hidden the normal labels */
}

Where does that label come from? We could do…

. …
<tr>
<td data-label=”First Name”>Chris</td>
<td data-label=”Last Name”>Coyier</td>
…
</tr>

Then:

td::before {
content: attr(data-label);
/* Also display: block things and such */
}

That’s a pretty good use case. If we use some kinda of accessible hiding method for that <thead>, it might even pass a11y muster.

But this same exact thing is doable with CSS custom properties…

. …
<tr>
<td style=”–label: ‘First Name’;”>Chris</td>
<td style=”–label: ‘Last Name’;”>Chris</td>
…
</tr>
td::before {
content: var(–label);
…
}

Eric Bidelman pointed me to a method of using psueudo content to show an input’s value.

<style>
input {
vertical-align: middle;
margin: 2em;
font-size: 14px;
height: 20px;
}
input::after {
content: attr(data-value) ‘/’ attr(max);
position: relative;
left: 135px;
top: -20px;
}
</style>

<input type=”range” min=”0″ max=”100″ value=”25″>

<script>
var input = document.querySelector(‘input’);

input.dataset.value = input.value; // Set an initial value.

input.addEventListener(‘change’, function(e) {
this.dataset.value = this.value;
});
</script>

That feels a smidge dangerous to me since I didn’t think pseudo content was supposed to work on replaced elements like an <input>. It’s probably a job for output, and the JavaScript would be essentially the same. You could use pseudo content with the additional element, but there’s really no need for that.

Exploiting the fact that psuedo content can’t be copied is also clever. For example, GitHub does code block line numbering with data-line-number=”” and ::before { content: attr(data-line-number); }.

Nobody likes selecting line numbers when they are trying to copy code! Good use here (probably even more flexible than CSS counters), but again, something that CSS custom properties could handle as well.

<td style=”–line-num: 5″> … </td>

You could argue this is better because if you did want to use CSS counters, you could use that first value to kick things off and not need it on every line.

See the Pen Line Numbering by Chris Coyier (@chriscoyier) on CodePen.

Same deal with typographic trickery involving duplicating text in CSS for stylistic reasons. Check out this cool demo by Mandy Michael using attr(). I’m sure you can imagine how –heading: “Fracture”; could do the trick there.

The CSS3 Values spec (in Candidate Recommendation) has a way to make attr() useful

I’m not sure it matters much, as I’d argue CSS custom properties are a near total replacement for attr(), but the spec does specifically cover this, presumably as an attempt to make it more useful.

The idea is to set the type of value as you grab it in CSS.

<div data-color=”red”>Some Words</div>
div {
color: attr(data-color color);
}

Or…

<span data-size=”50″>span</span>
span {
font-size: attr(data-size px);
}

But as far as I can tell, no browser supports this.

The CSS attr() function got nothin’ on custom properties is a post from CSS-Tricks