By Brian Scott

Long gone are the days when a graphic designer’s tools were pen, pencil, brush, exacto knife and illustration board. Today’s designer relies almost exclusively on graphic design software which is both expensive and constantly changing. At some point or other, the designer has to decide to upgrade his or her present software or change to another brand. And, then the designer must learn all the new functions of this version of software. If the program interface changes then the learning curve for the design professional can be very steep and costly. On top of that, there’s different graphic design software for desktop publishing, web design, illustration, and photography.

For much of the last decade, the desktop publishing arena was ruled by Quark Express. (Before that Adobe’s PageMaker had been King of the Mountain.) Over the past few years, Adobe has been making a serious bid to regain its preeminence in desktop publishing with In Design. If Adobe squashes Quark it will pretty much have a monopoly in graphic design software, having already swallowed up Macromedia and much of its other competition.

At the end of 2005, Adobe concluded its acquisition of Macromedia which made it the owner of Dreamweaver – usually acclaimed as one of the best (and sometimes the most difficult to use) web design software available. Dreamweaver has few challengers in the arena of professional web design. Microsoft’s Front Page still provides services for non-professionals and some professionals who are old-time PC users. Mostly though, Adobe, with the acquisition of Dreamweaver, has attained a semi-monopoly here as well.

In graphic design software for photography there’s only one acknowledged leader – Adobe Photoshop. While other programs exist for the casual user, for the professional photographer Photoshop is the digital darkroom. Other companies exist by producing “plug-in’s for Photoshop, until Adobe buys them.

What about graphic design software for illustration? Again, Adobe is the leader. With Adobe Illustrator used and recognized by the most professionals it usually wins hands down against the competition. And, it’s not always which program is the easiest to use or has the most functions. It is which one is the most compatible in the most places. Corel Draw, Canadian illustration competitor to Illustrator is acknowledged by many to be easier and have more functions – but the files are hard to use anywhere but with Corel. So that limits across program functionality and thus its popularity.

One of the reasons InDesign is gaining so much ground is the ease of use with all of the other graphic design software programs in the Adobe family. You can move between them quickly and smoothly. Adobe now packages them as its Creative Suite and so it becomes one-stop shopping.

But, what will happen if Adobe becomes King of the Mountain? Without challengers, will it maintain the same quality and drive for excellence? And what will happen to the price? Will it even out or just continue upward. If you’re the only ballpark, you can charge whatever rent you want?

About the Author: Visit Brian Scott’s website,

FastCashDesign.com

and learn about freelance graphic design and how to launch a successful

Graphic Design Career

.

Source:

isnare.com

Permanent Link:

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By David Fishman

Many entrepreneurs are interested in starting websites, it is a fast and easy way to make money, you are self employed and it gives you the freedom to work when you want to work, there is also very low overhead in starting the business.

There are many ways to drive traffic to your website; one of them is banner and text ads. The traffic you receive will increase your sales. The traffic you site is receiving needs to be targeted traffic, once you have the targeted traffic you sales copy can convert them into buying. A website is perfect when a substantial amount of traffic is driven in. To keep the visitor at your site you need to have quick readable copy on your site, the attention span of a visitor is very short. Make sure your navigation links are easy to find and are interesting, if the time it take for your website is long you will loose the customer and they will move on to the next searched website.

Website content is one of the most important aspects of promoting your site. When designing your website the simpler the better. Here is a rule of thumb: text content should outweigh the html content. If you have a simple, easy to read and informative site that offers something visitors will become sticky visitors. The looks of a website is much less important than the actual content. You need to constantly update your content on your site, how else are you going to get the people to come back. Keeping all aspects of your site fresh is very important. If your web content is stale, visitors will search elsewhere for the things they need.

When including content on your site, think about what the reader will like to read about or what information they will need, be clear and make the copy very easy to read and understand. Website keywords are important if you are looking to get your site ranked high on the search engines. Including the proper META tags on your site is important, so make sure you include them. Many search engines still use META tags; they give the description and keywords to the search engines and the search engines takes this information and determine what your site is about. When you choose the keywords you will use, make sure that pages on your site have these keywords included. When adding he keywords onto your pages make sure that a least 5% are your keywords. Think of ways to make your website lively and interesting so that visitors will want to return on a regular basis.

When writing articles to be published you need to place a link the resource box at the end the article. This will give you a link pointing back to your site. People search websites for tips and also for additional knowledge about anything they are interested in.

To rank well in the search engines make sure you start a marketing campaign for your website. Place your link everywhere you can.

Offer your customers something worth while; make sure your products benefit your customers. By doing this they will intern tell others and you will receive traffic by word of mouth.

About the Author: David Marc Fishman helps webmasters with a link directory like

directory

and

yahoo directory

to establish one way links.

Source:

isnare.com

Permanent Link:

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