Are you ready for this year’s biggest multimedia and design convention in the Philippines? I’m excited to attend this year’s Graphika Manila. Will be held on September 2008. Having to attend last year’s convention, you can get a glimpse of the latest trend in multimedia and web design from different experts around the world. Well, the speakers this year haven’t been disclosed yet but I’m betting that it would be a big ass party.

If you want to know what happened on last year’s Graphika Manila, check the video below.

Mark your calendars ladies and gents.

Having to work with big design companies has a very large benefit. You get referrals just about anywhere and as time goes by, those that are referred also refers you to other potential clients like money having compound interest. This is basically, a web designer’s dream, to work and do the things he loves best and be appreciated by many.

But, before that happens, we must first know how to enhance our web design skills. Many new comers in the web design industry felt kind of lost to where to start. Sometimes, they have the desire to design websites but they can’t express it in a design. To make it simple, they can’t make their imagination into a reality. Sometimes, some people are not gifted with the eyes of a designer that can distinguish a good color combination to another.

Tips To Improve Your Design Skills When Starting Up

• Good Artist Copy, Great Artists Steal - Two people who actually said those words are two of the richest men in the world. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. It is true. As web designers, you are an artist. The best way to start is to COPY other people’s design and make improvements to it. Practice on doing the same layout, the same design, the same color combination of other sites and make it your own. Once you know the style, its easy to make a new style that you can call your own.
• KISS Principle - The KISS principle or “Keep It Simple… Stupid” is one of the most widely used technique especially in the web 2.0 arena. Perfection in simplicity is determined not when there are no more things to add but there are no more things to remove. If you can make the design as simple as possible, you’re on the right track.
• Don’t Make Me Think - Always keep in mind that people who uses the internet always want to save time. People want to SCAN pages, not read them. And when they see something interesting on your page, that’s the time they will read the whole article. Keep in mind, web usability. Don’t make your visitors think. If you can make them do something on your site, without them thinking tremendously, you’re hitting the right spot. The book Don’t Make Me Think has been a bible for newbie designers and experienced web designers in the field of web usability. Definitely one of the many books you must have if you want to learn more.
• Practice, Practice, Practice - It doesn’t matter if your first few designs are crap. In time, you are building a portfolio and experience. Each page you make will only get you inspired and try another approach on every different site you handle. Allot a time for yourself wherein you can practice a new effect or learn a new graphic tool. Practice makes perfect.

Always remember that you can not please everybody. Just like every artist won’t be able to please anyone. Don’t feel bad. Its just a matter of being true and totally loving what you do and the design you make.

Being a web designer, you are exposed to different people wanting to have different websites to be designed and built. You come into play to bring out the image of the company from mere description into a reality. But these are not only the things that web designer can do, in fact, web design is a way of learning and web designers are learning from each client they work with.

I have been an adult web designer long before and during those times, I was curious how adult web masters do their business. During the course of my working days, I have come to find out how an adult webmaster work, how they promote, what are the trends in design that converts, just by chatting them up. Though I have no experience doing things by what they say, but it’s better to have an idea of things than to be totally clueless. It’s a learning process for web designers and that’s what makes web design job rewarding.

For example, the time that I was curious about affiliate marketing. I have no one to teach me, how would I learn? I figured, if I promote my service to affiliate marketers, I can get a glimpse of how they do business. And so I did. It took me months to get an idea of how the whole affiliate marketing goes by talking to affiliate marketeers and asking questions. They wouldn’t really mind answering most especially if you did a great job. Most clients will come back for more and its a great chance to ask for even more. Plus, it builds rapport because you wouldn’t be talking about small things with them, you are actually trying to learn things that they are passionate about thus trusting you even more. Building relationship which gives a win win situation to both parties.

Being a full time web designer for a company would mean 9 hrs of your day dedicated to your comapny, and around 3 - 5 hrs more for your side business (freelance). Freelancing is a business and it will take you more than just do this, and do that kind of thing to get it going. You have to do the accounting, invoice writing and the dreaded customer support. You know you can’t go forever with this kind of set up, juggling full time work and your freelance web design business. You’ll soon realize that you have to pick. Full time  web designer or full time freelance web designer?

Full Time Web Design Job

People loves security, no doubt, we want a better and safe future. That is why sometimes having a full time job is the best way to go. I think this is one of the best reason why people can’t quit their job. It’s for the security. Being a web designer, you know that you only need to design sites for the company, day after day. And wait till the end of the month to get paid. The only thing is, you’ll always hope to have an increase of maybe after a year? The good thing is you only have to work 9 hours a day for the pay check.

Freelance Web Design

Freelance web designers are entreprenuers at heart. They depend on their skills not only in design but people management and social skills. Maybe some business skills but the basics are all there, you can research the internet for that. Now, the advantage of this is that, the more you work, the more you earn. And time is flexible. BUT, the draw back is that, you are not sure of your income. It may decline or rise. There are income fluctuations, just like in real business.

Things to Remeber If You Want To Become A Freelance Web Designer

There are a couple of things I always think about before I took the plunge and quit my full time job. They are:

1. Do You have money to pay your expenses? If you quit your full time job, you have no more income source. Do you have the money to pay the bills without working? What I did was to set aside money to pay my bills for 6 months. Secure that money and quit to become a full time freelance web designer.
2. Do You feel limited, bored at work and think that work is getting in your way of improving? I always felt that doing routine work can bore the hell out of people. And the hardest part is that, you’re like a robot that does things over and over and over again, without consciously thinking about it. This will stop improvement in your skills and, come on people, its plain boring, if that hits you, you know there’s something wrong with your life or you’re better of doing business yourself than browsing youtube in the office.
3. Do You have a good number of clients and works to sustain your freelance web design business? If you are doing freelance web design jobs while having a full time job, it is best to have and keep clients that trusts you and those that have more work for you. When I quit my full time web design job, I have no rock solid client base, I only depended on contests to hopefully feed me. So, if you have the guts to go and try what I did, this I say to you, don’t you dare, or your family will think you’re stupid. Build a list of clients first and think if these clients will come back to you for more work and hopefully sustain your business.
4. Do You have a strong control of your emotions? Believe me, this one is a biggie, most people will think you’re stupid to quit a high paying web designer job. Do you have the guts to control the urge to get angry? If you don’t mind what other people think, you are on your way. Always remember that:“An entrepreneur stands tall against the tide of popular belief”.
5. Have you prepared yourself for the worst and planned for the best? Freelance web design is a business. In business, there are no certainty. We are all at risks. Business will come and go, are you prepared to accept that fact? No one will give you pay check, you are in command of how much you could earn now. Make plans for expansion, harness your skills. Learn more skill set. These are the traits that a full time job won’t teach you.
6. Don’t Be Afraid To Fail! If you never failed, you never lived.

If you follow this pointers, it will help you get started in the freelance web design industry. Always remember that freelancers are entreprenuers, selling their skills, it takes a lot of confidence to sell their skills to people. If you got these trait of an entreprenuer, making money by freelance web design will be easy for you.

During the last couple of days, I have been telling future freelance web designers out there on how they can make money online by freelance web design. I also talked about the importance of building a web design portfolio, should you want to gain a large base of loyal and returning clients. But, the reason I wrote this post is that, I forgot to mention how you can take the payment for the web design work.

Taking Your Web Design Payment

The best way to take payments from clients from around the world is to have a Paypal account. Let me explain what paypal do. Paypal accepts money paid by major credit cards, debit cards or another paypal account. This is very advantageous for web designers in the Philippines as you can accept instant payments from anyone from around the world and in dollars too.

There are things you need first before you register at Paypal.

1. A Valid Email Address - You will need a valid email address so paypal can notify you of transactions. Also, this email address can be used by the web designer to purchase other products on the web. If you decided to buy a software for web design, you can use this email address and Paypal will do the rest to pay it and deduct on your Paypal Balance.
2. A credit card or debit card - You will need a credit card or a debit card to verify your Paypal account. This may be done later if you want, but there is a drawback, you can only send $100 limit. After that, you need to enroll a credit card or debit card on Paypal for verification. They will charge about $1.60 on your card and will be refunded back to you when the verification is complete. Just to let paypal know that your card is working and is enrolled successfully into Paypal.

How To Get Accepted in Paypal Using Eon Debit Card

We all know that its hard to get accepted for a credit card. I know, because I got decline numerous of times. But I found out that Union Bank offers Visa Electron or what they called EON Card that lets you use and be accepted in Paypal with no problem. This is actually what I’m using right now and have no problems so far. The only thing is that it took me 2 weeks before I could use the card.

Hello Dashboard

Once accepted, you can now login to your paypal account. This is where most of transactions happen. You can Withdraw funds from your Paypal account to your Bank account. Or you can put funds from your Bank to your Paypal account to purchase goods online.

Basically, if you would like to offer your freelance web design service internationally, you should be able to accept payments internationally too. And Paypal will do the trick. You can register at Paypal now.

Full Time Web Designer

Back when the days of starting up in this web design industry, I had experienced total discrimination because I have no portfolio. Well, my first employer was good enough to give me an actual test where I can design a site hands on. But my 2nd employer did not even took a look at my work! I have all my sample sites in my flash drive but I have no site back then to where I can showcase my web designs. And that actually turned them off.

You can actually guess by my experience that if you’re a web designer and looking for a job in a web design company, the number one rule to have to get that job is the web design portfolio. Not many people have experience in this field and would like to try their luck and I can definitely tell, if you want a good company to get into, you should already have an experience.

Freelance Web Design

If you want to be a freelance web designer, it should be you’re number one goal to set up a rock solid web design portfolio. No one’s gonna gamble their money to know how good (or bad) you are at web design. They WANT PROOF. So before you win a client, they already did their research and most of the time, the quality of your work reflected from your portfolio is the best way to win a client.

How To Build Up A Web Portfolio

Now that we know the importance of web design portfolio in this business, lets talk about how we can build your own portfolio.

• By all means, join contests - This is by far the best way to build your portfolio. You earn while you learn and build up your sample works. Digital Point and Site Point are two great sites for web design competitions.
• Do Free Web Design For Friends - If you have friends that needs a web site design, even if its free, do it. But only take a handful, you can always expect friends to abuse free stuff from you, decide only a number of web design works that you will accept and keep in mind your true goal — to build a portfolio.
• Free Themes - Learn to design blogs and submit it to free wordpress blog themes sites. Wordpress.org lets you upload your own theme and be used by many people. The more people using your theme, the more you know that you have a great design. And a great design is always a great addition to your portfolio.

Setting Up A Site

Now that you have a portfolio, there are two things you can do with it. Either showcase it and host it in a free hosting. Or paid hosting, your own site and domain. My personal suggestion would be buying your own hosting and domain. Why? This is business, so treat it like one. Invest on a domain and hosting, it is the most professional way to go and brand your site.

I never really thought that I would take web design and development seriously. I have a Computer Engineering degree and its all computation, numbers and binaries on our head. But the creative spark of our human brain took domination over my other half of my brain. To put it in simple words, I was hooked!

I never really thought in the beginning that you could actually earn money from web pages or make a business out of it. I’ve been stumbling day after day after I quit my full time job as to where I could get the money to pay the bills. Up then after months of searching. I have come to find out the best way to make money on web design especially on a freelance basis.

This is how I learned, and I use these points to get freelance jobs. It may not work for anybody else but its up to you to apply the things I will point out.

Practice Web Design

Practice makes perfect. Creativity can not be learned by principle only through practice. Enhance your creativity in web design by doing creative things aside from web design. Creative writing, photography, painting… Anything that requires creativity. Its your bread and butter.

When I was starting up, I used to copy websites that I really like. My favorite was 2advanced.com. Their design is simply the best. Learn from each websites you visit and take note of what part of the page is attractive, pay attention to details.

Know the Web Design Trends

Clients are always on the look out for the best and freshest design for their website. If its a big company, they will need the website to be updated to the latest look. Know the styles, know the dont’s.

Brand Yourself

When joining web design communities or competition, always have the same name in the internet. So people know who you are and your skills and it would be easier for them to contact you.

Make Money

Join Web Design Competition

The best way to earn money online while learning is to join competition. SEO have seo competition so as web designers. Do not take any lost contest personally, learn from your competition. You may join contests on sitepoint.com or forums.digitalpoint.com there are tons of opportunities for newbie web designers.

Competition opens up new opportunities, people that are just passing by and saw your work might be interested in hiring you. Contests in which you have won might be interested in doing some more business with you. There are lots of benefits in joining web design competition so be sure to try them out while learning.

Freelance Websites

If you are ready to take on serious jobs, visit freelancing websites like getafreelancer.com or elance.com where you will bid on the work and the best bidder will get the job.

Put up a Web Design Portfolio

The reason why I wanted you to join competitions so keenly is that this is the best way to build up your portfolio. I have done FREE web design jobs to a lot of clients just to put up my portfolio but I learned that competitions are the best hands down. You get to earn money while building it up at the same time.

…and most especially…

Keep The Fire Burning

Have a burning desire to make web sites. That is what will make you earn money in this business. Once you have a list of clientelle, you’ll be amazed at how much work you have to do day after day and you’ll be happy that you have no more boss to answer to… Working hard would mean more money for you. You are in control now.

Making money online is never easy. This is a business and business is never easy. What is easy anyway? Picking your nose perhaps? There is no magic bullet here. Though you are sitting in front of the computer doing the work, its also tiresome and getting burned out is no joking matter.

I also understand that this type of business in the Philippines is not yet in the open so most people will look at you like a bum that have no work and always in the computer playing video games. They will ask you to get a “real job” will say things to you, but don’t be afraid to follow your heart. Let me quote this line from a very important figure:

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

~Steve Jobs

Have a dream and follow that dream.

Web design is a very saturated field. But still not enough to take on all of the web sites being made everyday. There’s enough work for all web designers in the world. Now who wouldn’t want to be in this lucrative and creative business. I’ve been a web designer for quite some time and the development of the design on all niches and types of websites are fast changing. We are now on the 4th stage of the internet called Web 2.0. Why have we’ve come to this internet era and how did I know we are in Web 2.0? One thing for sure its the design of the website.

Although it might not look like it by the look of my site, I’m really a web designer and I just recovered from my site losing all my files. If you would like to know more of me and see sample of my past work, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Tips On Being a Web Designer

Inner Game

I call this inner game. How you view this business and work. Your work will reflect on what’s going on your mind. One thing to never forget is that, a web designer is always creative. And creative people never say never and do the impossible. Creative people are genius in their own little way.

One time a client wanted me design a site that is fun and looks like an under sea fun party. They gave me sample and its all full of vector art. I don’t know shit how to use illustrator. But I got an idea and a clear picture of what they wanted. So I still went on. I messed around illustrator and my creativity never failed me. I came out of a design that’s one of the best I’ve done. I could easily get away and say, I can’t or I can’t use illustrator. But hey, if you want it, you can get it. All you have to do is close your eyes and have a clear picture of what you want and it will come tru.

Business Relations

If a client wants to revise something with your web proposal, don’t take it personally. I know sometimes when you worked hard for a project and the revisions are as big as just make a new one. You really have no choice and don’t take it personally. Appreciate the clients effort on pointing out your weakness and thank them for being open and honest. Build a lasting relationship with them so they know that they’ll get the highest quality web design service from you. This is the key to referrals and loyal clients.

When You Say It Do It

Integrity… That’s the word, if you say you can do it. Do it. If you say you can finish this at this time. Finish it at that time. Your clients will love you for your reliability and will trust you more.

Now that’s been taken care off… On to your arsenal…

Web Designer Skills and Tools

Photoshop

I can’t live without this tool. Graphic application is the bread and butter of a web designer. I am using Adobe Photoshop for all my web designs and will never trade it for anything else. This is the only graphic application I used since I first started (except MS Paint).

Adobe Photoshop is used for retouching images, improving the quality of pictures, web layouts and web designs, maybe some graphics and logo, but there is a more powerful tool for that, which brings us to the next,

Illustrator

The most powerful logo creation, vector creation and print creation software to be added on your arsenal. With Photoshop, you can do any kind of web design work.

Flash

Motion is the future. It is expected that when the internet reached the age of web 3.0, all websites will be a moving media. Videos and graphic animation. And today, its one of the most appealing piece of work in a website to catch the visitors attention in a little time.

Dreamweaver

For HTML and CSS coding. If you can do it in notepad, by all means, help yourself. I love Dreamweaver for the fact that its so easy to add code snippets and makes it a lot faster to work with codes.

Pizza, Coke and Smoke

With you’re skills and tools, you’ll find yourself piled with web design jobs. So pamper yourself with the best combination of every computer programmer and internet savvy professionals — Pizza & Coke. If you’re stuck and have no ideas, you can take a quick smoke and get back to work. That’s the life of a web designer.

Where to Learn Web Design

That’s easy, just type in google web design tutorials and you’ll find yourself with tons of tutorials. Or, if you want a suggestion Pixel2life is my favorite.

There’s a lot of sites to be made. Good luck on your web design career.

I am very proud and happy to announce the launch of the new design for Splitsec.co.uk.
The work consist of the web design, logo design, flash work and web site coding. Pretty much everything you see on the main site.

A Little Info About Splitsec Ltd

Splitsec LTD is a leading IT company in the UK provides IT support Services
and solutions for businesses in Leeds, Bradford and West Yorkshire.

With the rapid growth of internet business in the Philippines. It is most likely that companies would look for skills with regards to the web industry.

Web Design in the Philippines

With regards to web design, I can clearly say that the Philippines is one of the most talented with regards to creativity on the web. I have known tons of web designers that have huge talent in web design that works for companies that pay them 1 / 4 of what they should be earning. Though the skills of web designers are top notch in the country. Some people take advantage of the low price labor in the Philippines to run their web design business. I know because I have been into one.

SEO in the Philippines and Bloggers

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is kind of under rated in the country. And I have not yet found any good ones that really know what they are doing with regards to SEO. Not to mention bloggers that will talk about promoting their site to social networks to get tons of traffic = money. This is a myth and should be changed. For months I have been learning SEO, Affiliate Marketing and Internet Marketing, and I have come to find out that not many people (especially bloggers in the Philippines) know how to optimize their site. How did I know that they don’t know how to optimize their site? Notice when they do not make a post on their blog, their blog dies. I am not saying I’m a guru in this field, but come on, I bet you notice that, everybody is just posting what other sites have already posted. If problogger posted something, it would spread like wild fire. It’s just a rehash of a rehash of a rehash. Nothing new, nothing useful. Optimization is for the long term result, now, why aren’t getting this long term result to traffic that they are talking about? . . . . Because they don’t know how…

Can you see the opportunity here? Not too many people know how to optimize, when offline business take it online, they would need the expertise of an Internet Marketing Specialist in the Philippines. Not just people who know how to optimize pinay sexscandal post.

In reality, SEO Specialist and Internet Marketing in the Philippines would be a lucrative job. I already know someone getting paid 50,000 Pesos (starting) for this job position, and he wants to have an increase next month.

Personally…

I would rather be a specialist in internet marketing and do my own affiliate business than work for a company.