If you’re designing a page or running an e-store I bet you’re curious to know the behavior or reading pattern of your online visitors. Thanks to eye tracking method, researchers can analyze where online visitors are looking on your site. The output is what we call heatmaps.

Though this is a very useful tool, most entrepreneurs do not use eyetracking method for the simple reason that this service is not quite affordable. The good news is there are several sites simulating heatmaps to help you optimize your Web pages. (more…)

Colors have a strong impact on our logical or emotional state. For instance, red evokes sexiness or aggressive nature while blue is associated with calmness and loyalty. You might find it hard to believe but colors can even help treat some diseases.

It is no surprise then that finding the right color or color combinations is proven to boost your brands. It helps attract attention and set a mood for your customers. Though a good logo designer can help you choose the right colors, it is also valuable to learn this aspect.

A common mistake committed by many entrepreneurs is using more colors in their logo designs. Each color creates a single message or association. So if you are using 5 colors in your logos or brands, it will deliver 5 different messages. Unfortunately, consumers cannot handle that much perception.

The first thing you should consider in finding the appropriate color is your competitors. It is not wise to copy the color scheme of the leading brands for it will create an impression that you’re just a second-rate version.

Also, pay attention to the demographics of your market such as gender, age and culture. A trendy neon green might appeal to youngsters but painful to look at for your average grandmas and grandpas. In a way, it sets the limitation of the color you can use.

For more information about this topic, I suggest you pay a visit to Inspiration Bit for it offers a comprehensive discussion of the dos and don’ts of colors.

Disclaimer: The image is for reference only. Hence, copyright belongs to the respective owners. If you are the owner and wish to have the image removed from this post, please send an e-mail to remove-logo@logodesignworks.com.

Can’t think of creative and effective ad or slogan to go with your impressive logo design? Burnout happens even to very creative individuals. Also, not all entrepreneurs have the much needed creativity or enough resources to commission a branding agency.

In case you badly needed an ad or a memorable slogan, you can visit The Ad Generator by Alexis Lloyd. It is a free mashup tool which manipulates languages and images to create fake advertisements every 15 to 30 seconds. Here are some of their samples.

Here’s the explanation of his process:

Words and semantic structures from real corporate slogans are remixed and randomized to generate invented slogans. These slogans are then paired with related images from Flickr, thereby generating fake advertisements on the fly. By remixing corporate slogans, I intend to show how the language of advertising is both deeply meaningful, in that it represents real cultural values and desires, and yet utterly meaningless in that these ideas have no relationship to the products being sold.

While some of the generated ads are really meaningless, visiting this site can guide you to the right direction or help spark the creativity within you. If you’re lucky, you might find the ideal slogan or ads for your small business here.

If you make a living from creative ideas like a good logo designer or painter, you ought to read the free e-book published by a London-based creativity coach Mark McGuinness entitled Time Management for Creative People (pdf).

Subtitled ‘Manage the Mundane – Create the Extraordinary’, this free 32-page book provides practical tips to help you maintain your creative focus while handling other business or personal commitments.

Undeniably there are numerous Websites tackling about time management but most of them are created for the consumption of the general public. Creative people, on the other hand, think differently. For instance, McGuinness pointed out most creative thinkers view organization, habit, and discipline as threats to creativity and not as good qualities to strive for.

Creativity is all about thinking outside the box and breaking the stereotypes. One of my favorite tips is to ring-fence your most creative time by asking the following questions:

When is your most creative time, when you are most alert and find it easy to focus?

If you could arrange your ideal schedule, what time would you ring-fence for focused creative work?

How close to your ideal schedule can you get within the constraints of your current situation?

Do you have a special place for creative work?

What physical triggers (such as pens, paper, computer hardware or software), rituals or routines do you use to get yourself in the right state of mind?

The e-book is under Creative Commons License, meaning you can share this on a noncommercial basis with any people you believe would benefit from these insights. Just keep the name of the author intact.

Via Creative Generalist

Whether you’re an aspiring graphic designer or not, there are times when you need to manipulate or edit images according to your needs. You might be blogger looking to improve the images in your site or simply an avid collector of memories. At the end of the day, most of us are after the same thing – high quality images.

Good thing Vivien of Inspiration Bit shared about Picnik, a FREE online image editor which allows you to manipulate photos to fit your needs. To make this tool more useful, you can install it as a Firefox or Internet Explorer add-on so you can just press right click on any image and you will have an option to pull that image to Picnik site for quick editing.

No need to buy expensive software like Adobe Photoshop for basic editing or download free graphic software and spend time to learn it. You just need an Internet connection and a Web browser.

It can be a stand alone application as well for non-heavy users. To make our lives a lot easier, it enables us to edit directly from popular sites like Flickr, Photobucket, Picasa, and Facebook.

Picnik users can rotate, resize, sharpen, remove red eyes, and crop images as part of its editing functions. Looking at the sample image above, you can add text, shapes, frames, touch-up, and effects like sepia, black & white, matte, and many others as well.

Standard features are free of charge. If you love this simple tool and happen to be a heavy user, you can upgrade to premium account for only $25 per year or around $2 per month.

Via Graphic Design Blog