Week of 1-11-10:

Design blogs you should be following on Twitter
“With the vast majority of design blogs within the blogging community its hard to keep up with who is saying what. Using twitter along side your favorite RSS reader is a great way to find out about new articles that design blogs are writing up.”

How to make yourself stand out as a freelancer
“The cybersea is full of freelancers all out to make their mark and their money to keep their freelance fires burning. With an abundance of opportunity pouring in to the market, getting yourself out there and making sure you are heard and seen will help you sway those opportunities more your way.”

Impressive Tumblr customizations
“Over the past year, there have been a few different services that have popped up that allows you to post content online a lot faster than WordPress would. Two of the most popular ones are Tumblr and Posterous.”

Your personality, summarized in a typeface
“If you’ve ever sat down with a type designer, what you quickly realize is that they rarely talk about fonts in purely aesthetic or even functional terms: They talk about assertiveness or calm or friendliness. In short, they talk about personality traits. It makes sense, then, that your personality could be translated into a typeface.”

On small caps
“I just read this post by Joe Clark, linked from Daring Fireball, about why you shouldn’t use small caps for acronyms. In it, Clark provides some examples which at first glance seem to support his argument, but a little thought reveals them to be mere examples of ill-considered typography rather than a crushing blow on the use of small caps”

Dyana Weissman on Kerning
“As designers, kerning is one of those esoteric terms we love to use. Not only is it vital to quality typography, it’s also a great word to throw into a conversation with non-designers whenever we want to sound smart or abstruse.”

A Negative View of White Space
“After reading through the article on The Web Design Ledger, “Whitespace: The Underutilized Design Element” I felt compelled to respond and clear up what I feel is spreading misconceptions about design in relation to white space.”

Educate Your Clients On What You Offer With a Guide
“Educating clients on the services you offer can be a tedious process, especially if you find yourself doing it over and over again. There are a few options for providing your clients with a resource that can bring them up to speed on what you can do for them, without you needing to explain over and over again.”

10 big and bold slab fonts
“Slab fonts are a part of the serif font family and are incredibly effective for logos, headlines and in printed media. Slab fonts can be rounded, angled or block like, the common stand out feature is that slab fonts are chunky, bold and big.”

Type on a curve
“Setting type on a curving path can alter the balance and relationships between characters. Here’s how to make sure your text still looks good.”

The Most Relevant Identity Work of the Decade
“I gave myself a deadline of January 15 to do a recap of identity work in the 2000s, assuming that it wouldn’t be an editorial faux pas to do a list of this sort well into the new year. So here it is. An admittedly incomplete — it would take months to do this exhaustively — compilation of the most relevant identities of the past decade.”

Since starting The Design Cubicle, I have submitted many of my quality blog posts to various websites that accept community submissions. In the past year, approximately 900,000 visitors have come via referring sites (statistics provided by Google Analytics on 12/16/09).

While there are hundreds or more websites around the web that allow you to submit, below are the ones that have produced high traffic and successful exposure for my articles and blog in the past year.

Please note that many of these sites are reader voted or moderated, so I suggest only submitting your best and highest quality articles for approval or acceptance.

Twitter

Twitter, the most obvious on this list, but honestly the most effective. Tweeting your new blog posts allowing your followers to become exposed to your new content and get passed along to your follower’s followers and so on. A quality article has the opportunity to be seen by millions within a matter of minutes.

Smashing Magazine [submissions via Noupe]

If you are not familiar with Smashing Magazine… well let’s just say, you should be. The name says it all. (*83,001 Smashing Magazine visitors tracked by Google Analytics)

Design Float

Design Float is like Digg for design-only articles. Users vote on your article and once they surpase 4 votes appear on the front page’s Popular Entries. (22,517 Design Float visitors tracked by Google Analytics)

PSD Tuts

Psd Tuts, an amazing website for Photoshop tutorials, offers a community link feed of high quality content from around the web. (15,233 PSD Tut visitors tracked by Google Analytics)

Facebook

Using @TDCBrand as my Twitter account for only new Design Cubicle posts and news (I use @behoff for everything else), I also link those tweets to Facebook. (12,463 Facebook visitors tracked by Google Analytics)

All of my new posts show up in Facebook’s status updates so my friends and followers can stay up-to-date.

Design Bump

Another great site similar to Design Float. Design Bump as brought TDC continuous quality traffic over the past year. (8,132 Design Bump visitors tracked by Google Analytics)

Design Newz

Being that Design Newz is one of the newer sites on this list (**under 1 year old) its hard to get an exact reading in the past year, but I must say it has gained momentum and popularity quite fast. All posts are hand-picked to ensure the highest quality possible. (**6,211 Design Newz visitors tracked by Google Analytics)

Noupe

Recently acquired by Smashing Magazine, Noupe is gaining even more heavy traffic and popularity. (5,384 Noupe visitors tracked by Google Analytics).

Other websites producing consistent traffic for TDC last year:

• Designm.ag
• Graphic Design Links
• Design Moo
• The Web Blend
• Knowtebook
• Fuel Your Creativity
• Freelance Folder – for freelancing articles

Sites where others submit your articles:

The above websites are sites that I personally submit my quality articles, but there are sites out there where readers can submit for you. Below are three that have been extremely good to me in the past year.

• Digg – in the past year I’ve only had 3 articles Dugg, but have accumulated 58,164 visitors because of it.
• StumbleUpon – 199,199 visitors in the past 12 months.
• Delicious – 25,362 visitors in the past 12 months.

Personally, I like to have the above three, in addition to Twitter, on the bottom of every post to make it easy for my readers to submit articles that they enjoy and want to share.

*Visitor numbers for Smashing Magazine visitors will be higher because of recent addition to The Smashing Network
**Visitor numbers for Design Newz do not accurately reflect the course of an entire year

Mike was a follower of mine on Twitter and after discovering my portfolio, decided to fill out my online Logo Design Project Worksheet. After reading his responses and a few initial phone conversations I felt that Mike and I shared something very similar, and not because we were both independent workers; we both had extreme passion for what we do and also valued thoughtful, relevant design. Continue reading below for a look into Mike Tittel Photography’s logo design process.

Design Brief

Again, Mike, a freelance adventure sports photographer [ view his portfolio ], shoots both editorial and commercial assignments, as well as maintains a stock collection which contains over 45,000 rights managed images. His primary goal, and main reasoning for getting in contact with me, was to reach further into the commercial photography industry and work for clients such as Nike, New Balance, etc. Essentially he was looking to expand his presence and market reach.

A few notes from my clients Logo Worksheet:

• Simple, clean
• Memorable and approachable
• Easy to work with across various mediums
• Something that reflects and works with his portfolio and current colors; background of current website is black

Brainstorming

After reviewing Mike’s portfolio and worksheet responses, my first initial response was to make the logo bold and dense to compliment the beautiful and powerful extreme sports photography he produced. I also felt that a bold logo/mark would lay well over busy images, since the logo would most likely be overprinted on top of busy background and photographs.

Like all my designs I started off with a sketchbook and pencil:

While many of the above sketches are completely unrelated to the produced concepts, sketching is important as it let’s a designer get as many ideas out as possible in a short amount of time — great activity for the brain. Also, when searching for ideas and brainstorming I like to doodle completely unrelated drawings — sort of allows me to free my mind for few minutes, before coming back to a thoughtful process.

Although the final concept was the first presented concept (see concept 3), the first below concepts were produced to have a more action/sports feel to it.

Concept 1

The ‘M’ in Mike was emphasized through the mountain/lightening bolt mark, with the additional two lines emphasizing speed: all which can been seen through my client’s photography.

Concept 2

Drawing from the above concept, a second mark was produced to emphasize speed, direction, balance and strength.

Concept 3 (“The Chosen One”)

Prior to the above concepts, this concept (seen above) was presented to the client first (sometimes we get it right on the first try), which I was particularly excited about. The image captured all of the notes Mike discussed (simple, clean, memorable, reflective of his work, etc.)

While Mike was more drawn to the first two concepts and direction they were headed, I felt that they stemmed too far away from the fact that Mike was a photographer. What Mike and I particularly enjoyed about concept 1 and 2 was the strength and bold feel, so the typeface, Knockout by Hoefler and Frere-Jones brought back the extra punch the first two presented.

The point in the ‘M’ was replaced with an orange lens with the negative space resembling a simplified camera body (see image below). This logo was much more flexible, as the ‘M’ could also be singled-out as a mark on its own. I also told Mike that this logo would turn out to be his own personal “Fedex gem.”

Logo applied to the website

Business cards and stationery

The business cards were printed by Jakprints and implemented a fifth color, metallic silver, on the backside ‘Mike Tittel.’

Testimonial

While it’s not everyday that you get to work with clients that are not only a pleasure to communicate with, but equally as thrilled with the process AND the result, Mike was kind enough to write a fully detailed testimonial, which you can read on his blog.

While this is only the start of a few projects I’ve been working on with Mike and his company, it’s been a pleasure working with him up to this point and wish him and his company the very best success in the future.

This time I ask you the opposite, What’s the best part of being a Graphic Designer? While every designer has his or her own gripes when it comes to our professions, at the end of a stressful day I can sit back and honestly say I love what I do – creating, thinking, problem solving… making the world a better looking place!

My love for graphic design stems from my passion to create while solving problems. It’s like combining art and math class – you get to create something stunning while figuring out the best solution. Also, the ability to represent yourself and your client through your work is an honorable feeling.

Here are a few responses I received from other designers, including links to their Twitter accounts, that answers the question of why they love being Graphic Designers.

• Kevin J. Furst: Being able to do what you love and make a living doing it. I am able to work with clients while doing my own thing on the side working on pro-bono projects donating my time to others. Through design we all have the ability to make a difference and that is what I love to do. Design for Change.
• @kivodesigns: Every day is different and there is such a great community of designers
• @osvaldas: It’s about being able to control people minds by creating a visual object. Will people like it or hate it, depends on the result you designed. But it’s so pleasing to understand that all the possibilities are in your hands – it’s just the matter of how well you will use it!
• Kyle Garzia (@KGD22): Being able to see something that starts as just an idea or a sketch and turning that into a full functional, living and breathing identity for your client. It’s like having a baby and seeing it grow before your eyes. There’s nothing better than completing the job and moving on to the next one, and later receiving a follow up from that client some time later saying how much that job has helped his company/project grow.
• Matt Spire: When you present something to your client that inspires them to see in themselves what your design exposes.
• Gretchen: That rush you get when you deliver a design solution that significantly impacts the clients bottom line. There is something so empowering about creating something out of nothing and having it make a difference in someone else’s world.
• @Megalongcat: When I create a successful brand identity that reaches across a broad market spectrum. It’s one thing to appeal to a niche, it’s another thing to alienate everyone else.
• Kyle Steed (@kylesteed): I love solving problems and finding solutions. And to me, that’s what graphic design is. Of course we get to do it in a visual way using colors, shapes, images and words to convey our message. And that is such a thrill for me. But it’s not just creating work that is fun for me, it’s looking at other peoples work and seeing what they’re doing. Especially looking at work from overseas. I really like the Japanese approach to graphic design. Being a designer allows you to break down language barriers and be understood by all.
• Jenny Leonard: I live to be creative. As a freelancer I choose what companies and clients I take on and that gives me the freedom to work for companies and people I feel passionate about and create work that inspires and meets expectations. I can work in a variety of environments by taking my laptop and working from anywhere in the world. I’ve worked remotely from almost all of South America and all over the US… and of course my home city: Houston, TX. I get paid to be creative and come up with great ideas??? What else is there?!?
• Joann Sondy: That I get to pick projects and say ‘no’ to others. But more importantly, the variety of clients and industries that I have encountered in my career working closely with seasoned PR/IR executives.
• @RBKartworks: I have full license to be me when I tell people I’m a designer. I am by no means an airy fairy artsy fartsy, but in discussions I often look outside the box. Some of my questions or answers can throw people off. I inevitably get “What do you do for a living?”. When I answer Graphic Designer it can diffuse, cause curiosity, and/or continue the conversation in a interesting vein. I am myself because I do everyday what I inherently love, it’s a freedom many want but don’t have.
• @djschwin: having access to the cool projects that my clients are working on. Whether it’s a restaurant, a socially-conscious nonprofit, or a CD cover, I get to be in on the ground floor and help the client shape his or her vision. It’s a great marriage of skills: what I know how to do helps them communicate what they know how to do so well.
• @jeffvalois: watching your client proudly display your work or hand it out to their clients. Knowing that a company wants to use your creativity to grow their business is sometimes much more rewarding than the check you get for the actual work.
• @mark_denton: While I’m not actually a designer, I am a writer/marketer who works in a design studio. For me, the best part of being in this business is that almost everything you do can be viewed as something that informs or enhances your work. If you are a dentist, or an accountant, or a pilot, there are a fairly narrow range of activities that you can say make you better at your job. As a designer, though, everything from sunsets to visits to the grocery store and afternoons spent in a museum are making you better at what you do. When you can, in a sense, “write off” almost everything you do as work related, it makes it all that much easier to both enjoy a life full of extraordinary adventures and see meaning and beauty in mundane, everyday activities.
• @DerekLand: Is Creativity.Very seldom do I get bored when I’m working – there’s always something new to do, or I find some new way to apply what I know, or I am necessitated to learn something new to make the project successful.

Is Freedom. Working for myself as a designer I can set my own hours – I don’t have to to submit for time off, I can finish a project quickly and not be docked for hours I didn’t work. Much work is over the internet, which means ability to live almost anywhere (theoretically).

Is Challenge. Rather than stagnating or letting some app do the heavy lifting, I can test myself to do things I otherwise wouldn’t attempt. More often than not, I can do much more than I realize if I set my mind to it.

Is Helpfulness. For the most part, if there is any question, the abundance of knowledge is fantastic, and most are more than willing to share their knowledge and help if they can.

What’s the best part of your job as a Graphic Designer? What inspired you to join the profession?

Networking

Twitter is a great way to meet other creatives in your field, new prospects and clients. I have recently been discovering many people sending out tweets looking for a designer to develop their company logo or website – ‘search.twitter.com’ is a great tool for finding things.

Also having met so many creative and talented designers on Twitter I have formed close relationships, which I work with from time to time on projects and when I need to refer clients elsewhere for project beyond my abilities and time.

Information

With all the design resources on the web, Twitter is a great way to find new information –from blog posts, design conference announcements, product news, or any other form of information you are seeking. Discover something you saw or read on Twitter, try retweeting it to share it with your followers.

I’ve discovered everything from free fonts, amazing step-by-step tutorials, to how to improve your freelance business. Staying on top of your industry as designer is essential.

Relieve loneliness

Working as an independent graphic designer from home can be quite lonely from time to time. Having Tweetdeck running in the corner of my second monitor is a great way to relieve separation anxiety from the rest of the world.

Twitter is an ongoing conversation that you are able to jump in and out of whenever you want. It’s like working in a room of thousands of other designers while working from home.

Feedback

Independency has its perks, but without a doubt has its downfalls. Working independently you are unable to kick around ideas with other designers and get feedback on your work. It’s easy to become stale and your development can hinder working alone.

Try posting a screenshot of your current work asking for feedback. You’ll be surprised on how much you can learn from others.

Get answers

Having an issue with a website not displaying properly in IE6 and need some help? Designers on Twitter always seem up to offering out their assistance and help when needed. Remember, don’t just be a borrower, offer your expertise when needed as well.

Monitor and grow your business

Twitter is a great way to monitor your business and see what others are saying about you. The search feature of Twitter is extremely handy for finding out this type of information and seeing the areas on which you can improve. Seeing what is said and implementing new changes will help grow your business and make your customers happier.

What are some of the benefits you’ve seen from Twitter? What were the reasons you joined?

Below I explore and discuss the benefits of 13 WordPress plugins that I have personally used on The Design Cubicle that will give your site an extra boost and provide a better experience for your visitors (plus some other great additions you can add).

Akismet

Saves you time and frustration with spam comments. Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service and filters them so you can easily scan them or delete them later.

BENEFIT: Stops all that nasty spam from getting to your reader comments.

All in One SEO Pack

An “out-of-the-box” SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

BENEFIT: Makes your blog “friendlier” and better seen by search engines (ie. Google, Yahoo, etc). Allows you to add a home title, home description, keywords (meta tags) and more.

Tip: try limiting your site to 10  keywords or less; this allows search engines to place importance on a few, dominate words providing better results when someone searches for your site.

cformsII

CformsII offers unparalleled flexibility in deploying contact forms across your blog. Features include a comprehensive SPAM protection, Ajax support, Backup & Restore, Multi-Recipients, Role Manager support, Database tracking and many more.

BENEFIT: Easily customize contact forms for your website for your readers and contacts to get in touch with you. Fields can be added and customized to fit you and your visitors particular needs.

Google XML Sitemaps

This plugin will generate a sitemaps.org compatible sitemap of your WordPress blog which is supported by Ask.com, Google, MSN Search and Yahoo.

BENEFIT: Improves your sites visibility providing search engines with information about your site, in particular a list of the pages on your site, making it more discoverable and SEO friendly.

Highlight Author Comments

Automatically applies a distinctive style to comments by the post’s author.

BENEFIT: Helps your readers visually distinguish your comments from your readers.

Social Bookmarks

Adds a list of XHTML compliant graphic links at the end of your posts that allow your visitors to easily submit them to a number of social bookmarking sites.

BENEFIT: Get your articles easily submitted to various social bookmarking websites such as Digg, Delicious, Facebook, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Technorati, and a whole lot more. Assists in increasing your sites traffic!

Subscribe To Comments

Allows readers to receive notifications of new comments that are posted to an entry.

BENEFIT: Provides a way for your readers to stay engaged and connected to a conversation. Sets the ground work for a community and discussion on your blog.

Woopra

This plugin adds Woopra’s real-time analytics to any WordPress installation.

Live track over 40 different statistical events and analytics through Woopra’s rich and efficient desktop application or from the WordPress Dashboard. Check out more information about the features and download the desktop application on Woopra’s site.

BENEFIT: Provides you with the information you need to strenthen your site, thus improving your results and visitor interactions.

WordPress Gravatars

Makes use of Gravatars and MyBlogLog Avatars, places Gravatars, OpenAvatar, Wavatar, Identicon, monsterID or MyBlogLog Avatars in the comments section.

BENEFIT: Puts a face to your commentors. A nice touch to add more of a community feel to your site.

wp-cache

Very fast cache module. It’s composed of several modules, this plugin can configure and manage the whole system.

BENEFIT: Speed up the load time of your site. Works like a charm for those high traffic days and social media spikes.

Also try WP Super Cache for even more responsive load times.

WP-PageNavi

Adds a more advanced paging navigation to your WordPress blog.

BENEFIT: Adds a more advanced page navagation, instead of the standard ‘previous’ and ‘next’ links – helps your readers get around more effectively.

Yet Another Related Posts Plugin

Returns a list of related entries based on a unique algorithm for display on your blog and RSS feeds. A templating feature allows customization of the display.

BENEFIT: Help readers discover similar content and related posts – adds to a more enjoyable and resourceful visit.

Feedburner Counter

Display your RSS/Email subscriber count on your blog.

Google Custom Search

Harness the power of Google to create a search engine tailored to your sites needs.

Tweetmeme

The retweet button is for website and blog publishers that want to encourage their audience to retweet their content on twitter.

• NOTE FOR ALL ABOVE PLUGINS: I have personally tested and approve all the above plugins using WordPress version 2.7.1. You can also search and download the plugins using WP 2.7′s built-in ‘Add New’ dashboard option.

Do you subscribe to blogs or do you get your news via Twitter? Which do you prefer? To my surprise I was quite shocked with the results. Of the 25 or so responses I received approximately 20 of them responded with “I prefer Twitter”.

Here’s what a few had to say:

• @eleonor:  I subscribe to blogs & twitter. I find I’m using twitter more though these days. I find it more immediate when a blog post goes up.
• @marnieb:  Used to subscribe to feeds, but found I didn’t have time to read them all… so now it’s all via Twitter.
• @sarahtelldown:  get most info from twitter. don’t subscribe to too many blogs. if I did too many it’d overwhelm & I wouldn’t read any.
• @beet09: Truth is I follow blogs via Twitter now – I will subscribe if they have no Twitter ac but haven’t checked RSS reader this week
• @designmogul:  Both, mostly Twitter recently though.

How Do We Prepare for the Twitter/RSS Takeover?

In addition to my most active personal Twitter account (@behoff), I created a separate account (@TDCBrand) which is dedicated to only my blogs content — new posts, giveaways, announcements, etc.

This gives TDC followers an additional way to “subscribe” and stay updated with my content without reading all my other tweets and “twit-chat”. Also, adding hashtags (#) before keywords makes your blog articles and content more searchable on Twitter. ie: #thedesigncubicle #TDC #brianhoff. This will help those trying to search and find content related to your site more easily on Twitter. From Twitter Search they can even subscribe via RSS.

Add Twitter to everything

Try adding your Twitter ID to your business cards, email signature, stationery, etc. I even saw a bumper sticker on the back of a car sporting someone’s Twitter ID!

You’d be surprised on how many people heard of Twitter opposed to RSS – give them more ways to connect and follow you and your blog.

RSS or Twitter?

• BLOG FOUNDERS: Do you find yourself getting more Twitter followers than subscribers? What have you done to prepare?
• BLOG READERS: Do you find yourself subscribing to RSS feeds or checking Twitter more? Which do you prefer?

Get people involved and excited

One of the first thoughts that went through my mind when starting TDC was, “How do I get people to visit my site?” So what better way to get people to visit than to make them want to visit.

Posts such as, 26 Business Cards of Graphic & Web Designers and 40+ Creative Logos Submitted By The Designers Themselves not only helped other designers gain exposure, but helped TDC get off the ground. It’s a win/win situation, but how do you find people to submit and get involved…

Become active

Although I stated in the second paragraph that these were in no particular order, social networking and getting others involved was hands down the key to TDC’s initial exposure. After discovering other designer’s to follow on Twitter, I was not only able to find other talented designers to chat with, share information, and help out, but by making friends and the power of the retweet, TDC was able to gain exposure, readers and participants.

Notice I said to help others and not just promote your own blog. Lend a hand to the design community and more often than not they will return the favor.

Other valuable social sites:

Submit Articles

Submitting your articles to various design-related submission sites is another great way to reach a wider audience. Check out 40 promotional design sites where you can submit your blog articles for a fantastic starting point.

Giveaways and Competitions

Who doesn’t enjoy winning FREE stuff? Host a competition or giveaway free stuff for commenting or subscribing.

Also, you can ask others to help you out by offering up free prizes or services in return for some exposure or link love.

Use your sources

Linking to other peoples blogs and articles is another great way to gain exposure. Ask other blog founders of similar interest and popularity if you could add then to your blog roll in exchange for a link back.

A few good examples of link love include:

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Improving your search engine ranking by making your blog search engine friendly with SEO tricks and tips. If you are using WordPress, make certain to install the All in One SEO Pack plugin.

Comment On Other Blogs

Not only will this leave a link back to your site (if you leave your website URL in the form field), but also gives you the opportunity to shed some insight on other posts, thus making you valuable and informative.

Try keeping your avatar/picture consistent throughout your social networking sites. A gravatar is an image that ties into your email address whenever you comment on the web… this helps to brand your blog and yourself.

Add A Link To All Your Marketing Material

Start by adding your blogs URL to your business cards and email signature. The more the better.

Write Guest Posts

Writing for other blogs of similar interest and readership is a great way to reach out to a wider, new audience. Try writing to your best ability when doing guest posts — you want to impress!

Host Guest Writers

Allowing other’s to write the occasional blog post is a great way to provide other insight and a new, fresh perspective on topics. Agan, you’re getting your readers and community involved.

Link To Other Articles

If you look to the above paragraphs, you will notice a lot of relevant linking going on. Not only is this valuable to your readers, but it’s a great way for other blogs to notice you — and we all appreciate a good trackback.

Put A Face To Your Blog

I’m not sure if it’s coincidental or not, but putting a face to your blog helps bridge the gap between a standard website and a community.

Many of my favorite blogs I enjoy reading, I feel I have a connection with the writer. It makes me feel more welcome and invited to interact.

Blogs are typically personal so why not make them more personal? Add a photo of yourself someone where on your blog.

Write Interesting & Valuable Content

While this one seems to be a no-brainer, when writing or coming up with an idea for a post ask yourself “Would I want to read this?”

Write short, concise articles. Readers LOVE lists! Don’t ramble and appeal to the masses (well unless that’s not what you are going for). Also, don’t just preach. Instead, help people. Share your knowledge, expertise and experiences.

Post Regularly

Three things are extremely important when first starting your blog:

1. Have a few quality articles posted on your blog prior to the launch.
2. Have a few quality articles on the back burner so you can quickly post through the first few weeks.
3. Post on a regular basis. Why would readers want to visit your blog or subscribe if you are only posting once a month? Give them something to look forward to.

Before starting the Design Cubicle, I had read a number of articles supporting the start of a company blog, so I thought it would be interesting to gather various responses from a few recognized designers.

In this article a few successful and some of my favorite bloggers offer excellent insight how blogging personally and professionally benefits their design careers.

Jacob Cass, Just Creative Design

Blogging has helped me learn so much more outside of what I could ever had learned inside a design school, such as networking and the business aspect of design. Approximately 70% of my new work comes as a result of my blog. Before I started the blog (12 months ago) it was all through word of mouth (although that work still comes in, the exposure and money isn’t there compared to what comes in through my blog).

It also exposes me to a worldwide audience — I would have to say that also about 70% of my clients are based overseas. Blogging is a powerful way to get your name out there and while your at it, teach others. To start blogging was the best decision I have made in my career to date.

David Airey, DavidAirey.com

I enjoy sharing what I’m passionate about and it’s an important way of building my brand and interacting with my target audience. Also, it enables me to strike up conversations with so many like-minded people and learn new things every day. Blogging prompts me to learn more about the design industry, as I’m always on the lookout for new blog topics. The design feedback I receive from those who visit my blog also helps, particularly when any criticism is constructive.

Lauren Krause, Creative Curio

Writing articles for my blog has totally made me a better designer! I’ve learned the most when readers ask questions that I don’t know the answer to. I also break down designs, analyze them and then share my thoughts with my readers. Blogging makes me more conscious of my work and better able to pinpoint areas of improvement… I read my own articles when I’m stuck sometimes.

Although I don’t do much freelance, I have made many contacts around the world. I’m sure if I needed it, they could provide me with some work, either through sub-contracting, passing along extra work or recommendations. I also have a network of people I can go to with questions and critiques.

Kristi Colvin, Design For Users

I don’t know that blogging has made me a better designer, but it has definitely made me a better writer and researcher and being more informed indirectly enhances the design, workflow and information architecture work I do.

The business benefit of blogging have been very clear. People now find me that did not know I existed in the world before, and I have obtained one consulting gig from a blog post I wrote about a company’s product. I have also done several proposals for people, simply because they discovered me via an article I had written.

Graham Smith, ImJustCreative

The benefits are just huge if you tap into them right — After changing my personal blog focus over to a business venture, I have turned things up over the last 6 months and now really pleased with how things are progressing in terms of how much exposure the blogging aspect is bringing.

I know first hand how powerful a medium Twitter, for example, can be. I have been approached a number of times directly through Twitter to take on work. Not because they know me, not because they have even seen my website, but rather because of the time I spend chatting, sharing information on Twitter and similar services. It really doen’t need any more convincing for me… unless you really harness the power of all things internet, you are truly missing out on some wonderful opportunities.

Blogging mixes you with people, so many great people with good hearts. It’s bound to rub off, so you learn how to do things with more heart. And as they say, what goes round comes round.

Adelle Charles, Fuel Your Creativity

I really enjoy the interaction from the readers and it feels good knowing that I could help inspire someone through things that I like or say (advice). I also wanted to get my name out in the community since the online design community is so much bigger than the city I live in.

Personally I have gained a lot of great friends and contacts and can say that I’ve learned something from each person. I think I have grown as a designer since starting to blog as well. Interacting with the community has opened up a lot of doors (websites, advice etc..) that I may not have found otherwise.

I’ve gained lots of exposure professionally and have found a lot of great designers and developers that I can trust and outsource to if needed for projects. I have recently started writing for other blogs within the community and that is one thing I can say I probably wouldn’t have ever had the chance to do if I hadn’t started my own blog. I’ve also learned more of my likes and dislikes through writing and research for Fuel Your Creativity.

Tracey Grady, TraceyGrady.com

I’ve gained so much from reading other designers’ blogs that I knew I wanted to be an active part of the community. It’s like a third tier of design education – first was study, second was real world experience in the workforce, third is blogging about design and reading design blogs.

My everyday professional experiences provide the ideas for my blog posts: questions or problems which arise, or which I’ve experienced (and hopefully solved) in the past. I have a lot of experience in writing for an audience (I previously worked in journalism), however writing a blog has been a whole new ball game.

It’s making me think more deeply about the work I do and – most importantly – the direction in which I want to go with my career. The opportunities for professional exposure and making new contacts are also impressive, and are a great incentive for starting a blog.

What I’ve learned and gained in just 3 months

Being one of the new kids on the block, I’ve not yet experienced much of the professional benefits of a blog in terms of income, but I have experienced many personal benefits in just 3 months – more than I ever thought I could in such a short amount of time.

Through starting my blog I’m able to teach and interact with other designers and clients. It gives me the opportunity to learn, reflect, share and apply new principles. I’ve become more analytical of my own work, my networking and presence has increased and the interactions and comments left by all of you has helped me learn some many new things. It’s made me want to become a better designer. In a quickly changing creative field, it is extremely important to continue growing as a graphic designer and improving your creative skills — blogging is another way to help me to grow on both a personal and professional level.

What are some benefits you’ve experienced as a professional with a blog?
Would love to hear all of your experiences and benefits. Feel free to leave a comment about what you would like to read or learn more about on tDC (the Design Cubicle).

When I started subscribing to blog and news sites, I tried many of the above readers… tried them for a few weeks, moved on to the next. It took me a few months of trial and error until I gave Google Reader a go, and since then I have not even considered looking back.

I’ve found Google Reader to be the more productive and a friendlier choice. If you are new to RSS or considering switching your current feed reader, here are 10 reasons why you should.

10 Reasons to Start Using Google Reader

1.  Free, web-based and portable, so it doesn’t matter where you read your feeds – your computer, cell phones, friends laptop – the subscriptions are updated, marked read/deleted, or can be saved for later from anywhere. For example, imagine having read an email from your cell phone and having to go home only to repeat the process and delete it again… I can read my feeds from my iPhone (or most web-enabled phones) and have Google synchronize the changes – this was pretty much the deciding factor for my switch.

2.  Even more portable than you think – With Google Gears you can access your feeds while your offline. You can read, deleted, save (star) and share up to 2,000 of your latest feeds. When you connect online again, everything will sync up.

3.  It’s simple — If you already use Gmail then you know what I’m talking about… if not, you’re missing out. Viewing and reading your RSS subscriptions is as easy as viewing and reading email in any inbox.

4.  Easily add new subscriptions — Google makes it as easy as clicking a ‘favorite’ or ‘bookmark’ to add a new RSS feed. If you come across a feed you like, you can click on your “Subscribe…” bookmark and it will add it within Reader.

5.  Organize and keep your subscriptions clutter free within folders. Keep your technology, cooking and favorite graphic design blogs separate.

6. Star your items as a way to mark them as a favorite or save them for later reading. I use this feature quite often when I come across an article that I’m interested in reading, but don’t have the time at that given moment.

7.  Sharing is caring — Want an easy way to share an article with somebody? You can click the “Email” button, which will open up a new email message within Gmail or click “Share” to publish it to a public blog, so you friends can subscribe.

8.  Keyboard shortcuts make the online reader act as if it were a program on your computer. For example, press the J or K keys to go to the next/previous article or click the S key to quickly star an item. If you’re interested in all the shortcuts, press Shift + ? on your keyboard to get a pop up box of them all.

9.  Stay obsessively updated — Third-party plugins like Google Reader Notifier make it possible for blog reading junkies like myself to stay up-to-date every few minutes through Firefox, on your Mac or Windows desktop.

10.  Trends allows stat junkies to see what they are reading in the last 30 days or which of their subscription is their favorite or most read.

11. Reader helps you discover new feeds by comparing your interests with the feeds of users similar to you.

12. Google Reader lets you keep your old subscriptions from your previous feed reader by importing your subscriptions. You can also export your feeds incase you want to switch back to your old reader… but why would you want to do that? ;)

Getting started with Google Reader

1. Sign up for a Gmail account. This gives you a Reader access, a Gmail email, plus some other really great services
2. Take a tour here
3. Learn how to use Google Reader, inside and out
4. Start adding new subscription and enjoy your new reading experience