Living inside a Pollock After effects animation

Many ways to showcase yourself online

If you want to get some exposure for your design and build up an online presence. The following is some of the best websites to show your work:

Behance.net
Pros: The Behance Network works through collaborative circles so designers can join forces. It has a great, clean design and easy-to-use social networking tools. If your work’s on here, the members-only rule means you’ve already got some props.
Cons: User profiles are a little sparse. Although the JobList feature is great, it’s only useful if you’re looking for work in the US.
Best for: All creative areas


Flickr.com
Pros: Flickr’s many useful tools include tagging, search engine optimisation, image editing and a massive social network. You can also use an API to embed your Flickr portfolio into your own website through flickrSLiDR.
Cons: It’s always going to be hard to be noticed in a crowd like Flickr. 100MB per month size limit on free accounts could be a problem.
Best for: Photography and graphic design

Vimeo.com
Pros: Clean design, original content, and it accepts lots of different file formats for upload. Offers Simple and Advanced API and oEmbed tools.
Cons: Its Community Guidelines ban “commercials, infomercials, or demos that actively sell or promote”. Free account upload limit is 500MB per week.
Best for: Motion graphics

Carbonmade.com
Pros: Simple to set up, these portfolios are clean and easy to navigate. Over 72,000 portfolios cover 45 creative categories, although the focus is on illustration.
Cons: The free service offers 35 images or five projects. 50 projects, 10 videos and 500 images costs $12 a month.
Best for: Illustration, photography

Portfolios.deviantart.com
Pros: The site’s Portfolio tool gives you a free custom domain name, up to four galleries for 18 images, and a portfolio storage area.
Cons: Basic-looking portfolio layout. You get your own URL so your portfolio isn’t shared, but it’s a free site.
Best for: Illustration, fantasy art, 3D

Flavors.me
Pros: Creates a slick-looking site that draws together information from many different sites such as Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Vimeo and Netflix. Multiple backgrounds, colours and fonts to choose from. Great way of introducing yourself personally to potential clients.
Cons: Creative work can take a back seat to tweets and blogs.
Best for: Creatives with a serious social networking habit

FigDig.com
Pros: FigDig’s 1224x792 high-def resolution really makes your work stand out. The PDF profile tool lets users download a sample of your work as a memorable leave-behind, and it’s great publicity if you make it into the FigDig Hall of Fame.
Cons: Non-customisable template, lots of advertising.
Best for: Illustration, general graphic design

NOTCOT.org
Pros: NOTCOT works by showcasing one image and providing a link to your portfolio; this cut-down format works well for the visitor, providing multiple hits of inspiration, as well as a cure for creative block.
Cons: With just one image and a link to your site, that image had better be pretty good to attract attention.
Best for: All creative areas

Coroflot.com
Pros: Free online portfolio and networking site aimed at creatives from architects all the way through to print designers. Claims to be the largest and longest established site of its kind, plus unlimited uploads.
Cons: There’s no way of customising your portfolio page, limited to set templates, large amount of competing work can make it easy for your folio to get lost. Job search is very US-based.
Best for: All creative areas

Squarespace.com
Pros: 60 templates with hundreds of design variants and multiple navigation options. There’s a great suite of management tools, including easy to follow analytics reports, plus 24/7 support.
Cons: It’s pricey – there are free alternatives, whereas the lowest pricing option for Squarespace is $8 a month.
Best for: All creative areas

PimpArtworks.com
Pros: PimpArtworks offers free profile portfolio pages and social networking. It also sells work on canvases, acrylic frames or as framed prints, charging a base price for production, and the user sets the commission.
Cons: Great idea, but limited to one style.
Best for: Street art, illustration, photography

Society6.com
Pros: Society6 portfolios are free to create, simple and effective. Offering Flickr-style templates, a growing creative community promotes each other’s work. No ads to clutter things up, and they also sell Giclée prints.
Cons: The template leaves all portfolios looking samey.
Best for: Illustration

CargoCollective.com
Pros: Evolving out of the system behind the SpaceCollective community, Cargo offers easy-to-use, free and well designed portfolios with no advertising getting in the way. The ‘follow’ feature enables visitors to keep tabs on favourite work.
Cons: The Cargo site is still under development, so basics may change. You’ll need to apply for an account.
Best for: All creative areas

Mojizu.comPros: An easy-to-use site for character designers. Users can create their own profiles, have their characters rated and even battle them against each other. Mojizu also sells character design T-shirts.
Cons: Lots of adverts. Users assign ‘non-exclusive limited rights’ when uploading an image, so Mojizu has the right to sell merchandise featuring their characters – with profits split between the creative and the site.
Best for: Character design

5oup.net
Pros: Free, simple, easy-to-use site offering one image per page layout, with minimal information to let your work do the talking. Unlimited image and video uploads, and no adverts, plus a Fresh List feature to highlight the best work.
Cons: Non-customisable templates.
Best for: Illustration and design, especially students and new graduates

via Computerarts

These were some of the predictions for Web Design trends in 2010

Have they come true, what do you see so far?

Inventive Interaction

Check out any of these sample sites, and you’ll be drawn in right away by the interactive relationship between you (the user) and the site. I think we’ll see more of this as web design becomes more sophisticated and as old browsers (IE6) die out. As time goes on, web design won’t just be about making the page look pretty and a user-friendly navigation. It will also be about engaging the user by creating a relationship between the user and the site.

80s Inspired

The 80s are back, in a serious way. Movies have been feeding us 80s flashbacks for years, and now it’s finally hit full-force in the fashion industry. You hear 80s inspiration in new music, and see the makeup, jewelry, and hairstyles returning as well. Why wouldn’t design be part of this revival? Look for diagonal lines, simple shapes and patterns, and bold color statements in 2010. Whether the overall look is punk or yuppie, it won’t matter — as long as it’s totally 80s.

Video

Video is going to be huge in 2010. You’ll see it used as an effect (like in the samples below), and also as part of the site content. Videos will be integrated to illustrate a point, demonstrate an action, or explain a complex idea. Especially creative designers will use video to engage and interact with the user. Having no video experience myself, I’m especially interested to see how this trend develops.

More Interesting Typography

It’s a beautiful thing. Little by little, web designers are giving exceeding time and attention to typography within their designs. And as coding languages evolve, designers will have even more opportunities to be creative with their type. Not only do I think creative typography will be a huge trend in 2010, I also think that text-only sites will be in vogue this year.

Full-Screen Images

As far as images are concerned in 2010, the bigger, the better. Images are stretching all the way across my 24″ monitor, creating a lovely work-around for varying screen resolutions, and packing a big attention-grabbing punch. I’m expecting to see a LOT of this trend in the coming months.

3D Elements & 3D Text Effects

3D effects will blow up in 2010. Expect to see plenty of 3D type effects, and also 3D elements within the web page. Three dimensional shapes, wrapping elements, and tilted edges will give users the feeling of space and depth. Flat is out — stacking, layering, and popped or pushed elements are in.

Organic Layouts

I predict that 2010 will be the year to break out of the grid and create more organic web layouts. I think we’ll see some literal “outside the box” thinking as web design starts to take on some of the characteristics of print. There will be a long trial-and-error period, with some designers finding success, and others moving back toward the traditional grid-based design, but there will be an obvious growth toward a freer, more organic page.

Minimalist

Another trend that I expect to take off in 2010 is minimalist design. These designers will choose to focus on the content by giving it space to breath, rather than dressing it up with color and graphics. Although they appear simple at first, minimalist site design is actually quite sophisticated — a delicate balancing act between content and white space.

TypographyResources

While researching for other projects, I stumbled upon a pretty neat set of PDFs for typography education, nicely designed and featuring articles by Erik Spiekermann, the world-famous typographer. They are all free to download. I just wanted to share this info.

Please check out http://www.fontshop.com/education/