Rosenfeld Media, publisher of short, practical books on user experience design, is giving away its entire collection of books (retail value of $216) to a lucky Six Revisions fan via this Twitter-based giveaway.

Each book will be provided to the winner in both paperback and digital eBook versions. Topics range from how to design web forms to prototyping to performing remote user research.

You can view their entire book collection on their Products page.

How to Enter this Twitter Giveaway

Step 1: Find your favorite Rosenfeld Media Book

Browse the entire collection of Rosenfeld Media and choose a book you’re mosted excited about. Find a book that you would read first if you won their entire collection.

Step 2: Send a tweet

Tweet the following message, replacing [book] with the book you chose in Step 1 (the first word of the book is enough if it exceeds 140 characters):

Hey @sixrevisions if I win the entire @rosenfeldmedia book collection, I’ll read [book] first http://bit.ly/Rbooks

Step 3: Follow @sixrevisions

We will send you the information on how to claim your prize via Twitter’s Direct Messaging (DM) system. In order for us to send you a direct message, you must be following us on Twitter.

Giveaway Details

This giveaway lasts until March 17, 2010. We will select the winner at random and announce it here and on Twitter. You should follow us on Twitter so that we can notify you if you have won via Twitter’s Direct Messaging system.

About Rosenfeld Media

Rosenfeld Media is a publisher of short, practical books on user experience design. They have published books such as Web Form Design and Mental Models.

View their entire collection to find great books on user experience design and sign up to be notified of their new publications.

You can follow Rosenfeld Media on Twitter as @RosenfeldMedia.

Related Content

• MooTools 1.2 Beginner’s Guide Book
• 20 Useful Web Design Books Worthy of Your Collection
• Pre-Order The Smashing Book!
• Related categories: User Interface and Web Design

About the Author

Jacob Gube is the Founder and Chief Editor of Six Revisions. He’s also a web developer/designer who specializes in front-end development (JavaScript, HTML, CSS) and PHP development, and a book author. If you’d like to connect with him, head on over to the contact page and follow him on Twitter: @sixrevisions.

  

Since its emergence, the digital photography market has gradually supplanted the traditional one. APN and digital SLR cameras entered our lives, and some people announced the death of silver-based images. This is not all lie, and yet old-fashioned images have been particularly popular in the past few years. All we do seem to do now is try to recreate the atmosphere of those bygone times anyway. Blurry, distorted and over-saturated images are not just a fad anymore. People have became familiar with the style and even consider it a full-fledged photographic genre.

And this is where toy cameras play a role. These devices, made entirely of plastic, including often the lens itself, are not only toys. Sure, they cost next to nothing and have no controls to speak of, but this is what people like about them: they create unpredictable pictures, with equally unpredictable vintage effects. Once you understand this, the rest is a beautiful game. Take them anywhere, anytime, and photograph whatever you like.

  

Since its emergence, the digital photography market has gradually supplanted the traditional one. APN and digital SLR cameras entered our lives, and some people announced the death of silver-based images. This is not all lie, and yet old-fashioned images have been particularly popular in the past few years. All we do seem to do now is try to recreate the atmosphere of those bygone times anyway. Blurry, distorted and over-saturated images are not just a fad anymore. People have became familiar with the style and even consider it a full-fledged photographic genre.

And this is where toy cameras play a role. These devices, made entirely of plastic, including often the lens itself, are not only toys. Sure, they cost next to nothing and have no controls to speak of, but this is what people like about them: they create unpredictable pictures, with equally unpredictable vintage effects. Once you understand this, the rest is a beautiful game. Take them anywhere, anytime, and photograph whatever you like.

Promoting our products and services can be a time consuming and daunting task. A lot of us get tangled up in online self promotion without realising the value in collaboration more often with other people through the web. It can be a wise way to expand your network, pool resources and save time, money and work.

The internet has opened up a range of exciting possibilities for gaining value through mutually beneficial arrangements or simply interacting with others in promoting your work effectively and ultimately landing more clients.

Here are eight ways you can do this:

1. Joint Blogs/Sites

Getting a blog or simple website out there that you can use to showcase your work, build credibility in your field, promote yourself, and simply express your interests, is an important element in one’s online self-promotional strategy.

A successful blog requires regular and outstanding content to be in for a chance of attracting many visitors. Particularly for those lacking in time, it is worth considering setting up a site with one or more suitable other people. With others working on the same platform, it is now possible to build up posts quicker, combine skills and resources, and promote everyone’s work through a single site.

Some freelancers might even want to consider using a joint site as a platform to promote the combined skills of several people as a business, as opposed to promoting individual freelancers.

2. Contacts on Social Media Sites

Social media allows people to build up substantial networks of people who we’d want to know about our work. With sites like MySpace, Facebook and Twitter, it has become possible to link up with potential clients, fans, as well as key influencers and even celebrities in your industry. It’s best to add new people to these networks with appropriate personal messages.

What is extremely powerful with being connected to people who are well connected themselves, is that you are effectively ‘piggybacking’ on their networks whenever they are linked to something of yours. For example, on Facebook, if someone with connections joins your page, all their contacts will be aware of this in their newsfeeds. Linked up with key people, you can keep them in the loop with whatever you are working on, which will benefit your online visibility.

3. Content Exchanging

Getting material on someone else’s website can be a great way of having fresh new people seeing your name on the internet. You can agree to put an article or a guest post on another site in return for content for your own, or even agree to swap decent comments with someone else with a site or blog relating to yours.

One underused method of enhancing your validity online as a freelancer is to request a review/testimonial swap with someone. These can be placed visibly on your site, is mutually beneficial, and adds real value to the services etc you offer.

4. Joint Interviews

Find someone in your industry to interview in return for them interviewing yourself. Interview each other, either in written, audio or video format and upload to each other’s blogs or elsewhere. Include each other’s links at the bottom of and incorporated into interviews.

Appearing as an interviewee on another, ideally popular website, is an excellent self promotional method because, apart from appearing a separate site, an interview is a great endorsement of you and will add value to you as a professional.

5. List Promotion

If you send out a newsletter to a mailing list that you’ve built up, you can use this to promote other people and get your name on other lists. Having a feature, link, article about you on someone else’s newsletter is possible through polite asking. However, it’s even more possible through agreeing with relevant people who have mailing lists to swap content like articles or even simply a link in a newsletter so that you and your work get seen by a new and targeted audience.

6. Joint Products

By ‘products’ I mean both physical products such as giclee prints, and non-physical, like information products or audio downloads. Creating products like ebooks are one way of gaining exposure, especially if it is something that will spread through people are sharing it with others.

Obviously, sharing the knowledge, skills and work load with one or more partners is an excellent way of getting a high quality product together faster and to each collaborator’s already established contacts. You might also consider making products to give away for free for the promotional value within them.

7. Exchanging Links

A straightforward but useful promotional tactic is in agreeing to place a link on your site to someone’s work who has done the same for you on their site. People do click on links featured on or recommended by sites and by having many of your web links on key sites around the web, this will benefit your exposure.

8. Working with Others on Collaborated Projects

These can be paid projects, but it is also an option to create an interesting, self initiated project with others that you can add to your portfolio. Pooling skill and talent in this way will lead to high quality projects that will greatly boost the value of your personal portfolio and support your self-marketing efforts.

Really aim for a piece of work that is remarkable as you make use of the benefit of combining talents with others. The ideal partner to collaborate with is obviously someone who is well known in the first place, so that you can ‘piggy-back’ on their success and promote via the contacts they have as well.

Related Content

• How to Make Remote Team Collaboration Work
• Collaboration Tips for Designers Working with Developers
• 15 Free Tools for Web-based Collaboration
• Related categories: Project Management and Resources

Buy Alex Mathers’ Book!

If you enjoyed this article, read more of Alex Mathers work by purchasing ‘10 Steps to Powerful Online Self Promotion for Creatives’, which is an in depth guide to marketing oneself online, making more sales and getting more clients, is available now.

• Buy the book

About the Author

Alex Mathers is an illustrator, designer and writer for his site, Red Lemon Club, which focuses on online self promotion methods for creative professionals. He also runs a blog, Ape on the Moon, which showcases the best in contemporary illustration styles and techniques. Connect with him via Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Let’s say you’ve created a video or image you want to share, but you don’t want it saved to your computer. You want to save it in a safe place, where you can access it at any time. You want some storage options, and the ability to share it in multiple file formats… or keep it private. You want its original integrity to stay intact. And you want complete control.

You’re picky… but you have a right to be. Good thing Screencast.com was designed for content creators like you. At Screencast.com, you’ll get all of the above and more—plus it’s free.

What is Screencast.com?

Screencast.com is a free web service from TechSmith Co. that lets you upload, manage and share your content without changing a thing. From high-quality videos, to presentations, documents and images—Screencast.com gives your content the perfect home.

How does it work?

Step 1: Upload files

Logging into Screencast.com automatically takes you to the Library where you can upload your content. You can use any content creation tool to upload your videos and images to Screencast.com. But when you use TechSmith software—like a video recorded and edited with Camtasia Studio, or a quickly marked up image and video with Jing—you can directly upload to Screencast.com from within the application.

- Keep the original quality. What you upload is exactly what your viewers see. Content hosted on Screencast.com isn’t compressed or re-encoded into a “one-size-fits-all” format.

- Control the rights to your own content. Anything you upload to Screencast.com still belongs to you. So feel free to delete files you’ve uploaded and make room for something new.

Step 2: Store and protect

Create a folder in Screencast.com and save the videos and images you want to keep in one place. Simply store your content… or turn it into a portal for viewers to access.

- Decide who views your content. Make a folder public and visible to everyone. Hide it so only you can see it. Password protect it. Or make it so only authorized viewers can access your content.

- Access the stats on your content. At a glance, you can see how many times a specific file has been viewed and how much bandwidth each file is using.

Step 3: Share in multiple formats

Uploading is only part of it. Share your stuff outside of Screencast.com easily with a URL or send a link directly to your viewers. Screencast.com even gives you HTML embed code so you can post images and videos on your own website or blog.

- Share in high-quality. With options like Flash, WMV, QuickTime and others, Screencast.com is sure to give you the highest quality playback available.

- Share conveniently. Provide your audience with anything from a link to your content, to a MediaRoll widget, or to an RSS feed that they can subscribe to.

How do you get started?

Start off with a free Screencast.com account to instantly begin storing and sharing your content. With the free version, you’ll get 2GB of storage space and 2GB of monthly bandwidth at no cost. Or sign up for the Pro version of Screencast.com and get extra storage, bandwidth and customization options. With the Pro version, you’ll get 25GB of storage space and 200GB of monthly bandwidth for just $9.95 a month.

Whatever you do, your content will never be changed at Screencast.com. What you upload is exactly what you’ll see. So when you’re ready to share that video or image, or just save it for later, give Screencast.com a try. You’ll get your content, your way—every time.

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If you’re anything like me, it’s easy to "finish and forget" when it comes to web development. Once a website is live and the boss or client is happy, we close the project, kick off our shoes and crack a beer.

Part of the problem with this approach is the ever changing landscape online. Something that converts visitors today, might not be working two months from now (in some cases, it may not be working in the first place, but no one took the time to test it).

Redesigning a website, or even a single page, can be a tedious and time-consuming process. Re-opening a project that you so happily completed can take major mental willpower. However, improving a website doesn’t need to take weeks, or even days. I’m a believer in baby steps: making incremental progress, small victories, minor adjustments with big results.

That’s where my 45-minute plan comes into play. In less time than you spend watching The Bachelor each week, you can have a dramatic (and measurable) effect on your website.

Keep in mind, all times are approximate (and people work at different paces).

0 to 5 Minutes

Select a page where you can have the greatest impact

Surprisingly, this may not always be your homepage. Instead of trusting your gut, a little digging in Google Analytics (or your favorite analytics tool) can show you exactly where to start.

Here are some ideas on finding pages that you can work on:

Navigate to your "top landing pages" or "top entrance pages" report (in Google Analytics, this is found under "Content" on the left sidebar).

Use a filter to remove pages with minimal traffic (see the "Advanced Filter" link at the bottom of the table).

Sort your pages by bounce rate.

Select the biggest loser: the page with the most potential for improvement (a combination of high visits and bounce rate).

5 to 15 Minutes

Use free (or cheap) tools to determine which areas on the page need the most attention

If you really want to stick to 45 minutes, you won’t have time to use a lot of tools, but even using one will give you the insight you need to make an improvement.

Here are some tips and tools that you can help up your conversion rates:

Get free advice from the design and development professionals on Concept Feedback. You can find more tools like Concept Feedback in my previous post "10 Excellent Feedback Tools for Web Designers".

See how people interact with your site using Userfly or ClickTale (extra credit: set up an informal user test with your neighbor, or use a remote testing service like UserTesting or Feedback Army).

Use heat maps to quickly see what’s popular and what’s overlooked. CrazyEgg and clickdensity both provide heat map tools.

Setup a quick survey with Survey Monkey, or a poll with PollDaddy to see what your users want.

Still need help? Here is a quick list of high impact items you could be testing:

• Headline copy
• Buttons (size, color and location)
• Calls to action
• Whitespace
• Advertisement density
• Value proposition
• Text size
• Images
• Color scheme (There are many tools for picking colors)

Find more tools that you can use through these articles:

• 7 Tools You Should Be Using For Better Web Designs
• 7 Incredibly Useful Tools for Evaluating a Web Design
• 10 Promising Free Web Analytics Tools

15 to 40 Minutes

Define the top 3 items from your research and implement the changes

Chances are that you’ll discover a hundred different things you could change, but remember, the key is incremental improvement and not a complete overhaul. So choose the items that you believe will have the most impact, and start there.

Keep in mind that the changes you make don’t need to be perfect—this is going to be a work in progress.

As soon as you’ve narrowed down your list to three, develop the content and code a test page right away. Limiting your list to three items keeps the project manageable. Don’t try to overdo it: you’ll be surprised how much impact just three seemingly minor adjustments can make.

If you get done with three and still want to try new changes—great!—this needs to be an ongoing process. However, don’t let an overwhelming list of ideas prevent you from action.

40 to 45 Minutes

Split test your new page, rinse and repeat

Once your new page is ready, set up an A/B split test in Google Website Optimizer to track the results. Make sure to select a conversion page that accurately reflects your primary goal for that page.

Depending on the amount of traffic your page receives, you should be able to determine relatively quickly (anywhere from a few hours to a few weeks) what effect your changes made. If you’ve done your due diligence, you’ll most likely be rewarded for your effort with an increase in conversion rates, and sometimes your tweaks can result in substantial improvements.

However, you may find that your new page performs about the same, or in some cases, worse. But that’s the beauty of testing! Every test, whether successful or not, provides you with new knowledge about your site: what works and what doesn’t.

So—now that you’ve spent 10 minutes reading this—take the next 45 to improve your website. And please, come back here and let me know how it goes!

Related Content

• An Introduction to Website Split Testing
• Unleashing the Power of Website Analytics
• A 4-Step Process for a Positive Web Marketing Approach
• Related categories: Usability/Accessibility and Project Management

About the Author

Andrew Follett is the founder and CEO of Concept Feedback, a free web design review community for designers, developers and marketers. Follow Andrew and Concept Feedback on Twitter.

While the job is interesting and one gets to discover the latest about the Internet, blogging is no easy task. “Time is money” could not be any truer for bloggers; impossible deadlines put us under harsh time constraints. Due to this constraint, bloggers are always actively on the lookout for the next great tool that can help us cut back on the time it takes to write our articles/reviews.

Bloggers who run their own website, on the other hand, are not under any critical deadlines – their worries are of a different nature. Taking constant care of their website and monitoring it is an absolute must for them; if a site owner’s website unexpectedly goes down, his/her income will be negatively affected.

Therefore one way or the other, all bloggers have problems whether they are self-employed, freelancing, or fulltime employed. They need all the help they can get.

Today we present to our fellow bloggers five tools available on the internet which will help them in one way or the other. We hope you all find the following tools as helpful as we did.

You are welcome to share if you know more useful tools which our readers/viewers may like. Do you want to be the first one to know the latest happenings at SmashingApps.com just subscribe to our rss feed and you can follow us on twitter and do not forget to become our fan on facebook as well.

1. DomainTools

For somebody who plans to start out his/her own website, the first most important step is to come up with a great name. Once the great name has been thought of, one needs to check its availability. DomainTools is a free website that does both things. Firstly it can suggest various names to a user by taking as input a keyword. Secondly it shows us which domain extensions (COM, NET, etc.) is the site name available. If a user wishes, he/she can buy and register the domain name right from the site. In this way, DomainTools eventually saves us a lot of time in the process of naming our website.

2. WhoisLookup/WhoisApplication

WhoisLookup is a freeware application less than 100KB in size. The EXE file is downloaded and can be run without any installation. In the program we can enter the URL of a site and get its Whois information which shows us the site’s various attributes such as its registrar’s information, the location of the site, and the details of its administrator. Whois specifics can help out a great deal when trying to determine which website to blog about. To some extent, it can also show us whether or not the site’s claimed location matches its actual location; this helps us judge the trueness of the website’s credentials.

3. dnspchecker

This nifty little freeware is about 3MB to download and is helpful in determining the status of a website. It is compatible with Linux and Windows operating systems. After we enter a URL into the program, it uses ping command to see if the DNS is live. In other words you can see if a site is up or not. A successful message is show each time the site if up; if the site is down or a valid response could not be received then it automatically checks the site every 60 seconds. This way we do not have to recheck the status of the site each minute (because it is automatically being done for us). To have it not interfere with our work, the program can be minimized to the System Tray and gives an alert when DNS is propagated.

4. Observu

dnschecker can only help you if you have it installed on your system. If you are using a computer on which you do not have the privilege to install new programs and you would like to check the status of your websites, the only way that comes to mind is by actually visiting the website in your internet browser. If the number of websites is more than one then the process could be considerably time consuming. Observu is a free website that lets us register for a free account and enter an unlimited number of websites to be automatically monitored. If any one of them goes down, we are immediately emailed of its negative status. There is no limit to the number of sites we want monitored. Observu can be helpful not only for site owners but also for bloggers who have reviewed a website and want to stay informed of its status. For instance John, a blogger, blogs about www.XYZABC123.com and he is emailed of its negative status the next month; upon receiving the notification, John can updates his previous review and add a note saying that the site is currently experiencing problems and is down. Such responsibility can go a long way and earn loyal readers.

5. BlogDesk

Wordpress is a blogging platform used by many bloggers. Other widely used platforms are MovableType, Drupal, Serendipity and ExpressionEngine. To blog in these platforms, we open up our internet browser window, log into our blogging Dashboard and get started. With the latest platforms we can save our work as we go along but having the data secure on our hard drive is something that most bloggers find comfortable. Also while typing on these platforms, one has to go through special means while inserting hyperlinks and pictures. BlogDesk is a 4MB freeware program that eliminates all the problems associated with typing our blogs on these platforms. It is a desktop application that enables us to type up our blog offline with ease. When we want to publish the article, we can simply blog from BlogDesk directly. The abovementioned blogging platforms are supported by the program. But before you go using it, make sure its option is enabled in the online settings of your blogging platform.

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DotNetNuke Community Edition is a leading free open-source content management system for ASP.NET websites.  With DotNetNuke, you can quickly and effectively deploy dynamic web applications with almost no technical knowledge, however if you are an ASP.NET developer, you can customize it in the way you want to fulfill your specific needs.  Whether you need to deploy a simple website or a feature-rich dynamic application, DotNetNuke cater your needs in the way you want.

Unlike legacy web applications, you don’t need services of a web developer in order to make changes in your content and locations of different modules.  You can easily achieve this task on-the-fly by logging into the administration control panel.

Since DotNetNuke is open-source, you can enhance and extend the functionality of it if you are familiar with ASP.NET programming.  In addition to the existing modules in DotNetNuke, you can develop custom modules over it or use from a number of pre-developed modules by different third party vendors to extend the functionality as per your business needs.

DotNetNuke is the world’s most widely adopted framework for building web applications on Microsoft Windows platform. DotNetNuke powers over 500,000 portals, web applications and public web sites. It has a large open-source community to support the development of the system.  Furthermore, you can find number of help and support resources and books that help you find solutions to your problems while you work.

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I thought I could not be out-geeked. With a background in radio, and having dabbled in the demo scene on the Commodore 64 and hung out on BBSes and IRC for a long time and all the other things normal kids don't quite get, I thought I was safe in this area.

Then I went to my first WhereCamp, an unconference dealing with geographical issues and how they relate to the world of Web development. Even my A-Levels in Astronomy did not help me there. I was out-geeked by the people who drive and tweak the things that we now consider normal about geo-location on the Web.

Pulling out your phone, find your location and getting directions to the nearest bar is easy, but a lot of work has gone into making that possible. The good news is that because of that effort, mere geo-mortals like you and me can now create geographically aware products using a few lines of code. So, let's give the geo-community a big hand.

  

I thought I could not be out-geeked. With a background in radio, and having dabbled in the demo scene on the Commodore 64 and hung out on BBSes and IRC for a long time and all the other things normal kids don't quite get, I thought I was safe in this area.

Then I went to my first WhereCamp, an unconference dealing with geographical issues and how they relate to the world of Web development. Even my A-Levels in Astronomy did not help me there. I was out-geeked by the people who drive and tweak the things that we now consider normal about geo-location on the Web.

Pulling out your phone, find your location and getting directions to the nearest bar is easy, but a lot of work has gone into making that possible. The good news is that because of that effort, mere geo-mortals like you and me can now create geographically aware products using a few lines of code. So, let's give the geo-community a big hand.

Unarguably one of the most important aspects of any design is its colors. Designers create the style of a site, as well as the movement it makes, the emotion it creates, and its purpose based largely upon the color choices they make. Colors are powerful tools and an important thing all designers should understand when creating websites.

Color Terminologies

Many of you may have learned some color basics in school, but let’s quickly review some terminology in order to get a better grasp on colors and how to use them.

Color Wheel Main Groups

Colors are traditionally shown in a color wheel, and from this wheel, we can separate colors into three main groups: primary, secondary and tertiary.

The three primary colors are red, blue and yellow. These colors are the base colors that make up all the other colors on the color wheel.

Mix the primary colors together, and you get the secondary colors. These are orange, green and purple.

Tertiary colors are comprised of the middle colors like yellow-green and blue-green. They are created by mixing a primary color and a secondary color.

Relationships of Colors

There are plenty of terms to describe colors, which will be helpful to know later on when we discuss colors and their emotional meanings.

Complimentary colors are colors that compliment each other well and are located opposite of each other on the color wheel. These are colors like blue and orange, purple and yellow, and red and green.

Analogous colors are those located right next to each other on the color wheel, so they usually match fairly well but provide little contrast when used together.

Color Groups Based on Emotions

There are color groups that are associated with emotions: warm, cool and neutral.

Warm colors evoke warmth like red, yellow and orange.

Cool colors make people think of cool and chilly colors like blue, green and purple.

Neutral colors, as the term suggests, don’t create much of an emotion. Colors like grey and brown are neutral colors.

The knowledge of all these terms can be used to a designer’s advantage to help create meaning and suggest certain emotions in a web design without words.

Types of Color in Design

There are two different color systems and both are used depending on what you’re designing for.

RGB is short for Red Green Blue, which are the three primary colors of the system and is produced with light. RGB is used on televisions, computer monitors, and any kind of screen.

CMYK, which is short for Cyan Magenta Yellow and Key (Black) is created by pigments and is used in print.

Designs on the web should be created using the RGB system.

Making Wise Color Choices to Convey a Meaning

Color theory is the practice of using the meaning behind colors to bring about a sensory experience. This practice can be applied to web design with some knowledge and thought.

People will often disagree about what certain colors mean and what colors designers should use to implore a certain emotion. However, what can’t be argued is that consumers do have emotional responses to colors.

When choosing colors for your designs, be deliberate; don’t use colors without purpose. Instead, use colors that are appropriate for your target audience, the message that the client wants you to convey, and the overall feeling you want the user to experience on your site.

Warm colors will bring about sunny emotions and are wisely used on sites that want to call to mind a feeling of happiness and joy. As a case in point, yellow became a popular color in web design in 2009 when the global economy wasn’t doing very well and companies wanted their customers to feel sunny and comfortable on their site.

Cool colors are best used on professional and clean-cut sites to achieve a cool corporate look. Cool colors stir up emotions of authority, establishment, and trust. For example, cool shades of blue are used in many banking sites, such as Chase. It wouldn’t be wise to use cool colors on a site about an upbeat topic because users will get the wrong impression.

What Colors Mean to Users

Most colors can be taken in a positive or negative manner, depending on how it’s used, the other colors surrounding it, and the connotation of the site itself.

Here are some general meanings of popular colors.

Red

Red symbolizes fire and power and is associated with passion and importance. It also helps to stimulate energy and excitement.

The negative connotations of red are rage, emergency, and anger, which stem from the passionate and aggressive qualities of red.

Orange

Orange is a combination of its two neighbors on the color wheel, red and yellow. Orange symbolizes happiness, joy and sunshine. It is a cheerful color, evoking childlike exuberance.

Orange is not as aggressive as red but takes on some of the same qualities, stimulating mental activity. It also symbolizes ignorance and deceit.

Yellow

Bright yellow is a happy color representing the positive yellow qualities: joy, intelligence, brightness, energy, optimism, and happiness.

A dingy yellow brings about negative feelings: caution, criticism, laziness, and jealousy.

Green

Green symbolizes nature and has a healing quality. It can be used to symbolize growth and harmony. People feel safe with green. Hospitals often use the color of green.

On the other hand, green is symbolic of money, showing greed or jealousy. It can also be used to symbolize a lack of experience or a beginner in need of growth ("green behind the ears").

Blue

Blue is a peaceful and calming color exuding stability and expertise. It is a common color used in corporate sites because of this. Blue can also symbolize trust and dependability.

A cool shade can bring about the negative side of blue, symbolizing depression, coldness, and passiveness.

Purple

Purple is the color of royalty and sophistication showing wealth and luxury. It also gives a sense of spirituality and encourages creativity.

 Brighter purples can exude a magical feeling. It’s also great for promoting creativity and feminine qualities.

Darker purples can conjure gloominess and sadness.

Black

Although black is not a part of the color wheel, it can still be used to suggest feeling and meaning. It is often correlated with power, elegance, sophistication, and depth. It is said that wearing black on a job interview can show that the interviewee is a powerful individual, and the same goes with websites.

Black can also be seen negatively because the color is associated with death, mystery and the unknown. It is the color of grief, mourning, and sorrow so it must be used wisely.

White

White—also not a part of the color wheel—symbolizes purity and innocence. It also shows cleanliness and safety.

Conversely, white can be seen as cold and distant, symbolizing winter’s harsh and bitter qualities.

Examples of Colors in Big Companies Sites

We’ll look at some large company sites to get an idea of how they use color and what that color means to their users.

Nike

Nike changes their site often, but it is usually dark with mostly black and grey hues. The black shows the power in their product, giving the impression that they sell quality products to sporty people.

White House

The White House website is mostly white and light grey with some blue and red accents. The white symbolizes hope and freedom, showing a value for safety and purity. The red and blue are of course the other USA colors, but the blue shows stability and peace, while the red shows passion and energy.

Amazon

Amazon’s site is mostly white, which is the best color to use for contrast and readability. It also shows cleanliness and helps users navigate the site freely. There are orange and blue accents to help people feel at ease when on the site, as well as excited and hopeful to find their perfect purchase.

Verizon

Verizon’s main corporate branding color is red, which is used throughout the site. This helps stimulate the excitement of users, showing a company that sells an exciting and fast-paced product. The white background is used similarly to Amazon, helping users navigate the site by displaying a clean and orderly site.

Best Buy

Best Buy’s site showcases dark blue hues, showing their stability and power in the electronic market. Buyers are making large purchases from Best Buy and need to feel secure and peaceful on their site. The yellow emits happiness and helps people feel excited and joyful while making their purchases.

Charles Schwab

Charles Schwab is an investment company, and in an unstable market, they need to make consumers feel peaceful on their site. They use soft and dark blue tones to achieve this, creating a calming and peaceful atmosphere on their site. The neutral brown is another corporate color and helps neutralize intrepid users’ feelings. The orange accents are used to generate excitement in buying stocks and help bring a happier feel to the site.

Dodge

Dodge’s site is mostly black which allows their images to pop. They use a bright red for accents. The black gives a powerful quality to the site, showing their products off in a sophisticated and masculine light. Black is a great color to use to make products look expensive and worthy of value. The red shows passion and excitement, as well as the hope to drive consumers to purchase the vehicles from a company that values commitment and quality.

Whole Foods

The main color used in Whole Foods corporate branding, as well as their website, is green. Whole Foods sells healthy and organic food for a premium price. The green in their site design does well to show their healthful and pure values as well as their nature-loving products. They also use some pale yellow accents that are very complimentary to the green, and it gives a joyful value to the site.

How You Can Use Colors in Websites

Colors give sites meaning without having to use descriptive words. They create a lot of impact, whether you intend for them to or not. They can help move a user’s eye through your site, creating movement and motion that directs users around a page. As seen in many of the corporate sites, they create emotions and values that help show users what the company is about and what kind of products they are selling.

Use colors to your advantage by carefully selecting complimentary colors and ones that showcase the values you’re trying to sell.

Pairing colors can help change the meaning of a site altogether. Pair a soft blue site that creates calming qualities with a bright orange, and you could change your site to be more exciting and joyful.

Maybe your client thinks the site you’ve designed is too harsh with lots of dark grey hues. Add soft blue colors and your site design could have a more calming and peaceful tone.

Resources for Having Fun with Colors

Many sites out there discuss color theory and the usage of color in design. Use these helpful resources below to find color matches and infuse more meaning into your site designs.

COLOURlovers

Find complimentary color matches and color palettes with this web-based tool.

Design Meltdown

This site categorizes sites based on different genres, including many color categories.

Find the Perfect Colors for Your Website – Vandelay Design Blog

Lots of color resources and tools are listed on this great post.

JavaScript Color Picker

This fun JavaScript tool can help you pick out the colors you want and help you see how they look together.

References

• Color theory – Wikipedia
• Color Meaning – Color Wheel Pro
• Color Branding: The Meanings Behind Colors – EveryJoe
• Color: Meaning, Symbolism and Psychology – Squidoo
• Color Scheme Designer 3

Hope you enjoyed this comprehensive post on colors and their vast meanings, please share your thoughts, opinions, and your favorite color tools and resources in the comments below!

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About the Author

Shannon Noack is a designer in Arizona and the Creative Director of Snoack Studios. Designing is her passion in life and she loves to create websites, logos, print work, you name it. She also blogs regularly here and you can connect with her on Twitter as well.

A beautifully designed icon is the perfect way to represent your product or service, and they always come in handy whether you want to place them on your blog or want to represent yourself in an outstanding manner. A comprehensively designed icon can provide your user with the memorable metaphors and illustrations, even sometimes users only remember the icon they saw on the website.

Here we have compiled a list of some outstanding and beautifully designed FREE and FRESH 50 Sets of Social Media Icons such as digg icons, stumbleupon icons, reddit icons, twitter, RSS feed icon, facebook icons and more, so that you can use them on your blog and website. You can also use them in corporate designs as well, Kindly feel free to share your comments with us.

You are welcome if you want to share more free social icon sets that our readers/viewers may like. Do you want to be the first one to know the latest happenings at SmashingApps.com just subscribe to our rss feed and you can follow us on twitter and do not forget to become our fan on facebook as well. Click on the images to go from where the images has been taken.

Hand Drawn Social Media Icons

Vector Social Media Icons

The icons are designed in 32px and 16px vector format. With the vector format, you can scale the icon to any size to fit with your design or use it in high quality print materials.

Social Icons Vector Set

Here is a new free social icons vector set, which consists of 16 popular icons, available in both vector and PNG (64×64 pixels) format. Free for any use

Free and Exclusive Icons: Brown Social Icon Pack

In the pack, you will find 12 glossy polished icons in different size variations: 32×32px, 64×64px and 128×128px for maximum flexibility. All files are .PNG format and are mainly brown-colored especially for all you brown fanatic bloggers that like to share posts over the social networks nowadays.

Free Social Network Icons from IconShock

Included icons are for following services. Digg, StumbleUpon, Facebook, Twitter and Delicious.

Fluzzy Twitter Icon Set

Another high quality free Twitter icon set

Social Trucks Icons

There are 10 colorful, spacious and unstoppable social trucks at a whopping 512×512 px resolution for you

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Free Grass Textured Social Bookmarking Icon Set

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Social Trucks Icons

There are 10 colorful, spacious and unstoppable social trucks at a whopping 512×512 px resolution for you

inFocus Simple White Social Media Icons

Social Network Icon Set

These Iconshock icon set comes in 6 different sizes: 12×12, 16×16, 24×24, 128×128, 256×256 and 512×512 covering social various social network logos like Blogger, Delicious, Facebook, Flickr, Linked-in, Reddit, RSS feed, Stumble Upon, Technorati and Twitter.

Latte Art Social Icons

Four social icons for Facebook, RSS, StumbleUpon and Twitter available as 128×128, 64×64 and 48×48 PNGs.

Free Furry Cushions Social Icons Set

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New & Free Social Media Icon Set For Your Blog

Extreme Grunge Social Icons

This high quality, hand made, icon pack is full with 20 Extreme Grunge Social Media Garments. Each icon is in .png format with transparent backgrounds, sized at 256×256px. Icons are free for commercial and personal use.

Free Set of 25 Icons from TurboMilk

This set of 25 web icons in 3 sizes was created by Eugene Artsebasov and the illustrious Turbomilk team!

Beer Cap Social Icons

Featuring the PNG goodness you’ve come to love in 3 sizes: small (48 px), pint (64 px) and pitcher (128px).

Old Bottle Crowns Icon Set

This set contains 20 200px x 200px PNG files that you can easily resize and edit for your website design.

Social Cubes – Exclusive Vectortuts+ Free Pack

If you’re looking for high-quality social icons for your next web project, then check out these icons. This set of 18 high quality freebies is available to download today! Enjoy!

Free Social Media Icon Set: Chrome

This set includes 19 social networks along with a standard RSS icon in PNG format.

108 Glowing Neon Social Media

108 Glowing Neon Social Media Icons, 512px * 512px Free for personal and commercial use

Gummy social icon set

This icon set consists of 12 social icons, in PNG and EPS format as well.

Free Set of Social Media Icons

In this set, you will find 23 different icons that is perfect for content-centered websites such as blogs, news sites, etc. You will find PNG, ICO, and BMP file formats of various sizes (up to 512×512px) for ultimate flexibility and usability.

T-Shirt Social Icons

Available in two durable materials, PNG and EPS, at the comfortable size of 128×128 pixels.

Amazing 3D Social Icons

A brand new set that consists of 20 3D icons in PNG format (64×64 & 128×128pixels).

Social Icons Made of Wood

Here’s another social icon set from webtoolkit4.me. This time the theme is wood. The set consists of 11 icons in PNG format (64 x 64). It’s free for both personal and commercial projects.

New free social icons sticker set

Tabbed Social Media Icon Set

81 Pixel perfect Social Media Icons

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Social and Web Icons

Social Media Comment Bubbles

Extended set of social icons

Location: Free Social Media Icon Set

Set of social icons no.2

Icons Cloud

Aquaticus Social Icons

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Free Set of Social Media Icons – Rivet Social

Folder Style

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The design profession is full of happy folks, and understanding why so many designers enjoy their work is not hard. But not all are so happy. If you’re not careful, the joy of getting paid to pursue your passion can be tainted by the less joyous realities of the professional world. You see, no matter how skilled you are as a designer, unless you are equally prepared in professional matters, your prospects will be limited and your circumstances compromised. This is true whether you work freelance, for an agency or in-house with a company.

Every week I hear from designers who are struggling to come to terms with these realities. Unhappy with their current circumstances, they write to ask for advice on improving their lot. Usually, they either claim not to understand how things got so bad, or they lay the blame somewhere other than at their own feet. In every case, however, the sole cause is their poor choices and lack of professional acumen. It needn’t be so.

  

The design profession is full of happy folks, and understanding why so many designers enjoy their work is not hard. But not all are so happy. If you’re not careful, the joy of getting paid to pursue your passion can be tainted by the less joyous realities of the professional world. You see, no matter how skilled you are as a designer, unless you are equally prepared in professional matters, your prospects will be limited and your circumstances compromised. This is true whether you work freelance, for an agency or in-house with a company.

Every week I hear from designers who are struggling to come to terms with these realities. Unhappy with their current circumstances, they write to ask for advice on improving their lot. Usually, they either claim not to understand how things got so bad, or they lay the blame somewhere other than at their own feet. In every case, however, the sole cause is their poor choices and lack of professional acumen. It needn’t be so.

Last month, Packt Publishing set out to give away five copies of my book, MooTools 1.2 Beginner’s Guide. Over 200 Six Revisions readers participated to win a copy of the book by leaving a comment on why they would like a copy. Today, I’d like to announce the readers that will be receiving a copy (in either paperback or eBook format) from Packt Publishing.

The Winners

• Nejo – (ebook)
• Trevor – (paperback)
• priyadarshi kunal – (ebook)
• Jennifer – (paperback)
• Dave – (ebook)

Congratulations to the winners! You should have already received an email about your prize (or will receive one soon, shortly).

MySQL Query Screenshot

Buy a copy of the book!

If you’re interested in having a copy of MooTools 1.2 Beginner’s Guide but didn’t win one, I would like to encourage you to purchase it on Packt Publishing or Amazon.com. Read more about it here.

Related Content

• MooTools 1.2 Beginner’s Guide Book
• Win a MooTools 1.2 Beginner’s Guide Book from Packt Publishing
• How to Auto Caption Images Using MooTools
• Related categories: JavaScript and Web Development

About the Author

Jacob Gube is the Founder and Chief Editor of Six Revisions. He’s also a web developer/designer who specializes in front-end development (JavaScript, HTML, CSS) and PHP development, and a book author. If you’d like to connect with him, head on over to the contact page and follow him on Twitter: @sixrevisions.

CameronHess: @ScribbledNotes glad to see you on Twitter, I really appreciated your view on the latest Lost episode at http://bit.ly/bJWdnU

This is a post in which we are listing down some Stunning Pieces Of Digital Art That Make You Say ‘Wow’. These are some of the beautiful digital artwork and illustration examples. These are the wonder creations of designers who use their creativity with a different angle and approach to get the result that makes a difference.

You are welcome to share if you want to share more Digital Art And Illustration For Creative Inspiration that our readers/viewers may like. Do you want to be the first one to know the latest happenings at SmashingApps.com just subscribe to our rss feed and you can follow us on twitter and do not forget to become our fan on facebook as well. Click on the images to go from where the images has been taken.

Fire Within Me by =freaky665

Shiba’s Guidance by =Luches

Skullduggery by by Ng Fhze Yang

Colour by Wangli

Fire flower.. by ~shadow-light13

Forest by ~tahra

Muacks by LicoMomo

King of the Ash World by Diane Özdamar

The Monster Nian by Jason Juan

Metamorphosis by Cristiano Siqueira

Let Me Fly To Freedom by *Rockfield

Unique by ~ouwEnz

Jellyfish March by =Kaze-Hime

Cinabre by Diane Özdamar

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The first published article on Six Revisions was about the things you need for a web project to succeed. Two years later, the site has reached a point that I would consider "successful".

The definition of "success" is different to everyone. To me, I define success as having a large audience that consists of readers from all over the globe that love and enjoy your work as much as you do.

In this article, I would like to reflect and share with you the things I consider to be the ingredients of our recipe for success and growth.

This article is part of Design Instruct Week, a weeklong celebration of our newly launched site, Design Instruct. This week on Six Revisions covers topics that deal with running websites and design, written by the founders/editors of Design Instruct and Six Revisions. Be sure to check out the Design Instruct Week Twitter Giveaway, which gives out different prizes every day of Design Instruct Week.

Unyielding passion for your work

Growing a web project takes time and dedication. It involves many days with little or no sleep. It has an abundance of minutia tasks that need to be done when you’d rather be doing something else. Building a website necessitates a schedule that would make anyone but those who are truly passionate and dedicated to their idea, give up. Do you have it in you?

A strong knowledge about your subject

Whether you’re building an email app that will revolutionize the way people do emails or a web publication about baking cookies, you have to know your subject inside and out. When you’re not well informed, it clearly shows through to your audience. Being knowledgeable about your subject is about creating trust: Internet users are wary about the things they consume on the Web. If you can’t prove to them that you can be trusted, they have thousands of other sites to choose from.

Talented people

The foundation of any web startup is the people that have built it. It’s no secret that the largest component that drives the continual growth of Six Revisions and Design Instruct are their brilliant writers. Without them, our two sites wouldn’t be where they are now.

Discovering people with the same passion and belief is rare. Thankfully, we’ve found a few of them that have decided to join our family (you can see just some of them on the About page). I spend a lot of my time working with our writers, as well as helping them grow their own websites.

Partners that compliment your skills

In the first article of Six Revisions, I said that you should avoid going solo for your web project. When things start to build up, in order to carry forward your growth and keep up with demands, you need to collaborate with someone.

For Design Instruct, I knew I needed someone who would be better than I am with visual art and design. I was a graphic designer back in the days when dinosaurs still roamed the earth, but have now since moved onto web development and web design. I also knew that I couldn’t run two sites on my own, yet I was fearful to put my fate in the hands of just anyone.

This is when I approached my brother (Isaac) to team up with me. He’s an illustrator and photographer by trade, and someone who—regardless of our relationship—is vastly dissimilar from me. He has brought his knowledge, skills, fresh ideas, and passion to the table.

Design Instruct and Six Revisions wouldn’t be able to advance without a solid partner, and I’m almost certain that your web project won’t be able to either.

An open ear to your audience

Your users have a lot to say. They have a vested interest in your growth and have entrusted you with the responsibility of constantly improving yourself to meet their needs. Oftentimes, when we believe in something so steadfastly, we tend to shut these voices of alternative thoughts out.

Critics are a penny a dozen on the Web—the Internet gives people a cloak of anonymity that make it a piece of cake for raffish individuals to say negative things about your web project just for kicks.

However, there are also many people with ideas and suggestions that can make your site better. Take advantage of the collective nature of the Internet by listening to your users’ opinions, suggestions, and ideas. They have taken the time to share these ideas at no cost to you but your time to listen to them.

Relationships with people in your industry

The Web has the ability to connect us with people that we might not be in close proximity to. It’s important to foster and create relationships with people in your industry, regardless of whether you consider them competition or not. When we are working together rather than against each other, we can drive innovation and grow together instead of creating a counterproductive environment.

Make it a habit to reach out and contact the people in your industry. Participate on discussions in their website (you can, for example, frequently find me in the trenches of Smashing Magazine and Envato comment sections), see if there are opportunities to team up and build something together, trade war stories, and just get yourself on their radar.

Staying informed about the happenings in your industry

Keeping up with the events happening around you is critical. It’s part of being knowledgeable about your subject and is something your audience expects you to be doing. Especially on the Web, when things change so rapidly and interests are fickle, it’s imperative to maintain your information current.

Effective time management skills

Having a good time and task management habit ensures that you can keep up with the growth of your web project. Time is the primary limiting factor to your growth, and thus, you have to treat it as a resource, just like your budget and your technology infrastructure.

Taking risks

What stuns advancement of any project is the fear of change. Fear of change leads to fewer or no innovations. On the Web, being risk-adverse is not a good trait to have. In a realm where things move very quickly, being a stick in the mud will only make sure that the people around you that are taking all the risks will be reaping the rewards instead of you.

Looking out for opportunities to grow

The reason I personally respond to every email (I get hundreds a week) and carve out blocks of my time to partake in interviews, participate in discussions, write on other web publications, join panels, write books, and other activities that may not have a direct impact on Six Revisions or Design Instruct is because I never want to end up saying, "I wish I’d done that."

Being receptive to possibilities outside of the websites that I run, without a doubt, has contributed to the growth of my own web projects.

What are your own ingredients for success? Let’s talk about them in the comments below.

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• How to Stay Ahead of the Curve as a Designer
• 6 Things You Need for Your Web Project to Succeed
• Related categories: Project Management and Web Development

About the Author

Jacob Gube is the Founder and Chief Editor of Six Revisions. He’s also a web developer/designer who specializes in front-end development (JavaScript, HTML, CSS) and PHP development, and a book author. If you’d like to connect with him, head on over to the contact page and follow him on Twitter: @sixrevisions.