The main part of your website is your logo branding and online identity. Without this it’s hard to establish yourself as an online business. Look at Google and Yahoo, their logo has never changed (well apart from the Google Doodles) but both the Google & Yahoo logo’s among others are so easy to distinguish and once you see them, you know exactly who they are. Below are some of the top logo designers on the web today, some are my personal favorites.

Dache

MalbarDesign

LogoYes

LogoGuru

Ypson

LogoDesign

If you know any top quality logo designers that I haven’t mentioned, then be sure to let me know and i’ll add them. Until then, subscribe to the RSS Feed if you liked this post :).

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If your someone like me who loves to keep track and subscribe to blogs for either useful information for specific research or just a nice general read, then look no further. Listed below are some of the blogs which I read and some blogs which give very useful information to web related topics.

FreelanceSwitch speaks for itself really. With more than 23,000 subscribers it has lots of content and useful content at that. FreelanceSwitch also has a job board which I am apart of, its very useful for any freelancer to is available for hire and is looking for work.

SmashingMagazine really is smashing! One of my personal favourites, just because the writers and bloggers at SmashingMagazine find all the teeny weeny bonus’ on the web such as amazing typefaces and fonts. They also have very inspirational posts such as their most recent one - Sexy, Bold and Experimental Typography.

BootstrappingBlog has just recently been added to my feed reader due to me doing more research into “Bootstrapping”. It covers all aspects of “Bootstrapping”, from tips & tricks to cut costs when starting up a project and it also covers the widely subject of Guerilla Marketing & Advertising which is a very interesting topic indeed.

Personally, I have never spoken with Tyler Cruz but after reading a few of his posts a while back, I became totally interested into his blogging. Ever since, I have been a huge fan of Tyler keeping up to date with his ramblings. This is one of few personal blogs that I read and it’s one which I will continue to read due to its heavily detailed & exciting posts.

Jon Wheatley is a good friend of mine and is yet another one of few personal blogs I read. Jon’s blog posts differ from a lot of other blogs though. With posts such as these. Jon keeps a fun & humorous vibe about his blog which is one of the main reasons why I read it, but he does have a lot of very constructive posts, mostly on his latest projects which I love hearing about.

IndieStartups is a blog which is aimed at the little guy. The ‘little guy’ being us… freelancers, internet entreprenuers, web freaks - trying to make thousands, maybe even millions online without VC (venture capitalist) funding. IndieStartups cover a lot of online web applications and web 2.0 startups which have been put together with little funding and little help (usually a one man job).

I guess thats all I have in store for now, but above are some awesome reads. I would recommend all of them and I would recommend subscribing to their RSS feeds.

I hope you enjoyed this post, if so why not subscribe to my RSS feed, it would be greatly appreciated.

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Hello everyone, this is just a quick one to let you know that the portfolio page has been fixed. Some designs have been removed and more recent designs have been updated to the page. The positioning and aesthetic appeal to the page has also been changed with actual previews of the designs being introduced.

At the moment, I am currently for hire, so If you have any requests for a design then please get them in. You can email me for any bulk design prices I am offering at the moment and you can just email me regarding any sort of design work.

Thank you, I shall be back with another update shortly. In the meantime, remember and subscribe to the RSS feed. Thanks.

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All I keep saying at the moment is wow. Seriously. Wow. Tomorrow is my last official day of my first year and what an amazing journey it’s been, its bloody flew in! I have met so many new people and had so much fun. My course and lecturers have been great and the coursework has been pretty fun, but tough at the same time, but as always thats expected.

So why do I mostly write about my personal life? A question that I ask myself sometimes. I do it because I think talking about your personal life that little bit extra engages with the end user or client. It gives them more of an insight into who they are working with and what type of person they are.

Some of the images I am including in this post are just some screenshots of some of my coursework that i’ve had to do over the year. The B4 coursework was we had to design a logo for a new tv channel “B4″ which was owned by channel 4. The TV channel would show a list of TV shows which had been on that day and you would be able to select which one you wanted to watch. The arrow on the backwards ‘4′ is to represent the word ‘before’ or ‘previous’, just like the TV channel. Something conceptual I went with.

The image above is a screenshot from a poster I designed. To view the full poster, click here.

This image is just a part of the development process, quickly drawing out some ideas for how the ‘arrow’ would be implemented to the design. As another part of the coursework to gain extra marks, you were to design your own website template, so on the last few hours on presentation day, I threw this design up very quickly, just to add to what I had already.

I guess thats all I have at the moment, I’d just like to thank you all for reading. Oh and please do so if your a first time reader and subscribe to the RSS Feed. Would be greatly appreciated.

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Okay as you know i’ve been brainstorming ideas for Flockey, original ideas that might bring some interest. A section which I thought of having is a ‘Websites Which We Favour‘ section. Basically what this would consist of is having some websites sponsored which bring Flockey together. Such as hosting and possibly some CSS gallery websites which Flockey may be featured on. Also I will be putting some of the people that have helped me on there also.

So I’d like to know what your thoughts are on this. I’d also like to for you to contribute and if you have any ideas for Flockey, they’d be much appreciated and would be listened to.

Please note that I do know that my portfolio section is down. I will hopefully have it back up and running shortly.

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Hello everyone, It’s been a week since I last update. Shocking! Anyways, this post will hopefully be worth your while reading. I was originally going to make this post a video blog, although I will leave that for another time.

Firstly, I would just like to speak about whats going to be happening with Flockey in the next couple of weeks. Well I have a new logo in the process of being designed by Dache and I also have a design in the process which is coming on pretty nicely. Below is a small teaser for the new design.

The re-design will not be a blog, it will simply be a normal web portfolio for me to display my work, testimonials and some way of getting in touch with me. It was also have a section were you can get to know me a little better. I guess I have nothing much else to say about Flockey. It should be online in the next couple of weeks. No longer than a month.

New Project collaberation with Josh Craddock.
Some of you reading this might know of Josh but he is a member over at TalkFreelance and is really talented at what he does. He is a coder and coded this Flockey design and will probably most definitely code the next. Josh managed to punt out and code this design in the space of 7 hours which is truly amazing.

Okay, so new project is it? Sure is. This project is one which we have spoken about a few times now and we are really keen to get started on it. Basically it will be a web design firm with a few various different features to it. At the moment we do not have a name or anything for the site, due to the fact that are brainstorming some of the different ideas that we have for it.

The first idea that Josh came up with was having 20-30 different web design templates (possibly Wordpress designs or a mixture of both) and having them set on some sort of portfolio page being displayed. The visitor would be able to click on one of these ‘thumbnails’ of the design on this page and it would re-direct them to a page were they can see that design fully coded in xhtml/css. If they like what they see, then somewere on the page would be a little contact or ’send’ button were it would redirect the visitor to a page to fill in some details about what content etc they want replaced or what edits they want to the design. Once they hit a submit button, this information would then be passed onto us and then the visitor would be sent an invoice or something for that specific design. Once they have paid then the design would be for them to keep. We are still in two minds of making the 20-30 designs unique, so they can be sold for more or making them for re-sale.

So thats the first idea. The second idea is one which I came up with and it was inspired by a little advertisement which I seen on a bar/cafe wall when I was out and about last weekend. The idea to this was every Tuesday between 11-3 o’clock, a 15 minute turnaround was available. Basically the idea behind this was, when you came into the cafe and taken your seat, when ordering your food & drinks you would be given a little timer set to 15 minutes. As soon as the waiter or waitress took your order, the timer would be set and if you got your lunch delivered to your table in that 15 minute period you would pay for your food normally. However, if your food did not appear on your table in that 15 period, then you wouldn’t be charged a penny and you’d get to eat your food for free.

So, myself and Josh have spoke about this and how we could implement this idea into our design firm. We have been speaking briefly about it and here is what has been said already. We would change the turnaround period to around 6-7 hours and we would have a set menu of various different design & coding jobs that myself and Josh could be capable of doing in that space of time. So in this space of time if we complete the client would pay as normal - we are also thinking of having the prices a little higher than normal due to the work load and dedication required to complete such projects - but if we didn’t complete the project in that time then we obviously wouldn’t give the work for free but we would take a great deal off the price, possibly a normal priced fee or a discounted price, haven’t quite decided.

So thats all I have for now. I would love to hear your comments or suggestions for this project. Thank you for reading Flockey.

If you’d be so kind and subscribe to the RSS Feed that’d be great. You can also sign up via email on the left hand side. Which ever floats your boat. Thanks alot.

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Hello everyone, I thought it would be a good time to introduce you all to some profiles of mine on some really good websites online.

1. Flickr Account

I have a been a loyal Flickr fan for over two years now by purchasing they’re Flickr Pro account for the second consecutive year. Flickr as you probably know already is a great way to upload and share photos of anything you like. There are many features which Flickr consists of as well, such as photo tagging and most recently introduced, video sharing. So have a look through my Flickr account, comments are appreciated.

2. Twitter

I’ve only recently started using Twitter and already I’m becoming hooked. It’s a great way to find out news about any projects or anything in general by your friends which you are following.

3. Facebook

I am not a big fan of Facebook and rarely check it, but here it is anyways!

Thats all I have at the moment, Please do so and add me on them. I’d love to see other peoples profiles.

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Hello everyone, I have been planning to get some new posts up, but at the moment it is so hard due to university coursework being so demanding. Anyways, these kind of posts are something which i’ll be making a habit of doing, updating you with all my latest work which I have done.

So, below is a link to the design and a little description.

I was asked to design a forumbit and a postbit for a canadian forum called Jeeps Canada. I went for a very conceptual header for the website, to hopefully have the visitor lead into the forum and scroll down. Due to the big advertisements, the forumbit is hidden although that was a main part of the actual design. Have a peak. Comments are welcome.

This design was designed free of charge for a good friend Oliver, who happens to own a lot of websites. I have also collaborated with him on a project called Blogussion (if your a blogger yourself, you should sign up). Anyways. As a friend, I offered to re-design his current image upload service Upload3. I am a regular user of Upload3 and thought it needed a little change, so I came up with a different colour scheme and a relatively simple structure for it. Check it out and again, all comments are welcome.

Thats all I have to show at the moment.

Moving on, I’d like to inform all the mac users out there of a really useful mac application which has just been introduced to the web called >GrabUp. GrabUp allows you to quickly grab a screenshot of an image on the web and share it instantly with your friends or whoever. You can view the full features with the little video on the home page.

Say goodbye to the slow and annoying task of sharing a quick screenshot, GrabUp is the way forward. Please check out the website and leave all your thoughts in the comments section.

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Hello everyone, well its been nine days since my last post and its flew in. It’s wonderful how university coursework can take over your life for a week or so. But I have managed to find the time to update you all with a nice little post.

I was browsing Digg earlier and I found this cool post. The post is about extremely weird but conventional inventions, that do/could make a difference. My favourite has got to be the little rubber device which is used to help open and close screw top bottles.

Check it out. I’ll have a better update soon

Regards.

Subscribe to the RSS feed. Thank you.

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A couple of hours ago I came across a post on BootStrappingBlog about Guerilla Marketing and I went onto YouTube and did a little search. I’ll leave you with a little video, that gives you a lot of different examples of Guerilla Marketing.

If your looking for various tactics and how to come up with ideas or so for any Guerilla Advertising. I’d suggest again looking at one of BootStrappingBlog’s posts.

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