While the internet has quickly become the marketing cornerstone to any business, print is still an extremely effective advertising/marketing medium.

Of course any serious and legitimate business should have core identity materials - a logo, business cards, letterhead, and mailing envelopes - Beyond this a well designed printed piece can speak volumes to an intended audience. Whether its a flyer, direct mail piece or magazine advertisement, print is tangible and highly impressionable.

While Wikiddmedia.com may emphasize web development here on the site, of course I started out in print design and production before the internet was even around. These days, I'd say I do just about an even split on the workload between printed work and web development.

Many times clients come to me for a complete design solution, having me do all the materials from their logo, to their website and their advertisements. CONTENTS

Often, I am approached by small businesses or startups taking their first steps toward serious branding and marketing. Many times these clients request a logo design when what they're really looking for is the creation of a static graphic instead. Let me take a moment to clarify the difference.

A logo is a symbol, typographic or illustrative design, adopted by an organization to identify itself, product or service.

Professional logos are virtually always created as line art or vector art - which means they can be scaled to literally any size without losing any quality. This core ability allows logos to be placed on a very wide gammut of marketing materials from a small business card, to a baseball cap or jacket, to the side of a vehicle, to a large roadside billboard etc...

Logos typically need no or very minimal changes to be applied to various uses.

In contrast, a static graphic is a design, or illustration created to a specifc size and use. This type of graphic may or may not be line art and often may contain a mixture of photographic (or raster) elements as well as line art elements. Static graphics begin to lose quality when you enlarge or...
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A lot of times while surfing online posts and job forums, I see people posting comments like this "Must have feminine design style", "must be able to design a cool toned site". "must have samples of auto industry work" (or any other industry for that matter)...

Any designer may have a personal preference as to what specturm of the color wheel they like to work in. Any designer may also have an innate style or characteristic way of designing - after all, design is art, and all artists have their own way of doinf things. However, PROFESSIONAL designers learn, train, and work in a manner that specifically allows them to create and capture ANY look, ANY feel, or ANY style. This is what separates a professional from an amateur.

As a freelance graphic designer and web developer, it's a great pleasure to be able to work on such varying projects spanning virtually every industry in existance. If a designer were to only work in one type of industry or one specific style - the work become very boring very quick on a personal level. Only being able to create one style of work, and working in only one industry would also be a super fast track in delivering similar work job after job.

For clients trying to choose a new graphic designer or web developer, my advice is fairly simple.

First, review the designers portfolio, and look for consistent quality - REGARDLESS, if the samples are in the style of industry you're looking for.
Second, communicate with the designer. At risk of repeating myself, design is all about communication. After a couple of emails or phone calls, you'll know right away if you're dealing with a designer who really communicates - a designer who listens, answers, asks, suggests. CONTENTS

I recently spoke to a client in Massachusettes who said he was having a hard time connecting with a reliable freelance web developer. Apparently, he had (like so many others) burned through a number of fly by night freelancers mainly off of craigslist. They would pick up a project, work in spades for a few weeks, then either disappear altogether or just stop being responsive.

This problem is nothing new.

Over the years I have been called in to clean up another web developer or web designers mess, or pull a project out of the brink of disaster/stagnation - many times. This problem however, has been exacerbated with the economic downturn as the freelance market (across the board) is over saturated.

Random freelance developers or designers have a tendency to jump in, work on a project, collect their checks and then disappear. The way I see it, alot of this has to do with the personality types and lifestyles associated with the creative fields of web design and graphic design. This is one of the main reasons why working with a freelancer who has an established business presence is a much safer bet for your project. And,is a sure fire argument against using a student (but really thats a whole other discussion... For the curious or thorough minded have a read of my article on failed web design - it's a doozy).

Past performance IS a GOOD indicator of future behavior.

In my case, I have been focused on providing media services from my New York City studio to the masses worldwide (ok, really its only Nationwide) for 5 years now. I have consistently perused and replied to the various online job forums virtually every day during this time - vacations, sick days, etc... withstanding. In fact, every once in a while, I'll get contacted by someone who says "Nick you responded to my post recently for yada, yada... how have you been? I took a look at your site again, blah blah blah, and will keep your contact info handy for the next great project". Of course, sometimes I reconnect with someone who moved companies or started their own business, and wind up being hired for their project.

In anycase, Reliablitiy and Consistency should be considered very strongly when choosing a freelance web developer or web designer... CONTENTS