While this may seem like the most obvious thing in the world and shouldn’t require that much explanation, suboptimal file types and compression qualities actually plague the internet everywhere. You can have a great site with excellent design that is utterly destroyed by inefficient or poor file types and quality.

Ultimately, it comes down to a balance of file size and load time. You don’t want any graphics to look horrible, but you also don’t want your audience to wait five minutes for the page to load. However, different file types accommodate different images better than others while also affecting their file size. Most of it comes down to the tiny details of the file properties and how they are compressed and represented digitally.

File Types: Lossless and Lossy

Digital images are very similar to digital music in that there are two different types of files: Lossless and lossy. Lossless images are only slightly compressed; they do not suffer in loss in image quality or information (they are the .wav and .flac files of audio files). Lossy images, on the other hand, undergo heavy compression, resulting in a loss of quality and information but also a smaller file size (they are the .mp3s of audio files).

The most common lossless images files are GIF, PNG, and TIFF (TIFF being the largest in file size typically) while the most common lossy files is the JPEG. Sure, there are other image file types, but they are rarely ever used on the web, and if you don’t know about them, you shouldn’t try using them. As a rule of thumb (though there are exceptions to this rule), lossy image files are typically smaller in file size and therefore load more quickly. Of course, highest quality lossy files can end up being larger in size than a lossless file of equal resolution and color palette (more on color palette in a second). (more…)

If you are going to establish your own business, creating a memorable logo is a really important part of it’s success. A uniquely designed symbol of the company name represents your business or your website. It can be always recognized and, in fact, this emblem has a purpose to promote and advertise your product, service or company.

Now, recognizing the importance of a good logo, we are going to talk about creating a good one. How to start and in what way to think? There are several pieces of advice that might help you:

1. A unique and memorable logo is a must because it has to appear again in your potential customers’ minds after seeing it maybe just once. It has to represent some general values like confidence, power, success, action or even happiness. The top companies in the world are represented by absolutely outstanding logos with distinguish shape, mark and colour.

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Here we are, celebrating Easter again with many distinguish features. Maybe the most popular among them are Easter eggs, which are beautifully decorated. The origin of Easter egg is not determined precisely, but there are several assumptions:

• Persians used to paint eggs as a part of their New Year celebrations which was on the Spring Equinox. This tradition of painting these eggs is said to have continued and now these eggs are known as Easter eggs.
• The egg is considered to be a symbol of new life. The tradition of Easter eggs probably started at the end of the deprivations of Lent.
• In the medieval times these eggs were forbidden during Lent. After the strict fasting days, the consumption of eggs was resumed and this was the time of Easter. This is the time eggs became an integral part of Easter meals. (more…)

Business cards still can help you break the ice when you’re talking to other people about your business, but you might be surprised to find that your business card actually says a lot about you before any real words have been spoken. Even if you end up giving a full presentation before you even pass out business cards, there will still be messages that your business cards send to anyone who picks up your card. You will need to make sure that your business cards definitely don’t say the wrong things — that could end up costing you a lot of money, as it were. You definitely want to ensure that if you’re really going to take the time and money to print quality business cards, you ensure that they are truly sending the message that you intend. (more…)

Flyers. If there’s one thing that people think that isn’t effective in today’s marketing and advertising landscapes, it’s definitely flyers. People assume that flyers aren’t effective because we’re a digital society now, with everyone focusing on cell phones and other types of mobile technology. We have laptops everywhere and there are more businesses now with free Wi-Fi than ever before. Still, none of that really takes away from the power of flyers. (more…)

Listen cock-a-roach, my life story is coming to Blu-ray™ on September 6th, 2011. To celebrate the Scarface Blu-ray™debut, my fans will have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to design their own Scarface-inspired artwork. My ‘associates’ at Universal will select the Top 25 submissions based on creativity, originality, quality of composition/design and utilization of the Scarface theme. (more…)

Event planning can be stressful, and there’s definitely a reason why some freelance markets charge more for campaign planning for a specific event that needs to go perfectly — it’s a lot of work! However, when you have to make things happen in your small business, you don’t always have time to contract the “big guns” — you need to make it happen on your own. That can be scary, especially for businesses just getting started. However, it’s definitely a good thing, as it teaches valuable skills. All you really have to do is think about what you want to do most: create an impact and cause people to choose your event over others.

When you really want to sneak in and get under people’s natural objections, a series of postcards is actually the best way to go. Now, we say “series of postcards” because you don’t want to just send one. You want to make sure that you really send a whole range of postcards because people might not get the first one, or they need a little more information. (more…)