design time thursday Archives

3 Social Media Weapons to Maximize Engagement Quickly

An oft-repeated mantra throughout social media is to constantly focus on 'maximizing engagement'. Engage with your community on Twitter, set up alerts to ensure you don't miss an opportunity to engage, always respond to comments on your blog...you get the picture. The problem is these same articles don't delve too deeply into 'how' to actually increase your engagement levels. It does take work to maximize engagement; it's not something that [...]

By bbell|2016-10-17T14:41:16+00:00August 22nd, 2014|Design Time Thursday, Web Related|5 Comments

Easily Create Swipe Files with Skitch

Swipe files. They've been around for awhile, but I'm starting to see them more and more across various websites because they're perfect for use as lead magnets in exchange for an email addresses which will help build your email list. They're enticing because they offer a behind-the-scenes glance at another company's 'aresenal'. The larger the company the more enticing their swipe file will become in the eyes of the general consumer. Here are some [...]

By bbell|2016-10-17T14:41:19+00:00August 1st, 2014|Business Basics, Design Time Thursday, Web Related|0 Comments

Convert PDFs to Word In Just Three Clicks

It's as easy as 1, 2, 3... Converting PDFs to Word in just three clicks isn't an exaggeration. Using Adobe Acrobat allows you to handle the conversion, but it's not without its caveats. If the PDF file you want to convert features either transparency effects or lots of detailed graphics then there's a 50/50 chance the images won't make it through the conversion unscathed. Regular photos and text, however, should come through [...]

By bbell|2016-10-17T14:41:19+00:00July 18th, 2014|Design Time Thursday|0 Comments

How to Harness the Power of Illustrator’s Image Trace Feature

Adobe Illustrator's Image Trace is a simple, yet powerful feature that can help you get clean and scalable vector graphics from all sorts of original source files (jpeg, png, gif). Say goodbye to all those pixelated logos! As I mention in the video, the Image Trace (formerly Live Trace) feature has come through for me when all others have failed to improve upon a lo-res file. Have you ever been [...]

By bbell|2016-10-17T14:41:19+00:00July 10th, 2014|Design Time Thursday|0 Comments

How to Grab Colors from Any Website Using Chrome’s Eye Dropper

Eye Dropper is a Chrome extension that makes it super easy to grab a color from any existing website for use in any graphics editing program. In this video I show you how to use the extension and also how you can apply it to a real world scenario. This is one of those utilities that you can use once a week or 4-5 times a day based on your [...]

By bbell|2016-10-17T14:41:19+00:00July 3rd, 2014|Design Time Thursday, Web Related|1 Comment