Where to Buy Old CS3 Versions or Upgrades.
Buying Multiple Copies of C4? Get a Volume License!
Free 70-page CS4 Superguide.
Pending Orphan Works Legislation
Free eBooks to Help Grow Your Studio.
2008 Annual Designer Salary Survey.
The AIGA|Aquent Survey of Design Salaries 2008 is now available.
This survey is widely recognized as the most comprehensive look into how creative professionals are compensated. The results are drawn from responses from more than 6,200 design professionals across the United States.
Link: Design Salaries 2008
Curious how you stack up with your peers? The website has a location-based salary calculator that lets you compare average salaries using a wide range of variables.
Link: AIGA|Aquent Salary Calculator
Play with this handy tool and you can uncover a wealth of details:
- What’s the average salary for a Creative Director in Seattle?
- How do salaries compare between design studios and in-house design departments?
- How do different cities compare in creative salaries?
- What is the trend for designer salaries over the last several years?
Enjoy the research.
Track Craigslist Opportunities using RSS.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) for Graphic Designers.
On June 20, 2008, we performed a Google search using the phrase “Seattle graphic design.”
Out of about 722,000 total results, we carefully studied the top 10 websites Google identified as the best match for our search keywords.
Then we compared Google’s results to a list of the top 10 Seattle design firms drawn from the 2008 edition of Media Inc’s annual Northwest Graphic Design list.
It’s instructive to consider the differences between these lists. Large prominent design firms such as Hornall Anderson, HL2, Fitch, and Methodolgie are largely absent from Google’s results. While smaller (some relatively unknown) studios managed to grab Google’s top slots.
How do they do it? How do smaller studios like Page 3 Design, Eben Deisgn, and Design Hovie Studios beat out the big Seattle design firms in Google’s search results?
More importantly, can you learn how to accomplish the same results for your own studio?
Grow your Studio with Google Webmaster Tools.
If you want to attract visitors to your studio’s website (or if you design websites for clients) you really must understand and use Google’s collection of Webmaster Tools. This free service from Google provides you with detailed reports about your website’s visibility on Google, as well as giving you valuable ways to influence how your website appears in search results.
Link: Google Webmaster Tools
In this tip we’ll dig into this powerful resource that is key for harnessing Google as a marketing vehicle for your creative studio. As part of that discussion, we’ll show how you can answer the following questions:
- When was the last time Google indexed your website?
- Are there any bad links or missing pages on your site?
- Does your website’s content reflect your brand and target market?
- Who is linking to your website?
- How can you make your Flash-based site more findable?
- Can you stop Google from indexing photos in your portfolio?
- How do you remove something from Google’s search results?
Creativetechs is Now Members-Only.
At Creativetechs, we pride ourselves on providing great Mac support for Seattle-area creative teams. But with our increased success over the last year, our schedule has become too tight to respond to long-term clients as quickly as we’d like.
To address that, the Mac support side of Creativetechs is becoming a members-only support service. We no longer provide tech support for non-member clients. Our time is now dedicated exclusively for taking care of member clients with an ongoing support relationship.
This is a big step for us. If you are a Seattle creative pro who has relied on Creativetechs for sporadic Mac support over the years, we can be your support team. But we are no longer available for one-time troubleshooting projects.
Note: The training side of Creativetechs remains open to EVERYONE.
