January 4, 2010 by Jeff
Here at Paper Leaf, we do a decent amount of Wordpress blog design & implementation for our clients. While Wordpress is super easy to learn, you can’t just build your clients a blog, send them the login information and then disappear off of the face of the earth. Where’s the customer service, people?!? Ideally, we sit down for a half hour or hour with our clients to show them the basics of how to use their new blog (writing a post, adding categories, checking stats, uploading photos, adding users). However, sometimes a face-to-face meet up isn’t doable; we offer graphic & web design in Edmonton, but many of our clients are outside of the city.
To combat this, we built a very simple reference guide to give to our clients that explains how to do the following in their new Wordpress blog:
- write a new blog entry
- save, preview & publish a post
- add tags (and what that means)
- add categories (and what that means)
- check blog stats
- use the Media section
- moderate comments
- update plugins
- add a new user
This covers about 99% of what most basic blog users need to know, and it provides them with a resource they can come back to when needed, share within their business, and so forth. It’s sort of a basic Wordpress author’s guide suitable to email and view on screen – click here to download it (or click the image above).
We figured that since this guide has been helpful to us, maybe it will be helpful to other designers who use Wordpress. Here’s hoping! Anyway, share freely (but not as your own, please!)
*note: we install the Site Stats plugin for all clients – if you use this guide, I recommend doing the same, or your clients might be confused as to why they don’t have a Site Stats link.
Category: Articles, For Our Clients, Freebies, Tutorials Tags: author, basic, free, guide, how to, wordpress | Comments (17)
October 5, 2009 by Jeff
I was recently hired by two local Edmonton singer/songwriters – Daniel Moir and Stephanie Bosch – to design a tour kickoff poster for them. I enjoy their music, and had shot photos for Daniel before, so it was great to be able to work on one of my favorite items to design – the gig poster – for a couple of great Edmonton musicians. Edmonton has a great music scene, and I’m always happy to be able to contribute my skills to it!
Here’s the poster I made, and how I made it. Follow along to create your own vintage gig poster!
Follow me… (more…)
Category: Articles, Design, Tutorials Tags: band, Design, gig, music, poster, typography | Comments (5)
September 28, 2009 by Jeff
We all know the importance of having a solid online portfolio. It’s relatively simple to show the work we’ve developed for the screen on our website – after all, that’s how it was meant to be seen. But what about printed material? As designers, we have two options for showing our printed material on our websites: a) mockups, or b) photos of the finished product.
I’m going to assume that most designers reading this article are comfortable enough with the Creative Suite to whip up a decent mockup of a printed piece . So, for this article, I’m going to walk through how to take professional photos of your printed design work, using only a camera and a white sheet of paper. Here’s the shot we’ll end up with (printed pieces will vary, of course!):
Hit the jump for the tutorial!
(more…)
Category: Articles, Design, General, Photography, Tutorials Tags: business card, Design, Photography, tutorials | Comments (10)
September 21, 2009 by Jeff
Welcome to From A to Z, where I outline all the steps taken in a specific project. In this particular instance, I’ll outline the workflow from initial brainstorming through to delivery for a recording studio logo design.
Recently a friend of mine, Randor, came to me for a logo redesign. He runs an Edmonton-based recording studio called Turnkey Studios (website updating in progress), and their current logo was one he wasn’t fully happy with. Long story short, the previous logo was designed prior to Randor buying out the studio – and now that he was the sole owner, he felt that the logo didn’t properly reflect the new direction of Turnkey. Thus, he needed a redesign and he came back to Paper Leaf (thanks Randor)! We ended up designing him a logo that won Logo of the Day!
Hit the jump to learn how we went about creating this logo. (more…)
Category: A to Z, Articles, Design, Logos, Tutorials Tags: Design, logo, logo design edmonton business, tutorials | Comments (8)
September 8, 2009 by Jeff
Welcome to From A to Z, where I outline all the steps taken in a specific project. In this particular instance, I’ll outline a band promo photo project I was commissioned for. Keep reading to see how this shot was conceptualized, shot, and edited – and if you enjoy the article, subscribe to the RSS feed here.
Band promo photography can be tough, especially when the budget is small. It would be great if we all had unlimited budgets and could rent out awesome venues to shoot in, hire makeup & hairstylists all the time, and so forth. Unfortunately, with a lot of bands, there isn’t much coin in the bank. I understand this – I play in a band – so the challenge here is to make a photograph for them that represents them, looks cool, and keeps it in the budget (so they’re happy, and so you the photographer doesn’t end up doing a ton of work for peanuts).
The shot above is of a band called Chasing Jones. They’re a local rock/pop band in Edmonton who approached me for band promos – they wanted something that made them look like every day kinda guys. No rock star posturing. That answers the first step in making a band promo, after the jump. (more…)
Category: A to Z, Articles, Photography, Tutorials Tags: A to Z, band, Photography, tutorials | Comments (8)
