Google recipe view: benefits not only for foodies but for businesses serving delicious foods

Who does not like to have a bite on a Hamburger just to fill out the tummy for a while? Again you would definitely like to know the recipe of "pork and pineapple" provided you are a foodie like me! Well, I must thank Google for letting me find some quick-make dishes that I may try managing a couple of hours from my somewhat busy schedule. You know that I have no fixed working hours just because I work as a freelance graphic designer. So it may be the case that Google thought about you people and added a new search criterion – "Google recipe view" that shows a refined search on the recipes depending on the preparation time, calories, images and the user ratings. Obviously it does benefit the businesses that serve delicious foods to us. They now just get the opportunity to serve us with the recipe of the delicacies we order them to cook for us!

Well, now we may have a little discussion on how the Google recipe view works and come beneficial to both the food lovers and the maker too:

• Refined search saves time: Until recently if anybody wanted to find a recipe of any dish, he or she has to Google and find the desired one from the tons of results. Thanks, now with the implementation of Google recipe view, type the name of the dish on search box, choose the "recipe" option on the left hand panel of the search criteria and you get only the recipe results for your desired dishes. No killing of time – even find the recipe that can be prepared within hours!
• Custom search for health conscious people: I know it is always tough to manage a couple of hours for our appetite! But how about the mind that longs to taste something new (at least on the weekend)? Here comes the use of Google recipe view! Specifying calories or the nutrition, Google shows the review results of people who tasted noted the review against the dish. It is just fantastic to find what we are in search of! Many other criteria are being thought to be added. And yes, how we could forget the mouth watering Images shown with the results!
• Let the world know your invention: You may be running a business on food and you are a master to serve new delicacies on every now or then! Why then let the world remain devoid of tasting your invention? Just put the description of the recipe, image and time it takes to season. Google recipe view will certainly let all food lovers know your culinary skills!
• Attract the food lovers to you: It may be the case that you have a website for your restaurant or hotel and serve the guest cum customers with some desserts. Why not upload the recipe in your site with the specification provided by Google to get those enlisted in the Google recipe view? You would certainly be amazed to see the increase of the visitors in your site! Won’t you like to invite us to your business place to taste the delicacies before we decide to try our hands on it? At least if the price does not dig a big hole in my pocket, I will certainly pay a visit for sure (next time I may invite you to taste the same at my place – free of cost!)

Well, Google recipe view has a good many miles to walk on! We are waiting to find the search become more human and wide! Let the day come when we can specify the measure of salt to be used in a recipe or the desired smell it fumes at the time of preparation! But at the same time we must not forget that Google recipe view may have ignited a malpractice in the recipe makers who just want to see there recipe on top of the search results – we go through a recipe that assures of being ready within a hour to find it wrong at the end when we ourselves try a hand on it! This injustice should not be done at all on Google recipe view. There are some cases to me from some new clients who deal with food. They ask me to include their recipe in the website with some preparation time that is false!

I could easily code for them – instead, I try to make them understand – please let us not adulterate this great Google recipe view with inappropriate information. Instead, provide me with proper recipes, images and I will design and code those in most appropriate way with assurance that those will be shown in Google recipe view for sure (certainly not on the top of the results).Finally Congratulation to team Google for providing us with so nice a search option! 5XCEVXDXMTP2

Points to ponder upon to get effective web design

Who does not want to build a website that generates good revenue! But to fulfill this purpose, you need to get an effective web design for your website. However, is there any way to know if the web layout is effective or not? Yes, there are quite a good number of points that can clear to you if your site is having an effective web design or not! Starting from business oriented look to proper use of text and graphics there are many good features to ponder upon when you are asking any web designer or freelance graphic designer to design your website layout.

While working with clients every time they ask me how they can get really effective web design for their sites. I tell them just a few points that can really solve their queries:

• Business oriented design: It is for sure that you must be looking to get a layout that best shows off your business! Every way there cannot be any doubt in visitor’s mind about the business (products/services) the website is designed to serve for. At the same time it is essential to have your contact details (phone no, email address) to reach you. It is the foremost criterion of the effective web designing.
• Attractive look: It is always advisable that you get web pages designed in an attractive way. Remember the color combination has to be cool (not eye-sore), the fonts need to be normal so that visitors feel comfortable. If you cannot get attractive look then you are not getting effective web design.
• Balance of text and images: Sometimes it is found that the web pages are either full of images or texts. Remember even the formatting of the text does matter. You should not just pile up anything on the web pages. A layout is having effective web design if the visitors feels urge to view the images and read the texts. If you cannot just make the users concentrate on your products or services how would you ignite desire of using or buying your products or services!
• Optimized design: Sometimes for lack of designing sense designers use Javascripts, Ajax or even CSS files in haphazard way. And for these very reasons the webpage load time increases. The visitors feel irritated to see blank or half loaded pages. So now you could understand getting effective web design does not limit in having your web pages designed – it does extent to the part of HTML coding and development a little bit.
• Following modern trend and tools: There cannot be any doubt that your site should go with the trend of time – having option to get socially connected through placing several social networking buttons (Facebook, twitter and others). But some times to provide very much attraction to these tools, designers place the tools in a way that visitors feel irritating in using web pages (placing button hanging on the right or left side in a way that block the text while reading the information or viewing the images). If this thing happens, how could you say you have got an effective web design!

So reading the above points hope you have understood just following some simple steps you can get really nice and truly effective web designing for your website. But you should remember that you need to choose a web or graphic designer who has experience in providing your effective web designs. You should check web and graphic design portfolio of the designer who you are thinking to select for your project.

How colors play a vital role in good logo design

The primary goal of a good logo design is branding. In every means you try to leave a lasting impression on users’ mind about your business! Up to this everything is fine! But the question arises when you first conceptualize to design a logo for your new business or think of having some modification/change on the existing one. How should be your logo? There is no question on the typography but the use of color for sure! Do you have some fascination on colors? You may be having so but when you are looking for a good logo design, do your designers inform you that play or use of color has importance in designing logo?

At least, you will always find me, a freelance logo designer, informing and clarifying the clients about this matter. I do tell them how attracting the attention of the viewers, color plays a good role. Again how playing with the emotion of the viewers has got necessary to leave a lasting impression on their mind about your brand! Now let me point out a few factors in using colors in good logo design.

• Grab viewers’ attention with bold & catchy colors: As I said at the beginning, logos have to catch the attention of the viewers, for that reasons you have to design your logo with bold & catchy colors. In every webpage or any written document there will be thousands of texts, images. A good logo design has to attract the eyes of the viewers in the crowd of other things with its bright, bold colors.


• Color combination & shades does matter: In every logo, the designer has to be very much careful in using color shade. Depending on the shades of colors the impression of the logo develops. At the same time the combination of the colors of a good logo design leads to keeping great impression in viewers’ mind. A mismatch of color combination may irritate the viewers for sure. Color should match with overall page theme.


• Color perception of people evokes emotions: In a good logo design the designer has to use the color perception of the users. For example the RED color is identical to energy, whereas the blue and green is considered for evoking calm and environment-friendly feelings respectively.


• A good logo design uses colors matching business purpose: If we carefully look at the famous logos, we would find out that those are designed with the purposive colors. Take for example the logo of "IBM", its blue color indicates the calmness and stability. Again the logo of "RED BULL" has the bright Red color that shows the energy and bold attitude of the energy drink and its maker.


• Medium of use affect the color implementation: When clients come to you for having a nice logo designing, as a designer you need to ask the client what will be the medium of use. The reason is very important, as normally for the web use purpose designers use solid RGB color. But for using for printing the color needs to be generally CYMK. If you do not go by this separation the impression of the logo will not be attractive or impressive for sure.

So these are some of the important factors that determine the used of colors in a good logo designing. Interestingly an inexperienced logo designer would not tell you as they may not be having this much knowledge. So it is always better to ask a mature logo designer to design you a good logo. You just check the graphic design portfolio of the designer before assigning him or her project.

Image optimization: How important it is for your website

Our websites must impress visitors with a mesmerizing look. Remember any layout may not work for your online business as your website and its web pages have to be optimized. Optimization is needed as the websites have few seconds to get impresses the visitors. The images often create problems – not loading properly, the most valued images are not recognized by the search engines so do not come in image search. But the solution to image related issues is image optimization! Just following a few simple steps – using several image tags properly, reducing file size, compressing images – you can get rid of these issues.

While working as a freelance graphic designer various clients come to me with image related issues in their sites. I simply tell them these are no headache – only lack of experience! Now come let us see how I help them with image optimization.

• Images have to be reduced in size: Many a time it is found that due to lack of experience, designers use larger images in the layouts. Consequently, the images take time to load and the visitors see blank pages. Just taking a little step of image optimization – using CSS image sprites (using small images in a single folder that reduce server requests also) you can get rid of this issue.


• Use compressed images: Sometimes there may be situations when your website has so many images. And you may be using image sprites but the volume of the images is large. That may create issues in display of the web pages. But if you know image optimization, you can solve the issues with compressed image formats (.jpeg, .png, .gif). This ploy helps very much.


• "Save for web & devices": For sheer inexperience many a time I find images in the web pages are saved simply – not in the "save for web & devices" format! It is nothing but lack of knowledge on image optimization. These just make the images unfit to be used in the web pages. It is the reason that images come larger even after compressed format. Sometimes working with these simply saved images create other issues too.


• Use proper tags: Many a times it is found that images are not given proper image tags. And for this reason your images are not properly recognized by the search engines. For this your website (may be selling some products or services and uses huge number of images) do not get proper ranking or position in search engine results page. If you have the knowledge of image optimization, you would always use Alt tags (so that search engines read the images), Title tags (to name the images). These tags make the image recognized by the search engines and improved SERP of web pages.


• Adding images to sitemap: Last but not the least is neglecting images to be added to sitemap. This is nothing but a lack of experience in image optimization. Excluding images from site map many times result in image going invisible in image search. People do search images to get idea on any product or services. So using this technique you even help visitors to find your images through site map (if your site deal with photographs).

Are not these techniques very easy to use or implement? But again I must say, for hurry or pressure of too much work designers forget to implement these simple image optimization tactics. So as a client you should choose a designer who knows these things. Just having a look into the graphic design portfolio of the designers you could check the status of the image optimization done by them. Hope you will take the right step in this regard.

Print ad design - What should be the expectation from the graphic designer

Can you ask anybody to know if he or she loves to see or even listen to advertisement? Maximum number of people would say that they do not like to waste time to notice advertisements. But does it mean that advertisements have lost their value? No, it is not at all. Actually the advertisement designers or creators make every people to see or notice the ads. We people need to congratulate specially the designers who create fantastic print ad design. With some animation, any ad can get the attractions easily. But think about the static printed advertisements. It is the color, fonts, arrangement of space, use of proper image and graphics thorough which print ad designs attract people to them.

Working as a freelance graphic designer, I have found people sometimes ask me how should be their print advertisement layout! At the same time I do face questions from clients regarding several requirements for their print ads. So let us see some facts that will help graphic designers come to the expectation of the clients. In other words if you are a clients you may note this points and can expects these things from your graphic designers when checking through their print ad design portfolio.

• Clarity & Space managements: It is very much essential that as a print advertisement designer you know how to arrange the white or blank space in an advertisement layout. People do not like to look into very much clumsy ads. So quite a good quantity of white space will certainly help show off the ad matter cleanly.


• Focused, persuasive text content placement: Being a print ad designer you need to know that the text content of your ad has to be very much focused, persuasive and has to be placed nicely in proper place. It should be given a proper importance to get perused. Even there has to be a headline.


• Use of engaging image & graphic: We all know that simple texts cannot attract the viewers and make them to look at them for a few minutes. So as a print ad designer you got to use some engaging (certainly matching the purpose of the ad) images and graphics in your ad design. The images and graphics has to attract the viewers for making them read to understand the purpose the advertisement. But the use has to be limited as excessive use spoils the look.


• Use of font has to be proper: Some times while trying to go very much fancy, we print ad designers try several odd fonts (not familiar to everybody), capital styles. But we need to realize that these things may irritate the viewers and sometimes people do not get the message to be conveyed. So every time we may use some styles in fonts but that should not look odd.


• Color combination: Last but not the least – color combination of every print ad design has to be very much eye soothing. Remember while using colors in ad layouts the combination needs to be commensurate to every graphics, images and texts. If these things do not match, the total labor may go in vain.

Hope form the above points you have understood how should be the print advertisement designs. While selecting a designer, you must look into the print and graphic design portfolio of the designer. It is not that you cannot get affordable solutions for your business promotion! You need to just find the suitable designer. Finally, it is essential that your print ad design is purposeful in look and conveys the message properly. Hope your initiative gets successful.