Graphic designing and multimedia production is not for everyone, as it is a different ball game altogether. In case you are looking out for innovative and fresh products for business communication that would help you to keep your fingers on the cream of the customer pie, read on.

Today, graphic designing has evolved to be one of the most powerful business tools. Pairing together the technical know-how and imaginative skills, freelance graphics designers strive to bring the best in whatever they do. A competent graphic designer should assist companies and professionals in getting the most from their visual communication needs, without losing sight of the project and client relationships. Getting a hard hitting idea to convey the business idea forms the bed rock of graphic design

True to the ageless axiom “a good picture can replace a thousand words”, a graphic designer can fine tune the process of communicating through visual media. There are many useful online resources to perfect your design from comprehensive graphic tutorials to advanced Photoshop tips and more, which would give an upper hand in churning out perfect designs that are right on target.

There are many online podcasts for freelance designers, which help graphic designers to sharpen their skills, whether its making OSX Icons or catchy business cards. Apart from fine honing your designer skills, it would also help for to learn how to handle sticky economic conditions where the clients don’t adhere to payment terms and cost effective ways to promote yourselves to grab new business orders.

It goes without saying that Flash is one of the best platforms available today to deliver multimedia content on the Web. Online tutorials will help you to pick up the latest trends in this ever expanding field. With the advent of  the new Actionscript 3.0 and improved versions like Flash player 10, the sky has indeed become the limit.

You can also brush up production techniques for some of the head turning Adobe After Effects, Zaxwerks ProAnimator and Zaxwerks 3D Flag among others to pack a punch to your creative ideas. A creative concept takes birth from the innovative ideas of the graphic designer that is executed through the latest graphic design tools.

What’s in your toolkit?

We are now experiencing the typical start up growing pains ( a few bugs here and there ) and we appreciate your patience as we continue to improve LogoBids.com each day as we march towards official launch in early September.

We have setup several resources so that we can better serve you:

1) Skype Button

On the home page, you will see a Skype button. That button connects you directly with the LogoBids.com founder, who is eager to interact with the LogoBids.com community.

2) Contact Us

To reach us via e-mail, please use the contact us form located in the footer, or simply us this link: http://www.logobids.com/contact.

3) Feedback

You can give us direct feedback using the widget on the home page or through this link: http://crowdsound.com/widgets/popular?aid=283. In general, we are working on feedback items based on their popularity, unless it conflicts with our overall goals.

This is YOUR community. Make sure your voice is heard so that we can better serve you!

I’ll leave portfolio building tactics to another post; here I provide a short list of free or low cost portfolio building tools that you can add to your website for maximum effect.

SlideShowPro - $$

This is a Flash based solution that is fairly easy to set up. If you are dealing with lots of content, I suggest you check out SlideShowPro Director as well. Take a look at their demo video.

Expose Flash Gallery - Free

If you are using the Joomla CMS, this free plugin helps you create a nice looking slide show of your work. Take a look at their demo here.

Slide.Show - Free

If you are a Microsoft SilverLight fan, here is your tool. They have a demo here.

SlideShow 2 - Free

If you have a bit of JavaScript programming knowledge, this may be your solution. This script uses the popular MooTools JavaScript framework. You can find some demonstrations here.

Note: Before using any of these tools, be sure to read the license terms.

What’s your favorite portfolio building tool? Or do you prefer using a web based solution seperate from your website?

The service says it is free, but is it? Most of the free logo design websites out there are trying to entice you to purchase products from them or pay an additional fee to provide a better logo than the “free” one. That brings up the first question: If my “free” logo would suffice for what I need, then why would I want to pay for an upgrade? Simply put; you get what you pay for! When you don’t pay a dime, what you get isn’t worth a penny. Free is not always best.

It’s important to understand the significance of receiving a good logo. The logo you choose will represent you and your company for years to come. It’s an extension of your company name and you will most likely stick with it for the life of your company. As a small business this may or may not be important to you and you think “free” is a good price point to base your reputation on. As a large business you probably already have an understanding of the logo process and therefore will pay the fee it requires to secure a professional logo which is unique and that will carry you through the years and that is easily brandable. Either way, you want the best for your company.

Free logo design services are also very limited. Sure, they may be able to give you a fancy text with a Web 2.0 look and feel or something creative like flames inside the text with a name like “Flame Blowers, Inc.”. But, when it comes to graphics they rarely meet the standard and almost never exceed it. A lot of those service use clip art that they designed and re-use for many clients (including your competitors) or they use royalty free clip art that is used by everyone across the web. Chances are that you will end up with the same graphic as many other companies out there and this takes away your uniqueness. A logo should represent you and not be able to be applied to any company but yours, because you and your company should stand out and have its own identity.

Ok, so you have chosen to get a “free” logo design online. You download the file; open it up and…nothing. Your computer doesn’t recognize the format. You don’t have the program required to open the file. So now you have to take it to someone to convert it over to a file type you can use. Even then, if the file is too small then the quality will not be great or even useable. Either way, now you have to pay an experienced designer to fix your “free” logo design if you want to use it in any professional/business application.

There is one positive to the “free” online logo design: It’s FREE! But there are many downsides to it as well. It is important that you weigh the differences when deciding on how you want to represent your company and begin branding your image. Some of the downsides may not be apparent at first, but will come into play later as you grow and discover there are other logos just like yours. Just keep in mind, in the end - you get what you pay for.

Logobids.com Logo Design. This is a design made by a mediocre design company like Logo Works.

Logobids.com Logo. This is a design done by a local firm. This is the first round.

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