7 Useful Tools For Freelance Web Designers
Being a freelancer sounds very cool… You have 100% freedom in deciding what projects you will work on, the way you will organize those projects as well as the tools you will choose to work with. Not even mentioning that you decide whether you will work from home, office, cafes, park or any other place you like. Awesome right? Well yes and no. Both, yes and no, are because of one reason: 100% freedom. When you are given the freedom to decide on everything, from working hours, to working place and working tools, then often you might get lost. You are distracted by things that normally people with ordinary jobs do not encounter, you need to create the “system”, you need to find the right tools and use them in the right way, and all this should be done on time or before due or deadline. If this doesn’t happen…the freelancer is out of game.
In today’s article we recommend 7 tools we believe are useful for every freelance web designer. Let’s take a look:
Simple time tracking, fast online invoicing, and powerful reports. With this tool you can track your time spent on projects from your web browser, mobile phone, or desktop. It also allows you to create invoices fast, with customized logos and translations, and invoice in different currencies. Harvest also enables you to keep track of your expenses, as well as to send professional - looking estimates to your clients. You can check Harvest pricing here.
It is a great tool to get a new project to work on. Clients post projects for free and if you are one of the matching designers then you are notified via email immediately. Freelancers post bids to win contracts.
3. Shadowness
“Our vision is to create a simple and powerful tool to allow artists and designers to connect to each other and share their work. We’re tight-knit, pretty picky about our work, but always friendly, ready to help and learn”. This simple tool allows you to design your portfolio, be awarded as you contribute, join and create art groups, participate in forum topics, access to instant chat messaging between members of the community etc.
4. Vecteezy
It is a community of vector art! Members create and exchange free vector graphics like vector icons, vector patterns, vector swirls, or flourishes. Check it out!
5. FreeAgent
Great tool to manage your books and accounts. This tool is specifically targeting small businesses and freelancers. They say: “FreeAgent launched in 2007, hewn from the frustration that managing company finances was just too damn hard for most small businesses and freelancers. Since then we’ve doggedly stuck to our mantra of demystifying accounting and redefining the relationship people have with their finances”.
6. IconFinder
This tool helps you to find a variety of high quality icons in an easy and efficient way. It is said to be the first search engine focused on icons and “with millions on icons downloaded every month it is among the most popular icon sites”. So maybe it is worth to try it!
7. FontForge
It is an open-source application for font design. FontForge allows you to create your own postscript, truetype, opentype, cid-keyed, multi-master, cff, svg and bitmap (bdf, FON, NFNT) fonts, or edit existing ones. “Also lets you convert one format to another. FontForge has support for many macintosh font formats. FontForge’s user interface has been localized for: (English), Russian, Japanese, French, Italian, Spanish, Vietnamese, Greek, Simplified & Traditional Chinese, German, Polish, Ukrainian”, is explained on FontForge official website.
We hope you will find these tools useful. Any other tools you would like to recommend?
Building A Mobile App? Here Are 5 Tips For You!
If mobile apps used to be luxury, now they became necessity. They became a great tool for companies to strengthen their online presence as well as to build a more engaging customer community.
In today’s article we give 5 tips that could be of a great help when developing and designing your mobile app. Let’s take a look at them:
1. Do smaller releases quickly: Smaller but quick iterations are being highly recommended to developers and designers. Iteration is the key to perfection. Thus if you iterate frequently you will probably end up making more progress in the long run. This is what Kevin Systrom, Co-Founder of Instagram advises.
“Do fewer things more quickly, rather than waiting a long time between big releases as Instagram did. It’s not a mistake, it just took us a long time to do v 2.0. But I’d like to move us into smaller iterations more quickly because I think that if you get into a rhythm of releases you end up making more progress in the long run”, says Systrom.
2. Design for touch: While designing your app, you need to think from user’s perspective. What does this mean? It means that you need to get into the shoes of the user, the way he/she holds the phone, where the thumb sits, the spots the user will look at mostly, the spots and the way the user perceives natural to respond to, and so on. Before designing for others try to understand others behavior and the way they want and will use the app. This will help you a lot in designing a usable app. Many times great apps fail because they didn’t understand the user-device interaction, or they didn’t respond to it accordingly.
“Beyond button layout, think about how you want to indicate touch feedback — physically or visually. While the BlackBerry Storm tried the whole clickable screen thing, the truth is, haptic feedback (such as vibrations), while great for games or for alerts, doesn’t usually work very well for touch-based devices like mobile phones. Instead, use visual cues to show that an item is either touchable or has been touched. For instance, think about how the various keys on the iPhone keyboard grow in size when you touch them. That increase in size is feedback” writes Mashable.
3. Develop for multiple platforms: Logically, developing an app for multiple platforms will help you reach out more customers. Moreover it could enable selling the app at a lower price which eventually could increase the chances of a customer purchasing the app. However “do note that developing an application for multiple platforms is a time-consuming task and you might miss on some of the features available in a particular device or platform” writes TheGeeksClub.
4. Version control: This is probably a familiar concept to most web developers. However, this might not be the case with most designers. Why version control? Because it enables you “to have an unlimited number of people working on the same code base, without having to constantly send files back and forth. You can instantly browse previous “commits” to your repository and revert to earlier versions if something happens”, writes SmashingMagazine. Moreover, “If/when a bug is introduced, you can see the list of possible changes that caused it”, writes HT Applications.
Here you can find top open-source version control systems and tools that make setting up a version control system easy.
5. Compete with yourself: When developing your app or introducing new versions, think of who will use it, how it will be used, where it will be used, and finally how it can be improved taking into account the previous questions. Once you have an idea you believe in, forget about others. If you start acting on the basis of what others are doing, you will end up following them and eventually you will lose your focus.
Keith Rabois, COO at Square, says: “We look at ourselves in the mirror everyday….it doesn’t really matter what other people do. We really strictly believe that. Insofar as a lot of companies start with the premise of, I have to worry about this feature, and they send around emails (asking), ‘Do we have that?’ We try to take ourselves out of that. It’s our job to build amazing products and we either succeed or fail depending on how amazing they are.”
Any thoughts on this? What do you think new, fresh designers and developers should focus on when developing their mobile app? Please share your views and opinions in Comments section.
Interview With Muhammad Tabsh From Kol 3a Zaw2ak, Winners Of The Execution
In November 2011, Seeqnce organized Lebanon’s first Internet startup competition called The Execution. It was a month - long startup competition at which Kol 3a Zaw2ak was the winner. Last week Kol 3a Zaw2ak moved in to Seeqnce. We are all very excited about it and we wanted to share this amazing experience with you. For that reason, yesterday we conducted an interview with Muhammad Tabsh, the business person in Kol 3a Zaw2ak team.
What is Kol 3a Zaw2ak all about? It is a smart phone app that helps you find the best places you can visit for breakfast, lunch, or dinner; taking into consideration your location, budget and food preferences. However, Muhammad shared with us that they are going to shift into a narrower concept, targeting the vegetarian and vegan people. Next, he was talking about the way he came up with this idea as well as the people behind it.
We found out that although they are not looking for additional team members now, this might change after they launch the app. Following the concept of Minimal Viable Product, right now they are not looking for funding either “but in case we needed any funding I’m sure we will find it at hand”, said Muhammad.
Further, Muhammad was talking about the target market their app tries to serve, as well as the biggest challenge and fear the team faced while working on the idea. When we asked if there are any regrets so far, he said: “Great opportunity, great people to help us, amazing team, peaceful environment to work in, valuable application in hand…. What to regret?!!”
Next, he shared some of the most memorable moments from The Execution. He said: “Since we didn’t sleep for 48 hours, our most memorable moment was Saturday after midnight till Sunday 7:00 a.m; those are the hours we can’t forget. Omar was working on the application, Cyril was designing it, and I was preparing for my pitch, at that moment, pretty much everything made us laugh, and the more tired we got, the more the hunger increased and we started eating anything we saw”.
Muhammad shared his view on startup accelerators like Seeqnce as well as his team’s expectations from their residence at Seeqnce. “What we are expecting is what we are having. Seeqnce is providing us with all the help we need, random advice on exposing the app, their personal opinions regarding how the app looks like, or the thumbnails we are choosing from, all topped with consultancy in the business, technological, and designing fields”, said Muhammad.
In the end he sent a very inspirational message: “Never give up, if you have an idea you believe in, believe in yourself, and you will pull it through. When you want, you can. When you practice, you master. When you persist, you execute. This is what Lara told me before the pitch”.
You can find the full interview transcript below.
INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT
Seeqnce: What does Kol-3a-Zaw2ak do?
Muhammad Tabsh: Kol-3a-zaw2ak is a smart phone application for satisfying your hunger desires by finding you the best places you can visit for breakfast, lunch, or dinner; taking into consideration your location, budget and food preferences.
This was our official application, now we are going to shift it into something niche. Our application will have the same features but targeting the vegetarian and vegan people.
Seeqnce: How did you get the idea?
Muhammad Tabsh: I got the idea when I was sitting in Hamra street one day, and I was so confused about what to have for dinner, so I called a friend and told him to come so we can decide where to eat. After my friend arrived, I discovered that he has the same problem, since we had specific budget to have our meals. Eventually after a long discussion we ate.
After a while I heard about The Execution from Lara (from the Seeqnce team) and a close friend of mine. The idea was ready at the moment! Since I needed such an application, I thought many people faced the same problem and needed this kind of service so here it is: Kol-3a-Zaw2ak!
Seeqnce: Who is the Kol-3a-Zaw2ak team?
Muhammad Tabsh: Kol- 3a-Zaw2ak team members are:
- Muhammad Tabsh, the business person in the team (Marketing student at Global University)
- Omar Addam, the developer in the team (Computer science student at Global University)
- Cyril Sader, the graphic designer in the team (Graphic Design Graduate from AUB)
Seeqnce: What stage are you at?
Muhammad Tabsh: We developed our base at The Execution, but you can say we are still at the beginning (seed), and we are going up gradually step by step.
Seeqnce: Are you looking for additional team members?
Muhammad Tabsh: At the moment we don’t need any additional team member(s) since Seeqnce is giving us the help that we want. Maybe after we launch the application we might need additional people to work with us. So it depends.
Seeqnce: Are you looking for funding?
Muhammad Tabsh: The great thing about our application is that it is doable with the amount that we have in our hands. Our application follows the strategy of Minimal viable product. But in case we needed any funding I’m sure we will find it at hand.
Seeqnce: What was the biggest challenge you faced while developing the idea?
Muhammad Tabsh: The biggest challenge we are facing is: How to collect the data. Since in Lebanon we don’t have an official database (census) for restaurants and their menus. So at some point we might be obliged to collect it on our own, which is time consuming and needs a lot of effort.
Seeqnce: What is your target market?
Muhammad Tabsh: After the niche strategy we are going to apply, our target markets are people who are:
- Vegetarian
- Vegetarian friendly
- Vegan
- Vegan friendly
Seeqnce: What was your greatest fear while working on the idea?
Muhammad Tabsh: Our greatest fear is “Time”, since Cyril and I have other jobs and I’m still a student, and regarding Omar Addam, he was working on his senior but now he is finished which is good.
Seeqnce: Any regrets so far?
Muhammad Tabsh: Great opportunity, great people to help us, amazing team, peaceful environment to work in, valuable application in hand…. What to regret?!!
Seeqnce: Can you share some of the most memorable moments from The Execution?
Muhammad Tabsh: Since we didn’t sleep for 48 hours, our most memorable moment was Saturday after midnight till Sunday 7:00 a.m; those are the hours we can’t forget. Omar was working on the application, Cyril was designing it, and I was preparing for my pitch… At that moment, pretty much everything made us laugh, and the more tired we got, the more the hunger increased and we started eating anything we saw. Another great moment we cannot forget was Mr. Michel Nehme’s announcement of the winning team at the GEW 2011 Closing Party. When he said:” Global Team” I had goosebumps and was shocked for like 10 seconds.
Seeqnce: What is your view on startup accelerators like Seeqnce?
Muhammad Tabsh: To tell you the truth, we didn’t know what was a startup accelerator before we met Seeqnce. But now we see it as an opportunity to Lebanese people, for those who have great ideas and would like to be unique and special this is their opportunity to start…
Seeqnce: What are your expectations from your residence at Seeqnce?
Muhammad Tabsh: What we are expecting is what we are having.Seeqnce is providing us with all the help we need, random advice on exposing the app, their personal opinions regarding how the app looks like, or the thumbnails we are choosing from, all topped with consultancy in the business, technological, and designing fields.
Seeqnce: What advice can you give to other entrepreneurs?
Muhammad Tabsh: Never give up, if you have an idea you believe in, believe in yourself, and you will pull it through. When you want, you can. When you practice, you master. When you persist, you execute. This is what Lara told me before the pitch.
