Jake Rocheleau

How To Balance your Skills Between Design and Code

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Web designers and developers are usually seen working together on various projects. Designers end up following a path of creating pixels, while developers pick up the frontend and backend coding techniques. If you find yourself leaning towards either side then it’s worthwhile to follow whichever path interests you the most.

But it’s also important for some people to have a balance between these two facets. In this article I want to share some ideas for balancing your own skillset between coding and designing interfaces. These topics mostly pertain to building websites but you could also consider these ideas for app & software developers, too.

Design Tips for Building an Exquisite Portfolio

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Any successful web design agency, studio, or independent freelancer has started from the beginning at step #1. It’s not an easy road to build up your own skills and develop websites from scratch. But in doing so you can learn powerful lessons about development & project management, not to mention working in a team setting while juggling other various tasks.

To get anywhere in such a booming industry you’ll need to have some credentials behind your name. I want to share a few ideas for building a stunning portfolio website where you can showcase talented works. These could be web projects or other digital graphics. But really your website should be designed around your own personal traits and characteristics. There is plenty you can learn by studying the techniques of other top-notch designers.

Social Media Techniques for Building Viral Marketing

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Every website needs some form of marketing to initially garner a responsive audience. You want participating users on your website to offer feedback, utilize all your services, and put your website to good use. But there are so many techniques inside the umbrella of Internet marketing – which ones produce the best results?

I have found that social media is one method which offers a gateway directly into people’s desktops. Everybody uses at least some popular Internet figure whether it’s YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, or any other brand name website. These networks are also marketing tools for gauging the popularity of your content. In this article I want to share a few techniques you can use to push your website viral on many of these larger social media outlets.

Mobile App User Interfaces for Simpler Navigation

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The mobile iOS App Store has seen a tremendous influx in publishers over the past year. 2012 has been a phenomenal time for app developers with new creative and unique interfaces. From this small burst of creativity we can find dozens of examples for cleaner, more intuitive user navigation menus.

As such I’d like to dedicate this article looking into some newer trends for simpler mobile app navigation. iOS designers & developers are working together blending ideas with practical functionality and programming. There are also plenty of examples for mobile apps exclusive to the Android platform. But I feel that Apple developers are always ahead of the curve, which leads to a more polished and refined user experience within the App Store.

How Web Designers can Transition into Coding

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Getting started as a web designer requires weeks or even months of practice and dedication. There are so many unique aspects in designing graphics for the web, you may often feel out of place. But one step towards feeling more comfortable as a designer is to advance your own development skills.

Having the ability to design PSDs and then code the design into a site layout is a huge benefit. You won’t need to rely on another web developer to work out your HTML5/CSS3. Plus right after designing a website layout in Photoshop you’ll be able to bring that work to life. It’s truly a skillset that requires time – but ultimately it will improve your knowledge and control on the web.

How to Optimize Your Web Designs for Retina Devices

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Retina displays are becoming much more common amongst tech enthusiasts. The Apple iPad and iPhone 4 introduced the retina displays and changed the face of modern technology and modern web design. Using these newer screens the pixel density is double that of a typical mobile resolution.

This means images and page elements will appear more crisp than with any ordinary LCD screen. But this also means web developers have to work around settings to get images looking nice in both normal and retina formatting. In this article I want to discuss some basic ideas for optimizing your website’s performance on retina devices.