Build a rewarding friendship with UMBC's one and only SUCCESS program.  Flexible schedules with varied levels of commitment available, supported by Best Buddies Maryland, www.bestbuddiesmaryland.org.  This new partnership between SUCCESS and Best Buddies seeks 5-7 more Buddies!

Questions about expectations are welcomed! E-mail Brandy Kaschenbach, bkasche1@umbc.edu, or Saarah Bokari, bo7@umbc.edu, by Friday, October 18th for consideration.  

For more information, please visit

If you’ve got design skills, you have plenty of opportunities available to you for generating additional site traffic.

In this article, I’ll discuss some ideas and show you some examples of website content that have the ability to bring in a lot of site visitors.

Infographics

Infographics creatively make complex information more interesting and easier to understand. Because infographics are so well-suited to conveying interesting information quickly — which is optimal on the Internet — they are an extremely popular form of Web content.

According to online marketing firm Smart Insights, the number of people searching for "infographics" has increased by 800% since 2010.

Source: smartinsights.com

A good infographic can spread quickly across social networks like Facebook and Twitter and social bookmarking sites like Pinterest, StumbleUpon and Reddit, giving you the chance to generate a lot of site traffic rapidly.

Here’s an example of an infographic about the Mobile Web:

The infographic above has over 650 retweets and close to 200 Facebook Likes. To date, it has gotten close to 12,000 pageviews.

Infographic Tips

Once you’ve designed your infographic, it’s time to kick-start the snowball effect.

You should host the infographic on your own website so that you reap the benefit of any incoming links and traffic.

As a next step, you should email relevant blogs and websites asking them to repost your infographic with a link back to your site as the source.

You can also submit your infographic to galleries like visualizing.org and visual.ly.

For inspiration, check out this showcase of 40 useful and creative infographics.

Freebies

Orman Clark is a top-selling WordPress theme creator, having sold over $1 million worth of WordPress themes on ThemeForest.

One of his main promotional strategies is to give away free graphic resources on his personal website, Premium Pixels:

On the download page for each freebie, Clark displays a gallery of his WordPress themes on the sidebar:

It’s possible this strategy is part of the reason for his success in being a top-seller of premium WordPress themes.

Next time you create something cool in Photoshop or Illustrator, package the file up for distribution and give it away. If the freebie is useful, website owners will gladly send you links and traffic.

Desktop and Mobile Wallpapers

A beautiful wallpaper can attract links to your website.

Better yet, there are literally hundreds of wallpaper galleries you can submit your wallpaper to such as Wallbase.cc and InterfaceLIFT. These sites can provide you with significant amounts of site traffic if your wallpaper gets featured.

For example, as part of my work at Microlancer, I organized a wallpaper to be illustrated and distributed on our site:

Besides being a nice little freebie for our site users, I was able to submit the wallpaper to dozens of desktop and mobile wallpaper galleries, and receive dozens of links and plenty of site traffic in return.

Wallpaper Design Tip

To give your wallpaper design the best possible chance of success, you should create different-sized versions of it for popular desktop monitor screen sizes and mobile devices.

Below is a list of common wallpaper dimensions:

Custom-Designed Article Layouts

When you open the pages of a print magazine, nearly every article’s layout is custom-designed to suit the article’s topic. Why not do the same with your blog posts?

Jason Santa Maria added to his fame by designing custom layouts for each of his blog posts, like this one:

Trent Walton also creates custom webpage layouts for articles on his website. Here’s an example of one of his custom-designed articles:

With custom webpage layouts, your blog posts and articles will be extra memorable and shareable on social media.

Minisites

A minisite is a small website that’s narrowly focused around one thing. Because minisites include so little content, you can spend extra time making it beautiful.

When Envato hit 1 million members, the company made a minisite to celebrate the milestone:

Another great example of a minisite is How much to make an app?:

A clever minisite can be built quickly and send traffic and links to your site for years to come.

Your Turn

What are other ways designers can bring traffic into their website? Share your tips in the comments!

Related Content

• User-Friendly SEO
• 10 Excellent SEO Tips That Will Improve Your Web Design
• Designing Landing Pages That Work
• Related categories: Content Strategy and Web Design

About the Author

Skellie is a blogger and content marketer based in Melbourne, Australia. She works for Microlancer, a marketplace for freelance services. Connect with her on Twitter as @skellie.

The post Using Your Design Skills to Get Website Traffic appeared first on Six Revisions.

It was once all about gradients. It was once all about the watercolor effect. I even remember a time when it was all about the fun strokes and swooshes in logos.

We have gone through so many different trends for logo design that it’s hard to keep up with what’s relevant and what is not. We can probably think of tons of different styles for any one client using different logo trends from different time periods.

Today, it’s all about the hipster logo. And let me be the first to say this is one of the trends I absolutely adore and have utilized.

Hipster logos are sometimes pretty redundant — there’s no denying that. However, hipster logos have this simple charm that doesn’t take away from the actual product or service. It’s literally a cool way to interpret a brand that’s often modern, rustic and obvious.

Is it a bit overdone? Probably.

So much so that Tim Delger has decided to create a website and infographic that gives us a pretty satirical guide to creating these hipster logos. The idea is that the hipster logo design process doesn’t require much thought.

In some cases, you’ll see a logo that looks exactly like something else you’ve seen and probably has a concept unrelated to the product at hand. But, we all know that’s not native to this particular design style.

“The Hipster Logo Design Guide” is funny and pokes at a couple brands that probably take themselves a bit too seriously. You pick an emblem or badge, some extra design elements, a few buzzwords that are cool to use at the moment, an iconic font and go on with your wonderful new logo. And then, you’re given the idea to take that design ‘global’ by creating a rubber stamp. 

It’s fun and great to see designers poking fun at overdone themes and styles these days. It keeps people on their toes and starts to force people to think outside the box. This guide to hipster logo design is one of those, but I wouldn’t look forward to this trend dying any time soon. Hipster logos are too hip to die.

What do you think of hipster logos? Have you created a rubber stamp for your branding? Let us know in the comments.

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Cync Program Launches First Three Companies

UMBC’s Research Park Corporation, known as bwtech@UMBC, and Northrop Grumman Corporation hosted a ceremony on September 27th for the first graduating class of the Northrop Grumman Cync Program: AccelerEyes, Five Directions and Oculis Labs. The event also marked the expansion of bwtech@UMBC’s Cyber Incubator program, a sign of the program’s success and the positive economic impact both initiatives are making on the region.

The celebration, held at bwtech@UMBC, featured remarks by Northrop Grumman Corporate Vice President and President of Northrop Grumman Information Systems Kathy Warden, UMBC President Freeman Hrabowski, Baltimore County Executive Kevin Kamenetz, Speaker Pro Tem Delegate Adrienne Jones ’76 and Maryland Secretary of Business and Economic Development Dominick Murray.

“We’re proud to be a part of this endeavor and congratulate the Cync companies,” said Warden. “When seeking the most innovative approaches to mitigating the cyber threat, academia and small business bring unique insights to a cyber leader like Northrop Grumman. This partnership with UMBC and the Cync companies is generating the type of game-changing technologies that keep us ahead in the cyber battle, while helping us to cultivate tomorrow’s cyber workforce.”

“The graduation of the first three companies from this program demonstrates the potential of university and corporate partnerships to grow Maryland’s economy and support young businesses,” President Hrabowski said. “UMBC’s research park is playing an increasing role in developing the cybersecurity sector in Maryland, and we couldn’t have a better partner in that work than Northrop Grumman.”

The Cync program, founded in March 2011, is an innovative partnership that focuses on commercializing technology to protect the nation from a growing range of cyber threats. It builds on bwtech@UMBC’s successful business-incubation framework by offering a “scholarship program” for small businesses with the most promising cybersecurity ideas. Participants in the program draw on UMBC’s research expertise and Northrop Grumman resources to develop tools that will secure and protect our nation’s networks.

Participants also cut the ribbon on a 3,353 square-foot expansion of the bwtech@UMBC Cyber Incubator. The new space, called the CyberHive, will include five incubator labs, two shared offices, a conference room, coffee bar, kitchen and coworking space.

In total, there are 48 cybersecurity companies in the bwtech@UMBC community, including Light Point Security, also a Cync company and recently named a top-five Startup of the Year by the Wall Street Journal. bwtech@UMBC has the largest cluster of early-stage cybersecurity companies at a university-affiliated research park in the nation.

Sen. Barbara Mikulski and Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, made the following comments regarding the joint bwtech@UMBC/Northrop Grumman event:

“Maryland is the global epicenter of cyber security, leading the way in finding cyber tech solutions that make our country safer and preparing our cyber warriors for jobs that make our economy stronger,” said Mikulski. “Because of Maryland’s incredible federal assets, dynamic private sector and academic institutions, America’s cyber defense starts in Maryland. The partnership between institutions like UMBC and Northrop Grumman for the Cyber Cync Program is so important for Maryland and the country. It builds the cyber workforce and makes sure that our students are ready to fill the jobs of today and the jobs of tomorrow.”

“I am thrilled to see the success of the Cyber Cync Program, demonstrated by the first round of graduates celebrated today, and the expansion of UMBC’s Cyber Incubator,” said Cummings. “As technology’s role in society continues to grow, the cybersecurity problems we face will only become more difficult. Innovative partnerships like Cync play a critical role in ensuring we are able to find solutions to those problems now, and in the future.”

(10/02/13)

As summer and its warm weather comes to its inevitable close, America’s pastime brings the curtain down on its regular season and moves towards its playoffs and World Series championship.

Unfortunately, for Baltimore Orioles fans the season is now over. Dispite the disappoining season, there is one thing Orioles fans can celebrate…at least they are not supporting the Houston Astros.

 The Houston Astros are the poorest excuse for a baseball team in recent history. The Astros have now concluded its third consecutive 100 loss season (they play 162 games). One would think that team’s hapless play would end on the field. It does not.

In a promotional appeal to the female fans of Astros baseball, this dreadful organization offered a Ladies Night with an official tweet:

  “9/27 is Ladies Night by @StateFarm! Ladies can learn about baseball, enjoy music, food, drinks & more!”

Learn about baseball? What could the Astros possible have to offer in the education of baseball?

It is has been suggested the women that they have offended could put together a better team than whatever monstrosity this organization has put on the field. 

The Astros may be out of it, on the field and off… but other teams are vying in the playoffs. Who’s your pick?

               Few would call China a model of unrestricted
capitalism. It’s internal financial and administrative openness has left quite a bit to be desired.

               So the new Shanghai Pilot Free Trade Zone is quite understandably turning a few heads.

               The free trade zone itself is hardly groundbreaking—if anything, it’s simply a “redistricting” of existing zones—but the broader implications behind it might be.

               Some see it as the first step in a plethora of long-desired financial, trade, and investment reforms. Banking, trade, and investment may gradually become more open and less regulated.

               Want a more tangible sign of what this all could means down the road? Just look at China’s formal lifting of bans on foreign video game sales.

               An alleged lifting of social media bans in the zone proved to be false, certainly to some disappointment within the city.

               But who knows? Perhaps things will continue to loosen up in Shanghai–and elsewhere.