Portfolio applications for graphic designers

Brian — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 17:13:48 +0000

If you’re a graphic designer, you know you need an online portfolio. You probably have one already. And if you don’t, you can always find free Flash, JavaScript and plug-ins for popular CMS systems such as Wordpress, Joomla! and others.

But there’s more to building a great online portfolio than simply uploading some images to your site or a dynamic framework that showcases your skills in fluid motion.

Social networking.

If you haven’t engaged in social networking for your portfolio, you’re in for a treat (assuming you’re good at what you do. You are good, right?). There are many, many ways to socially network your skills online.

Why spread your portfolio into the vastness of the web when you can update it on a central server? Exposure, traffic, sales; in that order.

Do you get a quarter million visitors a month like behance.net does? It might be worth your while to post your portfolio there. Here are a few other graphic design portfolio websites your work should be listed on:

Designer’s Toolbox
Carbon Made
BeHance
Deviant Art
CPU Luv
Coroflot
Flickr
MySpace
Facebook
Elance
Guru

Best free Drupal themes

Brian — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 21:38:54 +0000

I write a lot about content management systems, probably Joomla! more than others. But by far my favorite CMS is Drupal. The system is powerful, extensible and customizable to a degree unmatched by other systems. The core delight of Drupal is that every add-on seems to work seamlessly with all other add-ons, while other systems have add-ons that conflict with one another and cause hellish nightmares of PHP code and .htaccess horrors.

One of the things I love about Drupal is the free themes — many of them look great and they’re easy to change (Joomla! is the same way, really). Here are three of my favorites, and why:

I love Acquia Marina because it’s easy to work with and customize, if you even want to. The entire template is elegant and Web 2.0, including form fields, which typically look blocky with most other themes. A bit of CSS can clear that up, sure, but it’s nice to not have to code any more than I have to (since I’m NOT a developer by trade, my knowledge is limited). Acquia Marina also features 15-plus block regions, allowing you to shape your site’s features however you’d like.

Contrast is another favorite of mine, mostly because it’s incredibly simple to work with. Contrast doesn’t offer a lot of options, but the layout is clean and the navigation is intuitive. Like Acquia Marina, Contrast is easy to customize and serves as a great base for the Ubercart shopping cart, though this isn’t its intended purpose.

For the hardcore custom Drupal nuts, I favor the Zen theme because it’s meant to be a developer’s template you can build on to create your own custom theme. I’ve used it on several projects and it has performed well to date. For Drupal customization, Zen is the platform to build with.

What are your favorite free Drupal themes?

PsPrint Blog » drupal

Portfolio applications for graphic designers

Best free Drupal themes