Here are my top 11 so far (in no particular order):

Get yourself out there!

Networking, blogging and social media are the way forward! At Top Left Design Keren and the team frequently update followers and clients with the latest events, offers and daily office going-ons.

Through this constant contact with people, TLD are continually establishing new contacts, friendships and exciting new ventures.

If you get yourself out there and approach marketing with confidence it will reflect on your business and also your own personal confidence – don’t be afraid to be the boldest of the bunch!

Shortcuts

Designing can be a very long process – unless your equipped with the magic shortcuts!

I’ve learnt a countless amount of shortcuts whilst working at TLD for a range of programmes, shortcuts don’t only save you time but also give your mouse a well earned rest.

*Please note we never take shortcuts when thinking up the brilliant ideas behind your designs, and also recommend to never take shortcuts in life!

Design is where the heart is

One of the best things about working at Top Left Design is being surrounded by a team that are passionate about design! Without this passion and drive we wouldn’t be able to produce the beautiful, professional and unique designs which we’re known for.

Size does matter

When designing it’s always important to have a balanced hierarchy of text and images. We always make sure that all elements work in harmony with one another creating a well balanced design.

The size of text, and fonts are fundamental in establishing headings,  subheadings, and  body text. The key is to use font styles, colours and perhaps two different fonts consistently to represent each section of text, it’s also always important to make sure the text is legible and balances well with images.

A good eye for balance whilst designing really does make a difference  – so you see, size really does matter!

Attention to detail

Good design requires a meticulous eye for detail. Its no use creating a beautiful design with those awful mistakes which make your head feel like its going to pop!

When designing we always check that the line height of text, and alignment of different elements is consistent, it’s also important to allow your design to breath. And of course we always look out for those dreaded spelling mistakes, missed full stops and bad grammar!

The importance of presentation

At Top Left Design we’re always presenting new ideas and designs to clients so its important that these designs are presented clearly and professionally.

Creating storyboards is one way which we present website designs. Live storyboards allow clients to view their designs in a browser, they can then compare each design and are also able to see what their site could look like live.

It’s also a handy way for them to get feedback from a friend or colleague, they can simply forward the link for a second opinion.

How to communicate with clients

Communication is key in any business and here at Top Left Design we make sure we’re always able to communicate clearly with clients through emails, phone calls, and meetings.

I’ve learnt how to structure emails which effectively communicate to clients any changes that have been made to their designs, quote for design work and have also learnt how and when to include polite suggestions for further changes/work – its always nice for clients to have input from the designer to help them along the way with the development of their design project. Phone calls – of course I mastered on the first day! (the traditional – Hello Nichaela speaking, how can I help-pen-paper-message) although the in-depth discussion and meetings are still yet to come…

When approaching a new design project it’s essential for both the designer and client to feel comfortable in developing the forthcoming designs. Its important for us to know the style of design the client desires, so we can feel confident in delivering the designs and making changes. Good communication is what makes your design perfect.

How to spot a good image

When including images on websites, in blogs, newsletters etc. its always important that you choose images which are eye catching, attractive and don’t look ‘clip arty’.

Below are three different types of photography, and two tips which will never fail you – what to look out for when your sourcing images :

Bokeh Photography
Bokeh is an adaptation from a Japanese word meaning blur. Photographers create this effect using lenses to adjust focus in the foreground or background, essentially highlighting one object and blurring and expanding areas of light. Just type Bokeh photography into your search engine and see what comes up – the images are amazing!

Macro Photography
This close up style of photography is always good if you want to show attention to detail. For example if your a restaurant or food company this type of photography will effectively show off your delicious food, or if your a florist it will highlight the beautiful detail of  your flowers in a very sophisticated way.

Tilt Shift Photography
Tilt Shift photographers cleverly create ‘toy like’ scenes using a special lens and movement of their camera. This type of photography creates an interesting and dynamic picture, turning your everyday scene into a miniature world.

Image source: www.smashingmagazine.com

Image source: www.hongkiat.com

Photography with interesting perspectives, arrangements and use of focus
Images with objects or people just plonked in the center aren’t very interesting and don’t draw in peoples attention. An interesting perspective, and arrangement of objects or people and use of focus will always catch someones eye.

Photography with ‘good’ backgrounds
Try to avoid images with white backgrounds as these can look very clip arty – unless of course you need an image with a white background. A nice scenery or textured background is always a great choice.

*remember its always good to think outside the box when choosing  images, make sure they’re interesting, but also relevant to the message you’re trying to convey.

How to mask!

For all you non Photoshoppers out there masking is a very handy tool which can be used in Photoshop, and other Adobe software which I recently found out exactly how to use it!

A mask can be made of one object e.g. a box for an image slider on a website. This mask can then be applied to another object such as an image, this will effectively make the image fit within the exact same space as the box – very handy in maintaining a precise and consistent design! See my example below:

Finished! or am I…

Its important not to get ahead of yourself. At Top Left Design we always encourage clients to let us know of any changes they want to their design work. We do whatever we can to create a design which reflects what they envisioned and recognise the jobs only finished when the clients are happy with their final product.

And last but not least… How to make a good cup of tea (I think)

One of the very first things Keren taught me! I’m petrified of making tea for people in case they don’t like it, but no complaints so far! Looks like Keren’s magic paid off.

Here is what Julien wrote

Hi everyone! I’ve just finished my 10 weeks internship here at Top Left Design. Usually I work more with the programming side of things, and have never really learnt much about the design process. I like coding because I’ve learnt a lot about how to do it, and so now it’s easy for me. But during this internship I saw that design is not so different from coding, you have to always keep in mind some key rules and guidelines to create a good design.

Here are the 7 most important rules I learnt at top left design during my 10 great weeks:

Composition

Align, align, align! Well-aligned elements within your layout make your website look tidy and organized. You can see an example of this on the Performance Resolution website.

Colours

Choosing the right combination of colours in reference to the client’s brief, and referring to the colours of their existing branding, is a difficult and important task in order to create visual harmony within the new branding and website. It’s also good to have some contrast between different elements to highlight important sections of the website, you can do this by using a combination of bright and dark colours, and this can also help to guide the reader through the site.

Visual Hierarchy

You should highlight things important like the services offered by your company, and keep less important things more simple. You can see on the A Business Innovation website that there services are highlighted in boxes making this section stand out to people.

Consistency

The website should be consistent, each page should be identifiable as part of the whole.

The little things matter

Details are very important in any type of work. It is the same with the design: details are the difference between a good design and great design.

When I started working on design layouts, I realised that every final site produced perfectly reflected the final design. This means the margins, padding, backgrounds and borders have to be perfectly consistent through your designs, it’s also important that the colours and fonts stay consistent throughout the site.

At the beginning of my internship it was very hard for me to follow these rules, I found it easy to make small mistakes in a layout, such as remembering to make sure everything is aligned exactly, making sure the right colours are used throughout, and ensuring the titles are consistent sizes. And the fact is I didn’t understand why it was so important because by definition, it was only small details… But now I know why.

Looking out for the little things whilst designing and remembering your ‘rules’ whilst designing really does have it benefits:

• The most obvious: The work looks more professional, if you always make small mistakes your reputation will suffer.

• You don’t waste time explaining these little mistakes when the client is viewing your designs. Everything is perfect and so you can focus spending time discussing the things that really matter.

• It makes you more organized. If you’re organised and have named each of your layers in Photoshop, and grouped these into folders it means when you come to making small changes you save a lot of time. Naming your layers in Photoshop is really important when you are working in a team as it’s not only you that will be working on those files.

• Faster development. For example if you design a blog which is not correctly aligned and you send it off to the programmer to be built, the programmer doesn’t have to waste time figuring out if you made a small mistake or if it was intentional.

Check your work

This tip is linked to my previous point. The final design has to be perfect to avoid a dissatisfied or disappointed client. Everything is double checked to be sure the result is as expected. Sometimes when you work for a long time on a design you can’t detect mistakes easily. That’s why it’s important to have someone else in the team to take a look over the design, and see if there are any little tweaks which need to be made.

Keep it simple

A design can look sophisticated and professional without many design elements which may just prove to be useless. Personally when I’m looking through a website for information about a company, I prefer to see a clean and minimalist design where it’s easy to find what you want, and not be distracted by things that are not as important.

Caroline and Julien are two french students who spent 10 weeks with the team at Top Left Design on a summer internship. 10 weeks have flown by! They have sadly left and will be truly missed by all of us at Top Left Design. In this blog post Caroline shares a little bit about her experience at TLD and the new things she learnt.

Here is what Caroline wrote

Here we are: 10 weeks have gone by, and it’s already the end. When I look at the pieces of paper which I wrote all of my tasks on each week, I think we can say that it’s been amazing. From tasks which took me several days to complete to some which only took me a few minutes, each week has been a new experience.

Of course at University I’m used to working on many projects at one time. But the big difference between school and an internship is that here, there is always somebody to help you to improve your work, and also to explain to you why it could be improved and above all HOW. It’s not just a mark at the end of a semester; it’s a real explanation – a great way to learn how to improve your skills, so each time you design it gets better and better.

Is 10 weeks too short a time to have a well-rounded vision of the world of work, and significantly develop your knowledge surrounding design? Do you really think so? If so, I hope I can persuade you to change your mind…

The 3 common mistakes that I made at the beginning of my internship:

1.  When designing I either made the line spaces too big or too small, but never the size they were supposed to be.

Solution: Be patient and analyse carefully existing designs to find the perfect spacing for yours. You always have to check what size the font is and adapt the line space accordingly. It’s the same for the spacing between the different design elements e.g. image sliders and boxes. The spacing needs to be consistent throughout allowing your design to breathe.

2.  Designing without enough individuality or character!

Solution: Add colours to the design and noise to the background, this makes the website background look textured and helps to make the website look welcoming. The best way to be inspired whilst designing is to have a look at great examples of website design which already exist on the web.

3.  I would sometimes design using too much text – nobody wants to read a page like that!

Solution: Put 2 or 3 colourful boxes to catch the viewer’s attention, and always try to find good images to space out the layout, this will make the page more harmonious. Plus you can always add a read more link.

The 3 types of tasks at Top Left Design which helped me to learn more about design:

1.  Creating a homepage layout using the brief filled out by the client

Even if you have never met the client, you have to be able to understand their brand and brief to be able to create a design which is fresh and new, but also very personal and relevant to the company. It’s important to include all of the design elements which the client has asked for within the layout, e.g. a blog feed, image slider and side navigation.

2.  Design all of the inner pages of a website even if you didn’t create the homepage

When designing inner pages it is important to follow the final design of the homepage. You have to make sure the style of design throughout the rest of the site is consistent with the homepage. It’s important to be really conscientious to ensure that the fonts, colours, and small details such as borders of boxes and so many other things are the same across all of the pages.

3.  Working on the creation of a logo

Such hard work! Of course you need to create a design which suites the clients brief and brand, but you need to have THE idea which will make the logo unique. It’s important to create something recognizable and also distinctive, however with a small amount of intricate details ensuring the logo will remain legible when used at a smaller size.

As you can see, you need much more than simply just knowledge of software to be able to create a great design. University taught me technical skills; Top Left Design gave me the opportunity to go beyond that.

To conclude, my first impression was that the team seemed to be so friendly… And now, the last thing that I can say about Top Left Design is that the team is definitively, extraordinarily friendly!

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“The team of Top Left Design is young, dynamic and very open minded and it was easy to get along with everybody. The team was so friendly and even thought of my birthday.
I was really impressed how quick the employees of Top Left Design could work with the graphic programs, I learned so much about using those programs faster by applying short cuts.
The whole team thought me so much only by analyzing my design work, giving me advice and making me think farther so that I could improve a lot of my designs.
It was a great pleasure to work at Top Left Design, the working atmosphere was very harmonic and sometimes pretty funny.
I really enjoyed my time and loved the work and I hope I’ll have the chance to come back someday. Working at Top Left Design encouraged me to be on the right way in life.”
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“When I heard about my internship in web design I was a little bit afraid, because I’ve never worked with HTML and web design before. But in the end I enjoyed it and I now know more about web design and how to present the designs to clients.
To be honest – this is my first internship that I really enjoyed. The whole team was very friendly and open minded and it was a very relaxed atmosphere. I even had my own computer – that was great!

The special things I have learnt whilst on my internship were:

Using Adobe Photoshop, Macromedia HomeSite, Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Indesign
How to make a gradient (using Layers) [ Photoshop]
How a website is designed in Photoshop then built in HTML (Footer, Top, Navigation, font size & Home and Inner, Templates) [ Photoshop & HomeSite]

I had a lot of projects, which was very good – so I could do a lot of designs which made me very happy. Sometimes I thought I was very helpful, so I hope at the end I was very useful to your company.

Every day I tried my best and the whole time in the internship was a very good experience for me. Thank you for giving me a lot of different projects to work on. This was very good and has built on my experiences.

I wish I could stay longer in your company because it was a really good time for me. I really liked this internship. This was the best internship I’ve ever had (seriously!).

In the past the other internships were not as good as here, because the atmosphere was not as good….a couple of my bosses were uptight and not good-humoured like you and your team are.

It was a great time at Top Left Design for me!”
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We will miss Maja too!
She was hard working, showed great talent, was quick to learn and helpful. We wish her luck in her future career – keep in touch!