17 Tools For Making Awesome Client Presentations
Ask five designers how they handle client design presentations and you’ll get five different answers. Some like to do their presentations in person, accompanying their designs with printouts detailing specific highlights. Others prefer utilizing an online screen sharing experience and talking their clients through their design in real time. And then there are those who simply ship off the jpgs in an email outlining the design’s main points. No matter what your method is for revealing your design, it is important to use tools and resources that can make your presentation successful. Without further ado, here’s a list of some of the best apps and tools for delivering the perfect client presentation.
Calls and Screen Sharing
Join.me
It’s simple, easy, and free. Either join someone’s screen share or share your own. You can invite up to 250 viewers into your screen share and can even let them take control of your computer. Join.me has a great list of features, such as internet calling, chat, and file sharing, which makes it a great all-in-one solution for screen sharing presentations.
Skype
Skype has over 600 million users, so chances are high that even your client will have an account that he/she can hop on to at any time. Skype is a great way to have face-to-face conversations with clients when the option of meeting them in person is unavailable. In addition, if you need to chat with more than one person in a single call, Skype comes with conference call support so you can include as many people as you want in your presentation. Most importantly, Skype has a built-in screen sharing ability that allows you to switch from video to design comp with ease.
GotoMeeting
GotoMeeting is a familiar business go-to for conference calls and screen shares. You can attend meetings from your phone or your computer and utilize its convenient scheduling features to help better organize your meetings and presentations.
Google Video Chat
You probably already have your Gmail inbox open, so why not hop on a video or audio call with your clients within the same workspace? If you live in your Gmail inbox archives and frequently reference email exchanges and attachments in your workflow, Google Video is the perfect solution for communicating with your clients.
Google Voice
This is a frequently underrated communication tool that makes living our work lives on computers that much easier. Free up your hands by using your computer as your phone. Even if you miss a call, you can easily access it via Google voicemail or email transcription!
Presenting: Information Architecture and Prototypes
Axure
Axure is a powerful and robust flowcharting, wireframing, and prototyping tool for all of your IA and prototyping needs. Axure is easy to use and is packed with every sort of web tool imaginable for creating the web wireframe or prototype of your dreams. You can even utilize its dynamic panels and widgets (including user-created widgets) to make your prototypes interactive. And if you want to get even more complex with your prototypes, you can integrate APIs and data to make your prototypes work with remote data!
Mockingbird
If you’re looking for an inexpensive, browser-based solution, Mockingbird is the way to go. If you’re working with a team, everyone can access and work on your wireframes together. Previewing and sharing your wireframes is easy, and since everything is online, you’ll avoid having to deal with more file organization and clutter. To make things even easier, Mockingbird has an intuitive UI, with simple drag-and-drop interactions, smart text resizing, and interactive page linking.
Omnigraffle
Omnigraffle is a great Mac solution for creating and presenting flowcharts, sitemaps, and wireframes. While it comes with a great span of tools to create your IA needs, it really shines with its “stencils” feature. For a fully customizable and personalized look, you can utilize Omnigraffle’s stencil or user-created libraries.
InVision
Want to create beautiful wireframes and prototypes? InVision is a simple and intuitive web application that allows you to take your design jpgs, pngs, or gifs and turn them into interactive prototypes within minutes. You’ll be amazed at how easy it is to turn your flattened PSD images into dazzling working prototypes.
Presenting: Designs
Photoshop full view mode and layer comps
Did you know you can utilize the different screen modes in Photoshop to view your PSD file? Photoshop’s Full Screen view hides everything but whatever is on your canvas and allows for easy toggling access back to the PSD in case you want to edit some nitty gritty elements of your file. Another great way to present designs is to use Photoshop layer comps. Layer comps allow you to save specific visibility, position, and layer styles for different versions or parts of your design. These layer comps are saved to your PSD so you can come back to them at any time.
Preview for Mac
If you’re using a Mac, Preview is a powerful default image viewer that allows for easy viewing of your jpgs, pngs, and pdfs. If you have Lion OS X installed, you can take preview one step further by taking advantage of the revamped Slideshow or Full Screen modes. These two modes have the same functions as Preview normally does, but they’re now packed with beautiful isolated presentation screens that allow you to swipe between multiple images in a subtle but showy sliding interaction.
Picasa Photo Viewer for PC
While Windows Picture and Fax viewer has some merit to its usability, a great image viewing app that you might want to consider installing on your PC is the Picasa Photo Viewer. It’s got a great interface for navigating through files, and its black overlay background makes viewing a single design (PSD or image file) both clean and easy.
Browser Viewing
For web-based projects, another interesting way to present a design is to drag your image file straight into your internet browser. This gives your clients the experience of seeing your design in its natural environment and helps capture a better overall impression of how the design will feel. Also, if you’re HTML/CSS savvy, you can make edits with the browser’s “Inspect element” screen to center and throw a background color behind your image. You’ll hardly be able to tell that the design isn’t live!
Feedback and Collaboration Tools
Notable
Notable app allows your clients to give feedback straight onto the designs themselves (image files only). What’s especially nice about Notable is that feedback is displayed as an overlayed highlight area that clearly indicates what parts of the design are being discussed. You can then have a threaded conversation on that feedback or even create your own notes on your design.
InVision
InVision was mentioned earlier for its wireframing and prototyping capabilities, but it also allows for collaborative feedback on these projects. So not only will you have beautiful IA and designs to show your client, you can also ask them make comments right on your InVision mockups.
Basecamp
Basecamp is one of the most popular project management systems on the web. Apart from its project management system, however, is its feedback environment for designs and PSDs. Since many of your clients will probably be familiar with Basecamp, having them provide their feedback within the app itself will be beneficial for both of you. This helps you keep your project organized, recorded, and easily accessible. If you’re looking for free alternatives that yield similar results, take a look at Freedcamp and Podio.
Google Docs
Free and popular, Google Docs is a great area for storing feedback on Word docs, Excel sheets, and many other document types. Google Docs has a particularly useful commenting system which allows for easy comment threading and discussion. Especially if your clients enjoy giving written feedback, consider taking advantage of this online resource.
About the Author:
Jessica Moon is both the blog editor and a UX/UI designer at digital-telepathy, a user experience design studio that specializes in creating products like SlideDeck, Hello Bar, and Impress. She has a passion for illustration and design, and enjoys blogging and sharing what she’s learned via Twitter and Google+.
7 Practical Ways to Gain Exposure as a Designer
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New freelancers and students who are just coming out of school are often faced with the challenge of gaining exposure for their work. The exposure is often needed for securing new client projects, but it can also be needed to help with landing a job or just building name recognition within the industry.
With so many talented designers out there already it can seem like a daunting task to grab any exposure for yourself. In this article we’ll look at some practical ways that any designer can improve their exposure. Implement a few of these ideas and you will be well on your way to reaching your goals of landing new clients and building name recognition. Several of the suggestions involve social media and/or blogging, so if you don’t already participate in those activities now is the time to start.
1. Design Galleries
One of the best ways to gain exposure and to build a name for yourself is to let your work do the speaking. Your portfolio site is not only a place to show off your work from client projects, the design of your portfolio site itself can lead to loads of exposure. Web design galleries like CSS Mania, Best Web Gallery, and hundreds of others showcase top quality work of designers from all over the world. Being showcased on a few of the leading galleries can provide exposure to thousands of people.
Likewise, design blogs like our own often publish posts for inspiration that showcase brilliant design examples. Being showcased on a few popular blogs can bring an equal amount of exposure, if not more. Many times blogs find sites to showcase by browsing web design galleries, so having your portfolio site approved to the major design galleries can lead to even more exposure through blogs.
In addition, gallery/portfolio sites like Behance, deviantART, and Carbonmade allow you to set up a portfolio and display all kinds of work, not just web designs.
2. Guest Post at Major Design Blogs
In the web and graphic design niche there are countless blogs that accept guest post submissions. In some cases authors are paid, and other times the exposure and a link may be the incentive for the writer. Whether it is paid or not, having guest posts published on leading design blogs is one of the best ways to quickly gain exposure in the industry. This provides the opportunity to display your abilities and your expertise while teaching or discussing a particular topic.
With leading blogs that reach hundreds of thousands, and sometimes millions, of visitors per month, there is plenty of opportunity here. You may think that you would only reach other designers by writing for design blogs, but that is not always the case. One of the longest term clients that we’ve ever had found us through a post published at Smashing Magazine. Those guest posts that you have published will continue to provide exposure into the future as they show up in search results.
3. Release Freebies
By creating and distributing a high-quality freebie you can pick up a lot of links to your site (where it is available for download), leading to visitors and exposure. Freebies aren’t great for directly leading to a lot of client work, but they are effective for building name recognition and for strengthening the quality of your domain through increased links to your site.
The possibilities for freebies are huge. Some popular items include PSD files, WordPress themes, icon sets, vectors, Photoshop brushes, and textures. Readers love to be able to get free items that they can put to good use, and many website owners and bloggers are happy to link to free resources. They also tend to be shared via social media.
If you’re dedicating the time to create something useful for others, you may also need to help get the ball rolling for promotion. If you have a blog with a decent following or social media profiles (like Twitter, Facebook, or Google+) with a large following you may be able to simply publish it on your blog and share it via social media. With a large enough following it should take off from there. But if you are looking for more exposure, chances are you don’t already have a large following. So here are a few things you can do to gain some momentum for your freebie:
- Contact bloggers and send them a link to your free resource
- Contact influential social media users and send them a link to your freebie
- Build a network of friends who will help each other with social media promotion
- Write a guest post for a leading blog and link to your freebie in the author bio
- Write a guest post for a leading blog with a link to your freebie in the post content
- Have the freebie distributed from a popular blog in addition to, or instead of, being distributed from your site
4. Write for Magazines, Newspapers, or Other Publications
While blogs and online publications can be great sources of exposure, offline publications should not be ignored. There are several magazines for designers that accept article submissions. Having an article published in a respected magazine would not only provide exposure for yourself, but it would also help to build your credibility when mentioned in a bio or on your portfolio site.
If you are targeting local clients and looking for exposure to business owners in the area, writing for your newspaper is a great option. Many papers are open to publishing articles in the business section that would provide tips or suggestions for business websites. This can be a great way to get your name out there to potential clients and it helps to build credibility as you will be seen as an expert on the subject.
5. Provide Training (In Person or Webinars)
Teaching others is one of the best ways to brand yourself as an expert and to pick up new clients. In a way, this is what you are doing when publishing guest posts at other blogs and writing for printed publications. Another way of doing that is through live training, either in person or online through webinars. The possible topics are endless. You could either offer training that will help other designers to improve their craft, or you could provide training to people who would fall into your target market for clients.
Offering training for designers can obviously help to improve exposure with the industry and to build your name recognition, although it likely won’t produce as many clients as offering a training session to people who would fall into your target market.
The training could be offered in person at a seminar, conference, or chamber of commerce event. Webinars are relatively easy to setup with services like GoToWebinar and AnyMeeting. If you are using training as a way to gain clients you’ll want to offer valuable information for free during the training, but have some type of extended offer or personalized services that can be purchased for those who want to go beyond the free training. The quality of the free training is then your sales tool to convince attendees that your services will truly be worth the price.
6. Write a Book
Another outstanding way to position yourself as an expert on a subject is to publish a book. Being a published author tends to give you as much or more credibility than just about anything else you can do. While published books are great for this, e-books are also excellent for gaining exposure. Anyone can produce and distribute an e-book, so it might not give you the same type of credibility as having your book picked up by a publisher. But in terms of getting people to your website, an e-book can be extremely valuable.
Free e-books are often linked to on blogs, websites, and social media. Those that are truly valuable often get recommendations and priceless exposure for the author. And the costs associated with producing and distributing an e-book are very small, with the exception of the cost of your time to write it.
7. Dribbble and Forrst
In recent years designers have flocked to new social networking sites like Dribbble and Forrst. These sites are not only great for getting inspiration from the work of other designers, but they also provide opportunities to get exposure for your own work. You’ll need to get an invite to join either of these sites. You can submit a request for an invite, or if you are lucky you may be able to get one from someone you know or from a contest somewhere.
What’s Your Experience?
What methods have you used to gain exposure? If you have advice for our readers please feel free to share it in the comments.
Free Stained Paper Textures
Check out our new Exotico UI Set. Free and premium versions available.
This set of textures was created by staining brown paper multiple times with ink and bleach. They combine the always-popular paper texture with splatters and stains to create interesting results. The set includes 4 free textures that we hope can be put to good use in your own projects.
These stained paper textures are free for use in both personal and commercial projects. The only restriction is that they cannot be re-distributed or sold.
Download the textures (8 MB zip file)
40 Excellent Fonts to Use Through Google Web Fonts
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In recent years the possibilities for using a wide variety of fonts and typefaces in web design has come a long way. There are now several different options for approaches that you can take when you want to use a font other than the basic, standard web safe fonts. Google Web Fonts has quickly become one of the leading options.
With Google Web Fonts it is quick and easy to implement a wide variety of fonts into the websites that you design and code. There are currently more than 500 fonts that are available through Google Web Fonts, and many of them are of sufficient quality to use in professional designs. In this post we’ll feature 40 fonts that you can start using today.
35 Navigation Menus for Your Design Inspiration
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Navigation menus are an important part of any web design for usability purposes, but they can also serve to improve the look and feel of the website. When designing navigation menus there are any number of different approaches that you can take, and in this post we’ll show 35 examples of sites with attractive menus. These examples sites can serve as an excellent source of inspiration for your own projects, as every website needs a good navigation menu.
For more design inspiration please see:
- Showcase of Amazing Websites with Attention to Detail
- 10 Examples of Effective Infographics
- 21 Marketing Agency Websites
- Shopping Cart Design
- Landing Page Design