Fashion designers have a myriad of career paths open to them. They may choose to work for clothing, footwear or accessory distributors. They may opt to pursue an elite career for high-end stores and specialty shops or fashion salons. Or, they may choose to work in the manufacturing end for pattern, textile, or apparel manufacturers. Whichever path they choose, few will break into the industry without the aid of fashion design degrees programs. With two to four years of fashion design training, doors start opening for the graduate.
A variety of traits are important to those considering a career in fashion design. They should be interested in and knowledgeable about trends in fashion, fabric, and color. A sense of balance and proportion is critical; an ability to sketch is advantageous. Creative flair is essential. Fashion design schools can help the individual learn how to express that creativity on paper via sketches or via computer-aided design. Fashion design schools also help the student learn how to use current trend research to create designs that have the best possible chance of success in the marketplace, helping the designer secure a better salary and achieve greater success in their chosen career path. As fashion design is not just art, but also commerce, fashion design degree programs can help merge talent with knowledge and experience to create a graduate that is in demand. Continue reading →
What to do to reinforce your brand
Even in good years, a unique and clearly developed personality is important for businesses selling goods and services. With money tighter than ever and customers everywhere taking extra time to make sure they really need to spend anything, a good brand strategy is more important than ever. Your company must be uniquely focused and on-target so that customers will choose to spend their more limited resources on you. Here are some tips about how to make your brand recession resistant, without breaking your own budget.
- Set clear goals and know your audience. Learn who buys your products or services and target your marketing strategies to this audience. Once you have identified your focus, your brand awareness strategies can follow. Understand their changing needs as time passes – and focus on changing along with these needs so that you don’t lose consumer interest. Continue reading →
Continuing the theme of sustainable creative businesses, what does it mean to build and then lead a staff? Few of us received any formal training for it, so we often model our own style on the examples we’ve had in other bosses (and parents). Too bad, really, because learning to do this ought to be a lot less accidental. Continue reading →
Staying competitive and sustaining success in today’s business environment requires thinking “outside the box”. Patented technologies, improved bottom line, streamlined processes, and market leadership are some of the compelling reasons for unleashing creativity in the workplace. Acquiring skills that help develop creative potential require strategies that are an interplay of art and science. The art is about intuitive wisdom —believing that you and your team have the intuitive ability for creative thinking and giving your mind time to synthesize unconventional, breakthrough solutions through deep, exploratory thinking. The science is about effectively implementing the tools and techniques to spark ideas. Continue reading →
Menu links are some of the most important features on a website in terms of SEO. The keywords in these links tell search engines about the main idea of the content on the connecting page and also give search engine spiders access to other areas of the site. That is – if the menus are search engine friendly.
Many of the more visually elaborate menus are SEO show stoppers. Some ways to ensure that your menus are search engine friendly are:
- Use text for menu links: Search engines read texts, so ideally menu links should be text as opposed to graphically designed buttons. Instead, use CSS to create design.
- Use some form of expandable menu system so that second tier links are accessible from the home page.
- Avoid Flash and JavaScript menus – search engines can’t (or in the case of JavaScript, won’t) read the text or spider them.
- If you’re set on cool drop-down effects, use DHTML – but very carefully. When using DHTML menus code cannot be placed in external JavaScript files. Also, DHTML menus have a tendency to get wacky depending on the browser. Here’s a great case study about a site that used DHTML menus and ranks #1 in the search engines.
- You’ve certainly heard this before, but include a site map. A good site map is still the best way to ensure that all pages get indexed.
David Williams is an Ethical Search Engine Optimization expert located in Raleigh, North Carolina. He works with people all over the United States marketing their websites. David has also been a public speaker since 2000.
