Let’s start with a throwback to 1997 when the Web design process required expensive graphic design software and lines of code in Notepad. When you finally did launch something, your server was at the mercy of an Internet full of sketchy hackers.
Fortunately, those days are gone—long gone.
The Web design space is more mature now than it ever has been. In fact, it’s a $20 billion dollar industry. You can go download a template, hire a web designer for something custom, or use software-as-a-service (SaaS) to DIY. The bottom line is that you have options for any budget, and all are good.
However, the increase in options can often complicate things, especially if you are planning to create your own website. That’s why DIY options still only hold three percent of the Web design market, which is a testament to the fact that in the SaaS world, there is no such thing as a ‘one size fits all’ solution.
The bottom line is that you need to choose an option that’s right for the specific challenges that you’re looking to tackle. With this mindset, you’ll also save a lot of money. Find the right SaaS design tools by following these steps.

Step 1: Know your buyer persona

Choose the right tool by putting yourself through a process that these companies’ marketers are following in their own targeting efforts—buyer persona development.
If you’re a programmer but not a designer, you’ll get the most value from working with a template. If you’re strong with UX, you might need to hire someone or find a solution to help with your brand identity. If you’re a strong designer without coding experience or prefer not to mess with coding, you’ll find value in a platforms like BrandedLogoDesigns
The bottom line is that no SaaS product will be everything to everyone. Know what you need so that you can laser-focus on the solution that’s right for you.

Step 2: Cover your technical bases

The evolution of digital has introduced a number of complexities to the Web design process—the biggest being security, privacy, and compliance. Legal speak aside, you need to make sure that you’re taking steps to keep your customers safe.
You shouldn’t procrastinate compliance.
You’ll want to be sure that there are no known vulnerabilities with your website.
One of the most effective ways to cover your bases, especially if you’re a solo designer, is to work with a third-party, cloud-based partner that works with thousands of customers like you.

Step 3: Research whether the platform can grow with you

Choose a SaaS tool that is designed to help you—and your customers—grow your business.
At a minimum, you should have full branding power and control, ability to service multiple clients, and a strong support experience. You should also trust that your website will always load quickly and that it will be responsive to any device.
Whether you’re creating a website for yourself or for one of your clients, your platform should be able to evolve alongside your growing business.

Step 4: Figure out who’s building your product

Human relationships are the key to success with SaaS software.
As you learn how to use your web design tool, you’ll likely need support and guidance along the way. Unexpected scenarios come up often, and when you need answers, you’ll need them fast. You’ll also want to make sure that the company with whom you’re doing business understands your pain points, challenges, and needs.
At a bare minimum, the people behind your SaaS software need to care. Webydo, for instance, is built by designers, for designers, around the pain points that designers face. Webydo’s community of designers has been integral in the evolution of the platform, with over 450 suggested features implemented as a result of the feedback.
It’s important to choose partners who build because they care. After all, at the end of the day, great products are built, at least in part, on empathy.

Final thoughts

It’s easy to say that the Internet is going through a “SaaS revolution.” The reality, however, is that makers, creators, and builders are experiencing much more. Thanks to technology, people have the flexibility and resources to leverage and laser-focus their skills. The ability to write code is no longer the cornerstone of creation. Do what you love, create amazing designs, and leave it to SaaS tools to do the building on your behalf.
Article Source: The Next Web

BrandedLogoDesigns Scam
A common phenomenon in humans is that we compare things based on their prices and outer looks to make our buying decision. In doing this, we often sideline the actual quality and true worth of the product. This is not only true for buying clothes and other daily accessories, but in purchasing logo designs as well. People mostly demand for a cheap and attractive logo, not paying attention to the more important factors of originality and copyrights.  A copied and edited logo will not be able to give the same strength to your product as an original and thoughtful logo will. For this reason, if you want to purchase inexpensive logos then you have to either compromise the quality or the originality of the design. In case you want a solution to have both originality and quality of the logo design in cheap rats, then BrandedLogoDesigns can provide a pertinent solution.
There have a number of scams against BrandedLogoDesigns stating that we take use of editing software to design our logo. Undoubtedly, such practices are common in the logo design industry and several companies adopt these strategies to offer logos in minimum prices, as the only effort they put is to edit the logo using a software tool. However, such companies would never offer a money back guarantee policy and will not offer 100% ownership right. It is simple that there is always a probability of customers finding that the design is not original and suing the company. For gaining a few dollars, no company that relies on copied designs would take that much risk; it is plain common sense! Therefore, it is apparent that companies that do offer the additional benefits of money back guarantee and 100% ownership rights have total confidence of their designs. Having said that, BrandedLogoDesigns is one of those companies that not only offers ownership rights and money back guarantee, we also offer the service of customized logo as per the customer’s request. Initially, we offer a set of concept icon from which the customer select the one which is the most suitable for him or her. Only after confirmation we proceed to further designing of the logo, just according to the customer’s description. This concurs to the fact that comments on website and chat forums against BrandedLogoDesigns are plain scams or the dirty trick of BrandedLogoDesigns reports competitors.
Scamming is not a new strategy to degrade the reputation of the opponent’s brand. What we have learnt over our successful journey of 10 years is that a company can only rise if it puts all attention towards self improvement. For this reason, we apart ourselves from such filthy practices as it would d nothing but to deviate our attention from our prime goal to degrading others. BrandedLogoDesigns’s services and quality standards are unmatched to many others in the market, and therefore, we are confident that BrandedLogoDesigns scams would not be able to affect the company’s name and customer trust.

Brandedlogodesigns Reviews | Skype Has Lost The Battle Against Sky

In the second Sky-related setback, Microsoft got banned from registering the trademark for Skype, its voice chat service, after being pushed to rename SkyDrive to One Drive.
It was ruled by an EU court that Microsoft’s Skype is too alike in terms of the name with Sky TV, which could possibly confuse the public.
The ruling keeps Microsoft from filing a trademark for its video, voice and text chat service Skype and its light blue bulb logo design in the EU, in the 2nd knockout against Microsoft centering on Sky-like names within these two years.
The case was brought about by Microsoft challenging 2012 & 2013 decisions by trademark authority of the EU, succeeding a complaint from Sky UK in 2005, formerly called British Sky Broadcasting.
Microsoft is unable to register Skype as its trademark, yet fortunately this time the company has not been forced to use its Skype name, contrasting the last tussle of US tech company with Sky on its cloud storage service once known as SkyDrive.
Microsoft’s argument that the name “Skype” is highly distinctive & had even entered the lexicon to identify voice over IP services was ignored by the court.
The ruling creates the possibilities for Sky UK to pursue Microsoft for the licensing fee for the name “sky” in Skype.
Courtroom battles tie current companies in legal knots, & sweeping rulings cramp innovation as well as deter invention. But considering what the past decade has shown, Sky is right to worry for the new branding confusion the next 10 years of convergence could yield.
Disappointing the design professionals, the federal government has selected an image created by a 19-year-old student as the logo for Canada’s 150th anniversary of Confederation.
Picked out among 300 entries in a competition aimed at students, the succeeding symbol is a stylized maple leaf constituted by multi-colored diamond shapes. It is going to be featured in all Canada Government’s products and events concerning the 150th anniversary in 2017.



Miss Ariana Cuvin, a second-year student of the University of Waterloo’s global business & the digital arts program, said that the diamonds and colors in her design are not the illustration of anything in particular. She told the Citizen, “I just wanted to go with something very simple,”.
However, the Canada150.gc.ca web site provides a different vision of what Cuvin described as her vision of the design. It says she aimed the base of a maple leaf, which is consists of four diamonds, to stand for the four provinces that shaped Confederation. The nine other diamonds that are expanding outwards, it says, were intended to represent the three territories and six other provinces.
Cuvin, who received $5,000 for the succeeding design, said she didn’t have enough time to come up with the concept because she only finds out about the contest 2 or 3 days before the submission deadline.
Miss Ariana Cuvin said that the significance of her achievement has just started to sink in. She said, “I’m still trying to process it,”.
Ariana Cuvin
Critiques:
Matthew Warburton, the design manager with the communications and marketing department of the University of British Columbia’s said, “To my eye, it looks like student work,”.

Mark Busse, a partner & managing director of a design firm, Industrial Brand, said the logo “meets the minimum criteria of a usable logo.”
A well-designed logo can serve as a lightning bolt to light up its brand and spark the sense of instant recognition at the back of viewer’s mind. But what if you see a famous logo in a completely different language, presume, Chinese? Does that lightning bolt still strike in the same manner?
This is something an Istanbul-based artist Mehmet Gozetlik wanted to reveal and his effort to figuring this out comes out as his new project, Chinatown. Gozetlik, in this project, reinterprets well-known and well-accustomed Western logos as the neon signs that appears to be plucked right from the side of your nearby Chinese restaurant.
On the signage examples, Mehmet maintained the graphic identity recognized by the consumers around the globe, but described the company’s brand in Chinese characters — e.g., the Shell Oil signage reads “gasoline”; Starbucks reads “Caramel Macchiato”, etc.
This effort of Mehmet fascinatingly expresses that how, and why, different logos are pasted in our brain. All in all, Chinatown’s signs seem to show that the sweet spot for the well-known logos that can bridge the gap between the East & the West can exceed the limitations with its distinctive art than its typography. For example, logo like MasterCard, 7-Eleven, Shell, Burger King, Pepsi, etc. were easy to recognize by their shapes and colors. While the mascots were helpful in recognizing other logos like Starbucks or Chiquita Banana.
Every moment in our daily life, we encounter a logo, whether it is Nestle’s bottle, Body Shop’s  balm, corn flakes or  Lambert & Butler Gold Cigarette. But, some of these logos are good enough to be pasted in the back of our minds and are able to get recognized even when seen in any other unfamiliar language.


Behind every successful man is a woman and behind every successful logo is a talented designer and his extra-exquisite Sketching. What most of the designers may not realize is that the sketches are a crucial element of the design & development process. Sketches help a lot in expressing ideas, demonstrating functionality, visualizing user flow, and illustrating anything that requires human interaction.
Here are some of the benefits that come complimentary with this practice, so that the newbies in the designing industry should wake and smell the coffee, and stop overlooking it.

Brainstorming with Brainsketching:
It just takes a few seconds for the very first idea to get skipped out of your head. You can easily translate and refine your idea on sketchbook using a pencil or pen as compared to on your computer using illustrator, which leads to better brainstorming. Sketching allows you to convey your ideas swiftly and involve others in producing the final look of the design. By giving yourself the free space to scribble out rough ideas, all you’ll end up is access to creative places you could never ever have imagined.


Apparently bad, still wonderful:
Sketches offer others a gander into your thinking. When you explore new ideas, it’s easy to reveal them in the form of your sketches. Unlike the mock-ups, sketches don’t need to be pretty. You don’t need to hold any sort of technical design skills for doing this. This makes collaborating with clients, as well as your team members a breeze.

Separates concepts from details.
Your client, at times, focuses on the wrong details on his/her first disposal to the initial concept, it’s completely natural. If you take your idea right to a design program, clients are likely to get zeroed in on that single color, or the first typography style presented.


So, the next time you’re provided with the communication task of any sort, whether it’s a logo design, a brand concept or anything else, trust your hand at sketching. Incorporating sketching into your designing tasks will enhance your appearance in your professional routine.
 ZTE’s brand improvements.


ZTE is one of the biggest telecom companies in the world and a giant in China. They want to connect with the world in a new way altogether. They want to launch themselves in the world market and in order to do this they have revamped their logo and brand image. Their earlier logo was a simple LTE in Chinese and English side by side. The typography and the fonts looked very Chinese and original. The new logo is not much different from the previous one except for the fact that the Chinese words are gone. They revealed their new logo on Facebook recently showing both the old logo and the new one.



The new logo has round edges and the color is also much light. They also have a new slogan which goes along with the new brand identity. The slogan says “Tomorrow never waits” which sound more like a James Bond flick. The new changes are aimed at the new younger audiences. They want a more appealing younger fan base. They are competing against the like of Huawei. The change looks minimal but their plans look promising.