If you don’t want to scroll down and read all the gory details, let me summarize them for you.

Annual Salaries:

Graphic Designers: $5,657.71 (Php243,281 or Php18,713/month)
Web Developer: $6,873.83 (Php295,574 or Php22,736/month)
Senior Web Developer: $9,054.33 (Php389,336 or Php29,949/month)
Software Developer: $7,521.83 (Php323,439 or Php24,880/month)
Web Designer: $4,244.28 (Php182,504 or Php14,039/month)
Senior Web Designer: $7,190.59 (Php309,195 or Php23,784/month)
Medical Transcriptionist: $3,112.47 (Php133,836 or Php10,295/month)

Philippines web developers and website designers salary

According to Kittelson and Carpo Consulting, the Salaries and wages in the Philippine IT industry start at the following rates:

• Entry Level from average school – $350
• Entry Level from top schools – $450
• Experienced – $600 – $900
• Very Experienced – $1,000 – $1,500
• Project Manager – $1,500 – $2,000

Salaries in the web and graphic design industry start at the following rates:

• Entry Level from average school – $300
• Entry Level from top schools -$400-450
• Experienced – $600 – $900
• Very Experienced – $1,000 – $1,500
• Project Manager – $1,500 – $2,000

Salaries and wages in the Philippine animation and game development industry start at the following rates:

• Entry Level from average school – $300
• Entry Level from top schools -$400
• Experienced – $600 – $900
• Very Experienced – $1,000 – $1,500
• Project Manager – $1,500 – $2,000

Are you paid enough as an IT manager or systems developer in the Philippines?

The 2008 salary survey of IT workers in the Philippines will tell you.

Average annual salary = P500,736

According to the comparative IT Salary and Skills Report 2008 conducted by ZDNet Asia, the average annual IT salary in the Philippines is P500,736 (US$12,425) although this median figure varies significantly by industry, years of experience and size of employer.

Across eight countries in the Asia Pacific, six have higher salaries than the Philippines: Australia (US$76,851); Hong Kong (US$57,303); Singapore (US$44,858); Thailand (US$24,108); Malaysia (US$22,582); and India (US$13,864). The Philippines (US$12,425) is higher only than Indonesia (US$7,709).

Average Salary by Job Function

Those in IT Management have the highest average annual salary (P995,940), followed by Project Management(P521,982), Systems Development (P424,944), Other IT Professional (P406,660), Communications (P390,348), andSupport (P390,348).

Average Salary by Industry

Those working in the Legal and Finance sector have the highest annual average salary (P667,519), followed by those in IT, Web and Telecom (P520,612). Those in Government, Education and Health unsurprisingly have the lowest average salary (P290,300).

Top IT Skills in the Philippines

IT skills were also considered in the survey. The top 5 IT skills in the Philippines are Application Development,Desktop/Software, Web Development, Database Management, and System Administration. Those with Application Development skills receive the highest average annual salary (P599,449) followed by those with System Administration skills (P512,278).

A total of 2,521 respondents participated in the survey. They came from a wide variety of IT professions, industry sectors, and company sizes. Some 92.6% of the respondents were working full-time, while the rest were contractors and independent consultants.

With the release of Joomla! 2.5, the user community has placed a large emphasis on making the CMS installation and updates management process as simple and straightforward as possible.

This will allow users to more easily and frequently migrate to the latest version of Joomla!, and take advantage of all the security benefits associated with running the newest code. We think Joomla! users around the world will really embrace this new process.

Joomla! 2.5 Released with Extra Features and Easy Updates

Joomla, one of the world’s most popular open source content management systems (CMS) used for everything from websites to blogs to Intranets, today announces the immediate availability of Joomla 2.5. Along with new features such as advanced search and automatic notification of Joomla core and extension updates, the Joomla CMS for the first time includes multi-database support with the addition of Microsoft SQL Server. Previous versions of Joomla were compatible exclusively with MySQL databases.

“Multi-database support is a huge step forward for Joomla, which is already powering more than 1.6 million websites worldwide. It ensures companies and organization, both large and small, will save even more money and time by adopting Joomla,” said Ryan Ozimek, president of Open Source Matters, a non-profit created to provide organization, legal and financial support to the Joomla project. “No longer will Joomla developers be tied down to a particular database or have to spend more money and time integrating other software to get Joomla to communicate with their database. This enhances Joomla’s scalability immensely.”

Other key features in Joomla 2.5 includes:

• Automatic notification when a Joomla or extension update is available. When logged into the control panel, site administrators will instantly have access to new notification buttons that allows them to see and act on the latest updates. In addition to updates for the Joomla CMS, a second button offers third party extension notification updates.
• A better natural language search engine to the Joomla core. Complete with auto-completion and stemming (for example if you type “running” in a search field you also see run), it is faster and more versatile than the standard search.

“We literally received thousands of pieces of input at ideas.joomla.org into what functionality should be added to Joomla 2.5, and overwhelmingly enhanced notifications and more elegant search topped the list,” said Mark Dexter of the Joomla Production Leadership Team. “In fact, the automatic notification for core and extension updates received the most votes for a feature that people wanted in 2.5. But we didn’t stop with just those two. Joomla 2.5 is a major overhaul with more than 24 new features that we have highlighted atjoom.la/25features.”

Joomla 2.5 adheres to Joomla’s newly-adopted six-month release cycle that began with the previous  Joomla CMS release of Joomla 1.7 in July, 2011. Downloading the latest version of Joomla is the best way to ensure organizational and personal security needs are being met since it will have the most recent updates to protect against the latest security threats.

Joomla 2.5 is truly a collaborative community-driven software project developed with the feedback gathered from more than 2.5 million Joomla forum posts, 540,000 Joomla forum members and data from more than 8,800 Joomla extensions.  To download Joomla 2.5, go to http://www.joomla.org/download.html.

What’s new in Joomla! 2.5?

When you already upgraded your site from Joomla! 1.5 to Joomla! 1.7 in 2011 you probably use all the new features introduced with Joomla! 1.6 and 1.7. When you scroll down and read the list of new features compared to Joomla! 1.5 then you realize that 2011 was a very interesting year for Joomla!.

But let’s have a closer look on the new features for Joomla! 2.5.

New Features in Joomla! 2.5

The shiny new Joomla! Platform

The Joomla Platform Version 11.3 is now the base of the CMS.
That means many more possibilities for third party developers e.g. image manipulation with the JImageclass and generation of HTML tables with the JGrid class. A new version of the JavaScript library MooToolsis used (1.4). If you don’t know what Joomla! platform is about, read Write your own App using Joomla! Platform  and the official annoucement of the Joomla Platform release.

Find more content with Smart Search

Search is “reinvented” in Joomla! 2.5 with Finder. The new finder component works with a search index (Figure 1).

Finder pre-searches your content. Search results are scored dynamically based on the context and frequency of search terms. The most relevant content will always be listed at the top of the results. It suggests alternative phrases (Figure 2) and its pluggable adapter system allows to install new search adapters which provide support for standard Joomla! content and many other types of documents. Custom search filters allows you to provide contextual searching when your visitor is looking at particular sections of your Web site.

Spread Joomla! to more Platforms by using more Databases

With Joomla! 2.5 it will be possible to run Joomla! on MySQL and Microsoft SQL Server. Drivers for PostgreSQL and Oracle seems to be very near (Getting Ready for Multi-Database Support).

Better Choices for Offline Mode

You can user the default offline message, disable it or create a customized message. Additionally you can select an image for the offline mode page (Figure 3). You have even a possibility to set the site to offline mode during installation so no unauthorized people can see it before you want them to.

User registrations with CAPTCHA

A CAPTCHA plugin using the reCAPTCHA service can be enabled (Figure 4). Once you sign up for free with reCAPTCHA and enter your keys, you can enable CAPTCHA on new user registrations. It could also be used by other extensions needing CAPTCHA.

Easier handling for simple Layouts

You can now attach an image for the intro text to use in blog and featured layouts, an image for the full article text and up to three links for the full
article layout. This means that your content creators won’t have to fuss with an image in the text and your article format will be cleaner and more consistent.

Mobile

The Beez core template comes with mobile enhancements.

Multilanguage

You can override the default language strings in a new manager in the backend (Figure 5).

User Notes

User Notes can be attach notes to users as well as assign tracking dates to the users. You can have multiple notes per user and the notes can be in different categories (Figure 6).

Clean Up

Filtering for Categories in Article Manager

That is simply useful. Since Joomla! 1.6 it was possible to filter categories in the article manager, but you did not see the articles of the subcategories. Now the filter logic include the articles of the subcategories too.

Linking New Menus with a Module

In Joomla! 2.5 modules are NOT automatically created for each new menu type. This is not a bug, it’s a feature 
Not everyone used the core menu module, but used instead ones from a custom template or third party module. For that reason, menus did not automatically create a module in 1.6/1.7. This change confused people and created extra work. In Joomla 2.5, if there is no module associated with the menu, there is a link showing in the Menu Manager that you can click that will take you directly into a new module that you can create. You then have the choice of saving this standard menu module or cancelling out and using a different menu module.

Custom Text Filters are moved to the global configuration. They are filtering content for black and white listed tags based on your configuration and on role permission.

You can now choose to have the administrator get a new message when a user creates an account. This is useful when the New User Account Notification is set to Self. In that case the user receives after an email after registration with an activation link (Figure 7). After clicking that link the account is activated.

The extensive options in “Select a Menu Item Type” are not loaded unless you need them.

New Features compared to Joomla! 1.5

In comparison to Joomla! 1.5 the differences are huge and there is a long list of features and improvements.

Here is a list of the most important changes in Joomla 1.6 and 1.7

• There will no longer be any sections. Categories can be nested as deeply as you would like
• The access concept is totally rebuilt.
  The existing user groups used in Joomla! 1.5 are still the same in Joomla! 2.5 but they can be enhanced and renamed. Unlimited access levels can also be defined there. User groups can be assigned to access levels and different groups can then be assigned to various access levels.
• Multiprocessing
  Copy and move operations, and the allocation of access levels can now be done in a batch process
• Updates per mouse click
  A simple feature. The system detects available updates and initiates them by clicking on the corresponding button.
• Templates
  There have been many changes in the area of templates. There are now two administrator templates and three website templates.
• Template styles
  Sometimes you may want to display a template with different options. You may want to create a page with a red background and another page with a blue one. Therefore, you will need template styles. Create as many versions (styles) of a template with different settings as you like and assign them to a menu link.
• Template layouts
  Sometimes you may want to display only the output of a component or a module in a different layout without hacking the template. That’s possible with template layouts.
• Consistent user interface
  A successful example is the general save dialogue.
  Save: content will be saved, you remain in editing mode
  Save & Close: content will be saved, you leave the editing mode
  Save & New: content will be saved; a new, empty editing mask appears
  Save as copy: content will be saved as a copy, you remain in the editing mask
• Minimum requirements
  The minimum requirements regarding your server environment and concerning your visitors’ web browsers have increased.
  Browser: Internet Explorer, version 7 or higher, Firefox, version 3 or higher, Safari, version 4 or higher
  Server: PHP: minimum version PHP 5.2.4, MySQL: minimum version 5.04
• Legacy Mode
  The legacy mode from Joomla! 1.5 is no longer necessary. Legacy mode allowed the execution of components originally developed for Joomla 1.0, which have ‘only’ been adapted to Joomla! 1.5. The procedure of adapting old components is offset by the development of ‘native’ Joomla! 1.5 and 2.5 components, which use the Joomla! Framework.
• Search engine optimization
  • You can now use unicode in URLs, which means you may now use special characters like ‘ö’ and ‘ä’ or Arabic or Hebrew characters in the URL.
  • You can allocate meta text and keywords to categories.
  • A title of a site will be displayed following the name of the website in the browser.
• Modules can be published time-controlled. The assignment options to menu items have been extended.
• Multilingualism
  Joomla! core now offers the possibility to create articles, categories and modules in several languages. With the new language switcher plug-in module you can filter the entire site for the selected language.
• New editor
  Code Mirror is the new editor, which is supplied in addition to TinyMCE. It is not a WYSIWYG editor but offers a convenient way to work with ‘code-like’ content, which will be displayed in colour and a structured way.
• Components
  • The new redirect component enables redirections to URLs in order to avoid ’404 not found’ errors.
  • The new search component provides an overview of the searched keywords and display results.
  • The survey component has been eliminated.
• New Release Cycle
  Every 18 months, a long term release of Joomla! will appear.
• Introduction of the Joomla! platform
  Joomla! consists of two parts 
  • the Joomla! platform
  • the Joomla! content management system

There are many more very nice little features like the possibility to place a background image into a module or to display articles with page breaks in a tab or slider layout.

Download

New Installations: Click here to download Joomla 2.5.0 (Full package) »

Update Package: Click here to download Joomla 2.5.0 (Update package) »

The Top 10 Trends and their impact, briefly include:

1 The evolution of virtualization: Cappuccio says virtualization will ultimately drive more companies to treat IT like a business. The danger during the next few years will be in following a specific vendor’s vision, though it is unlikely that any one vendor’s vision will prevail. Users should have their own visions of architecture control, and build toward it with a constantly updated strategic plan.

2 Big data, patterns and analytics: Unstructured data will grow some 80% over the course of the next five years, creating a huge IT challenge. Technologies such as in-line deduplication, automated tiering of data to get the most efficient usage patterns per kilowatt, and flash or solid-state drives for higher-end performance optimization, will increase in importance over the next few years, Cappuccio said. Analytics and other systems to monitor for recurring data patterns that could develop  into money making applications will also be important.

3. Energy efficiency and monitoring: The power issue has moved up the food corporate food chain, Cappuccio said.  Nascent tools are beginning to roll out that can use analytic tools to watch power usage on a variety of levels.  With the increased attention given to power consumption, it has become apparent that many systems are highly underutilized. At low utilization levels, they use a high percentage of their total energy draw. An average x86 server that is turned on, but idle, will draw upward of 65% of its nameplate wattage, for example.  IT organizations need a clear inventory of what compute resources are doing and what workloads there is the potential for significant waste of energy.

4. Context aware apps: The big question here how to do something smart to take advantage of smartphones.  Gartner has in the past said context-based computing will go beyond the business intelligence applications and truly make a unified communications environment possible by  bringing together data culled from social networks and mobile-devices.

5. Staff retention and retraining: Here the idea is developing a plan to get people excited about their jobs enough to stay.  And we’ll need is as starting in 2011 an average of 10,000 baby boomers will be eligible to retire every day for the next 19 years, Cappuccio said. Loyalty to one company is not a quality found in new workers.

6. Social networks:  Affordable and accessible technology has let individuals and  communities come together in a new way – with a collective voice – to make statements about our organizations, the products/services we deliver and how we deliver them, Cappuccio said. The collective is made up of individuals, groups, communities, mobs, markets and firms that shape the direction of society and business. The collective is not new, but technology has made it more powerful -and enabled change to happen more rapidly Cappuccio said. The collective is just beginning to have an impact on business operations and strategies but most organizations do not have a plan for enabling or embracing it.  Ignoring social networking is not an option, Cappuccio said.

7. Consumerization: The key trend here is the fact that new application types will be developed to address mobile users but they won’t be desktop replacement applications.  Still,  a secure, well-defined strategy needs to be put into place to take advantage of this development, Cappuccio said.

8. Compute per square foot:  Virtualization is one of the most critical components being used to increase densities and vertically scale data centers. If used wisely, average server performance can move from today’s paltry 7% to 12% average to 40% to 50%, yielding huge benefits in floor space and energy savings.  Two issues that need to be considered going forward are the number of cores per server — four- and eight-core systems are becoming common, and 16 cores will be common within two years –  and overall data center energy trends. IT will also have to address things like performance/licensing, Cappuccio said

 9. Cloud computing: While cost is a potential benefit for small companies, the biggest benefits of cloud computing are built-in elasticity and scalability. As certain IT functions industrialize and become less customized, such as email, there are more possibilities for larger organizations to benefit from cloud computing, according to Cappuccio.

 10. Fabrics: Gartner defines this infrastructure convergence as: The vertical integration of server, storage, and network systems and components with element-level management software that lays the foundation to optimize shared data center resources efficiently and dynamically. Systems put forth so far by Cisco and HP will unify network control but are not there yet.

1. Set A Schedule

Define Your Working Hours

Having set working hours creates a feeling of accountability and puts a premium on your time, making you less likely to waste it. Create a clear set workday schedule and stick to it. If you decide to start work at 8:00 each morning, then get up, take a shower, get dressed and get to work on time. Wandering into your home office still in your pajamas doesn’t exactly set the mood for a productive day. Follow this rule and you may be surprised to find your level of productivity increase immediately.

Take Breaks

Studies show that people who take short breaks during the work day tend to get more done . Spending a few minutes away from work will have you returning refreshed and ready to tackle the next task. Go for a walk, grab a snack or take a quick ride to the coffee shop. Set aside 30 minutes or an hour each day at a predetermined time to take lunch. Skipping lunch may mean more time to work, but working on an empty stomach leads to poor concentration. Your focus here should be on quality rather than quantity. Thirty minutes of focused work is much more productive than an hour of distracted work.

2. Make A Plan

Set Goals

Without goals, we would quickly find ourselves bumbling through life aimlessly. Goals keep us on track with a clear vision. Set short-term, mid-term and long-term goals for yourself. For instance, what do you hope to accomplish this week, this month or even this year? Long-term goals help shape your short-term goals. Spend some time thinking about what you want to accomplish and then write it down.

Create To-Do Lists

Use your goal list for the week to create your daily to-do lists. You can use any type of to-do list, whether a desktop app, an online app or just plain old pencil and paper. Regardless of the format you prefer, having your day planned out in order to stay focused is important. Create the next day’s to-do list at the end of each day and commit to it.

Break Up Large Tasks Into Managable Pieces

When creating your to-do lists, don’t write things like, “Work on productivity article” or “Work on logo design.” Be more specific, like, “Do research for productivity article” or “Refine logo concepts.” By being specific, you narrow your focus and work more efficiently. Save the vaguer or more general descriptions for your goals list.

Track Your Time

Several good time-tracking apps out there will help you with time management. Knowing if you’re using your time wisely is important. Record how long you take to complete tasks: you may be surprised to find how much time you waste in a day. Knowing how long certain tasks take can help you better plan your days, leading to greater efficiency.

Evaluate Your Performance

At the end of the day, look back at how well you measured up to the goals you set for yourself. Did you accomplish what you set out to do today? If not, why? Evaluating your performance is a critical step towards improving your productivity. Set realistic but challenging goals, and honestly review your performance to determine if there’s room for improvement.

3. Get Focused

Do One Task at a Time

Multi-tasking has gone from being a computer term to a part of our everyday lexicon. Many people feel these days that we get more done by multi-tasking. This couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, doing one task with full attention is much better than doing two tasks with half as much attention. Spreading your focus between multiple tasks leads only to diminished quality and actually less productivity. Do just one thing at a time and you’ll find your productivity go up, along with the quality of your work.

Limit the Time You Spend Surfing the Web

Set aside a certain amount of time each day for Web surfing, and keep it work-related. Use an RSS (Really Simple Syndication) reader to have new content from your favorite websites and blogs brought to you. This is much more efficient than visiting these websites several times a day to see if anything new has been published. If you already use an RSS reader, then you could probably benefit from spending a little time cleaning it up and eliminating feeds that you rarely read. Also, organize your feeds into folders so that you’re not browsing non-work-related feeds during the day.

Eliminate Distractions

Allocate certain times of the day to checking email and social media. Rather than keeping your email and Twitter accounts open on your desktop and letting them constantly vie for your attention, decide how much time you are willing to devote to them. For example, you may decide to check and respond to emails twice a day. Handling tasks like these in large batches is best. Which do you think would take longer: reading and responding to 30 emails periodically throughout the day, or reading and responding to them all in one shot?

4. Get Organized

Consolidate Your Email

Many of us have several email accounts for different purposes. Why not put all of your email in one place? If you don’t already have one, sign up for a Gmail account from Google. It’s free and by far the best Web-based email out there. Once you have set up your Gmail account, you can have it fetch email from all of your other addresses. You can even set up filters to organize emails as they come in so that you don’t get confused. Now you can deal with all of your email in one convenient place.

Use Labels to Organize Your Email

Gmail has labels instead of folders. Labels work like folders except that an email can have multiple labels instead of having to reside in just one folder. Set up labels (or folders if you don’t use Gmail) with names like “Urgent” and “Follow up” to prioritize messages, and names like “Account info” and “Website client” to stay organized. With Gmail, you can even automatically label and sort incoming email instead of doing it manually.

Update All Your Social Media Accounts at Once

Networking is a great way for freelancers to find new clients, keep up with trends in their industry and stay connected to colleagues. Most of us have accounts on several social media websites, such as Twitter, Facebook and Flickr. Just keeping track of all these services can be challenging, not to mention a huge time drain. Instead of visiting each of these websites individually, why not update them all in one place? With social media aggregators, you can stay in touch as well as post updates to all of your social media accounts at one time, in one place.

5. Set Up Your Office Properly

Respect Your Office

Keep your office clean and orderly. Have only the essentials on your desktop: computer, phone, printer, etc. A cluttered desk negatively affects your mood, which will spill into your work. Working in a constant mess is counter-productive. Take the time to set things up so that everything you need is right in front of you. Searching for supplies, walking to the printer and other small actions can really add up to a lot of wasted time.

Get Comfortable

Make your work place comfortable by opening up the window on a nice day or playing some of your favorite music. Your place of work shouldn’t be a dark dudgeon where you feel like you slave away all day. You should enjoy being there. Invest in an ergonomic chair, keyboard and mouse. Back pain or carpel tunnel certainly won’t make you more productive. Research ergonomics to learn how to create a comfortable and healthy office.

Go Mobile

One of the best things about being a freelancer is that you don’t have to report to a certain place every day. If you find yourself getting in a rut, change things up by working at a local coffee shop, bookstore or park. A change of scenery can go a long way to keeping things fresh, and most cities have a lot of freeWiFi hotspots. Just pack your laptop and go.

6. Get Help

Outsource

Consider hiring an assistant. You will more than make up for the cost of filing and invoicing services with the extra time you’ll have to focus on the work you do best. Hand your taxes over to a professional; an accountant will do them properly and give you one less thing to worry about. All kinds of services for small-business owners are out there. Which ones make sense for you?

Learn from Other Freelancers

Frequent freelance forums and connect with your peers. A wealth of knowledge and new ideas is shared on forums every day. You could learn such things as how to better deal with clients and what is the best invoicing software. Become a member and reap the benefits of the collective experience of freelancers just like you.

One such task is contracts. Drafting a contract that covers you, and doesn’t just enumerate information, is more than important: it is a must. Freelancers do not have the benefit of a legal department dedicated to protecting their interests with a watertight contract. Nevertheless, a freelancer’s contract must be comprehensive, concise and clear. It should outline the scope of the job, scheduling demands, the expectations of both parties and more.

In this post, we’ll help you identify the information that should be included in your contract and make sure you have a concrete agreement that leaves little chance of things getting out of hand… as can sometimes happen to those of us in the freelancing crowd.

These do’s and don’ts will hopefully remove a lot of the headache and guesswork that comes withdrafting a contract. By understanding the rationale behind various contractual elements, you will be able to better customize your contracts to fit the specific job you have been hired for.

[Editor's note: Have you already got your copy of the Smashing Book #2? The book shares valuable practical insight into design, usability and coding. Have a look at the contents.]

The Basics

Include the basic information, obviously. The “who” and the “what” of the project. Who is contracting you to do what kind of work? This is standard stuff included in every contract that defines the job as a whole. While this information is probably well known by both parties, put it in the contract anyway so that everyone is on the same page about their roles and responsibilities. Because it is such basic information, freelancers often overlook how important this section is for establishing the framework of the project.

Do’s and Don’ts

K.I.S.S. Keep It Simple, Simon (your name may not be Simon, but it is nicer than the traditional “S” in the phrase.) Do be sure to clarify your role in the project from start to finish and exactly what it entails, so that the client doesn’t try to put a hat on your head that you do not want to wear (for example, trying to make you switch from designing to providing tech support once the project has launched).

You know who you are and what your strengths are; don’t leave room for the client to change your role in the project for their convenience. Be specific about what roles you are and are not willing to play.

Time Frame

This simply establishes the time that the project will take and the duration that the contract covers. Sometimes a freelancer has to leave time open after a project’s completion to help integrate the product into the client’s existing media stream. But not always. Determining that time frame at the beginning and formalizing it in the terms and conditions of the contract will ensure you are not taken advantage of.

Do’s and Don’ts

Many people do not like deadlines, and some freelancers are no different. Whether you love or hate them, including deadlines in your contracts is important. Don’t overlook this detail simply because of the pressure it may bring. Give yourself enough time to properly complete your tasks, while keeping the client’s timetable in mind.

Being vague about how much time the contract covers will give your client room to find things for you to improve after the project has launched. Also, do be sure to include time frames on when the client needs to respond to your submissions with their questions and concerns, so that you are not endlessly strung along waiting to hear back on how to proceed.

Delivery Details

Putting this in the contract further clarifies expectations at the outset. The client knows up front what the final product will be and how you will be delivering it to them. This frees you from having to guess later on things like what file types they can access, and it gives the client peace of mind knowing that you are both on the same page.

It also gives you an indication of the depth of the client’s knowledge in this area of work and how well they will be able to work with the product once you hand it over. And being able to anticipate the client’s need for assistance in accessing and integrating your product will help you formulate other parts of the contract.

Do’s and Don’ts

Once again, keep it simple. Once you’ve assessed the client’s needs, don’t send them more files or file types than are needed to satisfy the project’s requirements. Don’t try to impress them with a ZIP file full of extras that show how professional you are. This will overwhelm clients who are not design-savvy and encourages needless pestering. Keeping it simple will move your client happily along their way, not only giving you peace of mind from a job well done but freeing you from future distractions as you move on to your next client.

The Financials

For most design work, billing by the job, rather than by the hour, is easier for everyone. You may have already come to an agreement on financial matters, but include them in the contract anyway for good measure. Just because you have an understanding about payment, the client could always conveniently “forget” the amount or change the terms.

Do’s and Don’ts

Agree on an initial deposit (whatever seems fair) before doing any work, to protect both parties if either wants to back out. Make sure the client understands that this deposit protects them as well by committing you to the project and keeping you from being sidetracked by other clients. Also include a Cancellation Clause in the financial section of the contract. This isn’t Santa’s less famous brother; it actually protects you, the freelancer, in case your client backs out by stating the financial obligations of both parties should the project terminate before completion.

Revisions And Alterations

You can also protect yourself by including a clause that states how many alterations and revisions to the product are covered by the fee. You can set the pricing for changes requested by the client that go beyond the number specified in the contract, thus preventing the client from abusing their privilege.

Be clear that this is not a commentary on either party; by including this, you are not implying that the client will be hard to please or that you will need multiple attempts to get it right. It simply recognizes that we sometimes need time to fully process something before making a decision and that we should have the freedom to change our minds about whether an idea works or not once we actually see it in action.

Do’s and Don’ts

Remember that professionalism should win out at all times, so don’t let this part of the contract be any different. Yes, it can be aggravating how some clients come back to you over and over with requests as a result of every whim that moves them, but do be reasonable. Don’t punish all of your clients because of one that burned you in the past. And don’t let pride keep you from accommodating a modest amount of revision by the client, even if they don’t suit your taste. After all, the design may be yours, but they are paying you to create it for them.

The Fine Print And Bottom Line

In the end, make sure the contract is professional and clear throughout, and be as detailed as possible in defining the roles of both parties in the project.

Further Resources

Here are some further articles and related resources:

• Terms and Conditions for Design Contracts
  An extremely helpful post by Shel Perkins that seeks to inform designers about the terminology and general conditions of contracts.
• Web Design Contracts – The How and Why’s of Contracts
  This is another post full of great information that talks about the reasons why designers need to use contracts.
• What goes into a good web design contract?
  It is a question that every designer should ask themselves at one time or another, and this fabulously informative post from Idea15 answers that question.
• Using freelance graphic design contracts
  An article by David Airey dealing with the whys and hows of using freelance design contracts.
• Business of Design Online Forms
  The Business of Design Online offers a number of useful forms free for download and use.
• Freelance Contracts
  A great contract template which makes it easy for freelancers to fill in their own information.
• Logo Design Contract of Agreement
  This is an actual contract drawn up by Logo Designer, Joni Solis, and is a good example to look at when you start drawing up a contract of your own.
• Work for Hire Agreement
  A form necessary to ensure copyright transfer and protect your creative firm when you outsource work to other freelancers. Guaranteeing that you will retain all rights to the work.
• Freelance Design Contracts & Templates
  A fantastic resource full of free downloadable design contracts and alterable templates for easy customization.
• AIGA Standard Form of Agreement for Design Services
  This agreement allows you to create customized terms and conditions for different types of design engagements.

Thanks to :

Robert Bowen

Robert Bowen is an emerging author, celebrated podcaster and poet, and most recently the co-founder and imaginative co-contributor of the creative design and blogging duo at the Arbenting Freebies Blog and Dead Wings Designs.

I can also Register your .ph or .com.ph website…please contact me here : +639222642806 or tel 4111040 or email me at info@dbestwebdeveloper.com then I can provide the registration for you……….

Fill out the Online Registration Form. Just follow the instructions, provide us with some basic information and click “GO”. Before you know it, you will have gotten a notice informing you of the status of your application.
Third Step

Pay for your domain. Use our online credit card payment system and get your domain instantly. If you don’t have a credit card, you may send a check or pay in person to:

dotPH Domains Inc.
2706 Jollibee Plaza Bldg.,
F. Ortigas Jr. Rd. (formerly Emerald Ave.),
Ortigas Center, Pasig City
1605 Philippines
Fax: +632 6327319

Please check the approval notice for details on how to pay by check or cash.

2. What if the name I want is not available?
If the name you want is not available, you can try searching for a different name or a variation of the name you desire (sometimes a slightly different spelling or incorporating a hyphen will work).

Or you can avail of our Waitlist Service. A Waitlist reservation means you are first in line to get that domain if it expires and the current registrant does not renew.

A Waitlist reservation costs the same as registering a domain. If the current registrant does not renew, the Waitlist fee is applied towards your domain registration. If the current registrant renews or you get tired of waiting, you may apply the Waitlist fee to register an available domain (or Waitlist another domain) at no extra cost.

3. What are the rules on choosing a domain name?
One and 2 character domain names are disallowed.

As few as three and as many as 63 characters (not including .PH) are permitted. Some mail programs do not accept more than 26 characters in a combined TLD and second level domain name, so we therefore do not recommend more than 23 characters for the second level domain (plus .PH = 26). Names may not begin or end with a dash, and upper case and lower case are treated as lower case only. Besides the – character, only alphanumeric characters a-z, 0-9 are accepted. Spaces and any other characters in a name will not be accepted. Names with only numeric characters and names with spaces will not be accepted.

4. What information is required to register a Domain Name?
You must provide:

your name
a company/organization name
mailing address
a phone number,
an e-mail address for Primary and Secondary Users.
Email addresses for both Primary and Secondary Users must be valid. Furthermore, the domain you are registering cannot form part of any of these two email addresses. E.g. if you applied for “dom-name.ph”, you can’t use “contact@dom-name.ph” as the email address for either your Primary or Secondary contacts.

You should also provide DNS information about the servers that will point to your Domain Name. Valid Name server hostnames and IP addresses must both be indicated.

5. What if I don’t have an ISP/hosting company yet?
You can make use of the default name servers (ns1.domains.ph and ns2.domains.ph). These name servers will only serve as placeholders until you are ready to use your domain.

6. Can I register a Domain Name without having a Web site?
Yes. Domain Names can be registered and “parked” on our server until you are ready to launch your Website.

7. After the online registration, how will I be informed and how long will it take for the approval?
If the domain name you submitted is available and your registration form is filled out correctly, a notification will automatically be sent within seconds to your e-mail address. Sometimes a domain is registered and paid for by someone else in the time it takes you to search for availability and fill out the registration form. If that happens, you will receive a notice informing you that the domain is no longer available and requesting you to register a different domain.

8. Can I register for .edu.ph and .gov.ph domains through dotPH?
No. dotPH does not administer the “.gov.ph” or the “.edu.ph” subdomains. You may visit their respective websites at:

.EDU.PH – http://dns.edu.ph
.GOV.PH – http://dns.gov.ph
9. What does it mean to have my domain name “parked” on the DotPH server?
It means that you can get your domain name even if you don’t have an ISP or Web host for your site. This is important for those who register a domain to protect it against cyber-squatters or unauthorized use. Domains parked on our server can avail of FREE Web Forwarding.

10. What is Webforwarding?
This allows people to find your Website by simply typing in your domain name (ex. http://your-business.ph), even if you are using a free hosting service such as Geocities. Web forwarding comes free with any PH domain (.ph, .com.ph, .net.ph, .org.ph, .mil.ph and .ngo.ph). Your domain must be parked on our server to avail of the Web Forwarding feature.

11. What is the “Park Your Domain with Mail Forwarding” Package?
The package allows you to use your domain as an easy-to-remember e-mail address (ex. first-name@last-name.ph or sales@your-business.ph). Mail sent to this address will be forwarded to your existing mailbox, whether it is a mailbox provided by your ISP or a Web-based mail service such as Yahoo or Hotmail. If you change ISPs or get a different e-mail account, just let us know and we will re-direct your mail to your new mailbox.

How mailforwarding works
How to configure mailforwarding
12. How do we register for .mil.ph and .ngo.ph domains?

You will need to learn skills in XHTML(Extensible Hypertext Markup Language) and CSS(Cascading Stylesheets) as a foundation on which to build.

In advance programming create dynamic websites using PHP and MySQL.

Install a web server ( XAMMP or WAMMP) on your Computer so that you can work on scripts locally without an internet connection.

Get yourself some script examples to “tinker” with: Finding a script to dissect is the best way to learn. Try CMS’s like Drupal and Joomla.

No matter where you are along the path of Web design, there is sure to be something more for you to learn and grow. But how do you decide where to go next?

If you’re just starting out on the Web design path, this is your stop. The beginning HTML resources cover the basics of HTML and building a Web page.

Now with everything you know get yourself some hosting and a domain; then start creating sites.

Knowing where you are on the path of Web design is the first step to getting the information and resources you need to keep learning and growing in your choice. Look at how other web designers create sites, note how a menu or content area is laid out and then use that knowledge in your designs.

Professional Web Designers focus a lot on the look and feel of Web pages. Many, if not most Web designers work as contractors or for contract design firms. This means that a lot of their focus needs to be on contracts, legal issues, and what to charge. But in order to get contracts, designers need to know how to create good layouts, write or manage excellent content, and then promote and market both themselves and the sites they create.

Becoming a professional web designer is not as hard is it seems. With a bit of free time and some patience you can earn money doing contracts.

Professional Web Programmers focus on the unseen part of Web pages. Things like the CGI, scripts, and programs that make Web sites work. Plus programmers work on the servers and keep them up and running. They manage the security of Web sites and Web pages. Web programmers often implement and manage content management systems and e-commerce portals. Being a Web programmer is often less glamourous than a Designer, but it is just as important a role.

Many of us desire to be seen as experts because we would like our opinions to be taken seriously. Others want to be respected and valued, partly to satisfy our own ego, but largely due to a belief that we know best and that things should be done our way.

However, as we will see later, being an expert is more than about getting people to listen. If that is all you can manage, then they will see through this shallow desire and not give you the status that you believe you deserve.

Respect is not the only thing we expect from being regarded as an expert. Many of us also think that we would be able to charge more and that people will line up to hire us. Unfortunately, that is not always the case. Many experts are largely unknown, even within their field, and do not demand high salaries. Being an unheard-of expert is of little value to your career.

In spite of all this, being perceived as an expert can be helpful when working with clients, and it does create the potential to attract better-quality work.

What, then, does it take to become an expert?

Success is going from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.

The definition of an expert is someone who knows what not to do.

With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility

Becoming an expert has to be about more than having an ego trip. Rather, it should always be about serving others. You become an expert so that you can do a better job for your clients, provide more value to your organization and help others establish best practice in your industry. Ultimately, if all you want is to be loved and respected, you will never achieve your aim. People can detect that kind of narcissism a mile away and will dismiss you as vain.

That said, being taken seriously is important in our line of work. If we are not taken seriously, then good websites can go bad. I am sure you will share in the comments stories of how Web projects have gone wrong because people didn’t listen to you. But hearing some experiences of how you convinced bosses and clients to take you seriously would also be nice.

Some contents get in this website:
Thanks to : Paul Boag in http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2011/08/25/how-to-become-a-web-design-expert/

1. Adaptive Web Design

By Aaron Gustafson
$22 (paperback edition)
easy-readers.net
£6.45 (Kindle edition)
Buy now

With web designers having to cater for an increasingly diverse range of browsers and platforms, while also keen to remain at the cutting-edge, progressive enhancement is an essential concept to understand. Gustafson’s book provides you with this knowledge, through the history, mechanisms and practical application of progressive enhancement.

Several of those in the industry were quick to praise Gustafson’s work…

Jeffrey Zeldman, Happy Cog founder: “Coined by Steven Champeon of The Web Standards Project in the early 2000s, ‘progressive enhancement’ is the key idea behind standards-based web design. Both a method and a philosophy, it yields experiences that are accessible to all. Through mastery of progressive enhancement, we stop designing for browsers and start designing for people. No one has done a better, clearer, or more thorough job of illuminating progressive enhancement in all its richness than Aaron Gustafson… nor is anyone likely to.”

Developer Stephanie Sullivan Rewis: “This is a well-written book on methods and techniques to progressively enhance your web pages and keep them accessible. Aaron has provided lots of great examples.”

Author and speaker Jonathan Snook: “Aaron Gustafson’s book is thorough and covers just about every topic I could think of when it comes to responsible web design.”

2. Responsive Web Design

By Ethan Marcotte
$18/$9 (paperback/ebook)
Buy now

Like Adaptive Web Design, Marcotte’s book is keen to assist you in designing for today’s landscape, rather than rooting you in the past. With modern designers having to cater for mobile browsers, tablets, netbooks and also massive widescreen displays, the concept of design that anticipates and responds to your users’ needs is key. Responsive Web Design details the techniques and principles behind such design, including fluid grids, flexible images and media queries.

Again, it was a popular book among those we asked for recommendations:

Andy Budd, Clearleft managing director: “Just like web standards, responsive design isn’t something you should sit on the fence about, until being asked by a client. Instead, good designers and developers should be thinking responsively about every new project that comes their way. So if you haven’t jumped on the responsive-design freight train yet, do so now, with this book to guide you, before you get left behind.”

Stephanie Sullivan Rewis: “This is an excellent explanation of how to create sites that react to the user’s needs — and Ethan makes you chuckle while you learn.”

Web designer, author of Hardboiled Web Design, and speaker Andy Clarke: “Ethan’s giving fluid grids, fluid assets and CSS3 media queries a collective name, ‘Responsive Web Design’, has changed the way millions of people now see web pages.”

Author, Easy! Designs founder and WaSP group manager Aaron Gustafson: “My book,Adaptive Web Design, and Ethan Marcotte’s Responsive Web Design make an excellent pairing if you’re excited by mobile and are looking to craft truly adaptive web experiences.”

Web and UI designer Sarah Parmenter: “This is a book I reference constantly. Ethan makes light of a tough skill-set and entertains throughout.”

And here’s the rest in alphabetical order:

3. CSS3 for Web Designers

By Dan Cederholm
$18/$9 (paperback/ebook)
Buy now

Cederholm’s book aims to show how CSS3 is a “universe of creative possibilities”, providing insight into web fonts, advanced selectors and the many visual enhancements the technology can bring to web pages.

Eric Meyer, An Event Apart partner and co-founder, says: “With Dan you know you’re getting great visual design with a fun theme, wrapped around great technical information. This book delivers big time.” Meyer also recommends Jeremy Keith’s HTML5 for Web Designers as a companion volume, saying it enables you to “get up to speed with HTML5 in no time”.

4. Designing for the Digital Age

By Kim Goodwin
£40.38
Buy now

Not so much a web-design tome as a handbook for dealing with an entire industry, Designing for the Digital Age explores how to succeed through a multi-disciplinary approach. Freelance user experience consultant Leisa Reichelt considers it an essential read: “It’s not exactly ‘holiday’ as in ‘take to the beach’ reading, but if you’ve got some time off at home, it’s worth getting stuck into this design bible.”

5. DOM Scripting

By Jeremy Keith
£24.69
Buy now

It’s increasingly common for websites to be rich in functionality provided by JavaScript. Keith’s book is intended to offer designers — rather than programmers — a guiding hand, showing them how to add stylish, usable enhancements to websites. Snook told us: “Jeremy Keith’s book has been out for a while now but I still believe that it provides a great foundation for anybody wanting to get into JavaScript development.”

6. Don’t Make Me Think!

By Steve Krug
£14.89
Buy now

Krug’s tight, focussed book, subtitled ‘A common-sense approach to web usability’, remains as relevant today as when it first appeared, back in 2000. “Anyone who designs, codes, writes, owns, or directs websites should read and memorise this book,” argues Zeldman. “Whereas earlier usability books are scolding, parental, and anti-creative in tone, Steve makes the case for web usability compelling, friendly, and fun. I naively saw usability as the enemy of design until I read this book. It will work equal wonders for the marketers, developers, project managers, and content folks on your team… or for anyone who wants their website to delight its users.”

7. Getting Things Done

By David Allen
£6.50
Buy now

“One of the greatest problems faced by web design freelancers is stress. Running your own business and dealing with demanding clients leaves many freelancers lying in bed worrying and feeling completely overwhelmed,” thinks Paul Boag, co-founder ofHeadscape.

“Allen’s book proposes a way of organising one’s life to strike the balance between work and home. Although not for everybody, it certainly made an enormous difference for me, enabling me to feel in control of my ever-growing workload.”

8. Good Strategy, Bad Strategy

By Richard Rumelt
£7.01
Buy now

Rumelt’s book on management and strategy aims to differentiate itself from its rivals by not stretching an essay-like argument to hundreds of pages. Instead, says the author, it “presents views on a range of issues that are fundamental, but which have not been given much daylight”. This gelled with Reichelt: “It’s not exactly a web book, but I wish more web-industry people would read it so that we could spend more time making better things”.

9. Handcrafted CSS: More Bulletproof Web Design

By Dan Cederholm and Ethan Marcotte
£17.10
Buy now

“If my own Designing With Web Standards was catnip to web designers, Handcrafted CSS is heroin,” jokes Zeldman. “Master sophisticated CSS layout methods powered by a philosophy of ‘progressive enrichment’. Create fluid designs that support today’s plethora of connected devices, and learn techniques that create a living, textural look and feel without killing your user’s bandwidth. Dare to innovate fearlessly and gain tips on persuading your clients to accept your innovations!”

10. JavaScript Enlightenment

By Cody Lindley
$15 (PDF edition)
Buy now

On his website, Lindley says a lot about what his book is not: a complete reference; targeted at those new to programming and JavaScript; a cookbook of recipes. But what he says it is makes it a must-buy: a book that might transform you from a JavaScript library user into a JavaScript developer. Gustafson is a huge fan: “Most of us old-timers learned JavaScript by reading other people’s code and through blind experimentation, so we missed out on a lot of the fundamentals. In this book, Cody does an amazing job walking through the ECMA spec, detailing the intricacies of the JavaScript language. It made me love JavaScript even more than I already did.”

11. Mobile First

By Luke Wroblewski
$18/$9 (paperback/ebook)
Buy now

A strategic guide to mobile web design, which asks and answers why you should go mobile first, and how to achieve such goals. “Read in tandem with Responsive Web Design and you’ll know the shape of web design for the next five years,” believes Clarke.

Gustafson agrees: “When you want solid research and statistics on any web-related topic, Luke is your guy. His recent treatise on mobile is packed with incredibly valuable — and sometimes surprising — information that will help you better understand the mobile landscape and better sell its promise to your clients.”

12. Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness

By Richard H Thaler and Cass R Sunstein
£13.52
Buy now

“Nudge is not strictly a web design book. However, I believe it should be essential reading for any web designer,” says Boag: “The premise of the book is that psychology can be used to ‘nudge’ people into making certain choices. While the book focuses on how this could be used to encourage things like more organ donation or saving for a pension, the lessons learnt can also be applied to designing a website.”

13. Rocket Surgery Made Easy

By Steve Krug
£15.41
Buy now

Although Krug is better known for Don’t Make Me Think(listed earlier), Boag considers Rocket Surgery Made Easy more useful for the majority of web designers: “Where the original book focused on the importance of usability testing, the second one talks about the practicalities of setting up regular test sessions. Most of us are already aware of the importance of usability testing and yet find it hard to make it happen. This book will show you how.”

14. Scalable and Modular Architecture for CSS

By Jonathan Snook
Free, online only
Get it now

In this website-cum-book, Snook outlines the methodology behind SMACSS (pronounced ‘smacks’), a means to examine your design process and fit rigid frameworks into a flexible thought process, thereby resulting in a consistent approach to site development when using CSS. “Jon has created a free, organic, online book with discussion, and it has great thoughts on architecting maintainable CSS for larger sites,” believes Rewis.

15. Seductive Interaction Design

By Stephen P Anderson
£12.46
Buy now

Most designers at some point will have crafted something amazing and beautiful, but found that no-one cares. This book delves into the reasoning behind why people stick around, with an approach to designing sites and interactions based on the stages of seduction. “I love this book because it explains how to design websites to help invoke behaviour, with lots of emphasis on the psychology behind them as well,” says Parmenter.

16. Steve Jobs

By Walter Isaacson
£11.97
Buy now

Steve Jobs was a private man, and so while many authors have delved inside his thought process, they’ve done so via assumption, guesswork and through third-parties. Isaacson’s book is different, drawn from three years of exclusive interviews with the Apple founder.

Clarke recommends it because “as web professionals, we need to remember to keep doing the work we love and never settle”.

17. Stunning CSS3

By Zoe Gillenwater
£16.94
Buy now

Far too many CSS books are little more than elaborate reference guides, but Gillenwater takes a different approach, helping you learn the power of CSS3 through practical, eye-catching examples. “I don’t think this book has gotten the promotion and attention it deserves,” says Rewis. “It is sincerely one of the most practical, informative and lovely CSS3 books out there, due to Zoe using a project-based approach throughout to illustrate the concepts.”

18. The Designful Company

By Marty Neumeier
£13.59
Buy now

Another alternative and highly useful take on management, The Designful Company argues that while most managers rely on a two-step process to make decisions — ‘knowing’ and ‘doing’ — today’s innovation-driven marketplace requires a middle step, ‘making’, where “assumptions are questioned, futures are imagined and prototypes are tested”.

According to Budd, it’s a book folks at Clearleft constantly refer to: “And combined with his other books,Zag and The Brand Gap, it provides plenty of quotes and animation when having tough design conversations with clients.”

19. The Elements of Content Strategy

By Erin Kissane
$18/$9 (paperback/ebook)
Buy now

If you’re wondering where the idea of ‘content strategy’ arrived from, what it means and why it matters, you should begrabbing yourself a copy of Kissane’s book right now. “I thoroughly enjoyed reading it,” enthuses Snook. “And its succinctness should not be mistaken for lack of content — this is a dense read that’s chock full of great content, as one might expect from a book on content strategy!”

20. The Happiness Project

By Gretchen Rubin
£5.49
Buy now

Are you happy? Rubin one rainy afternoon realised she could be happier and embarked on her project, setting resolutions and figuring out what worked for her. The result is a thoughtful, practical and humorous story that could inspire you to your own paths to happiness. Parmenter elaborates on why it’s an important inclusion in our list: “It reminded me that there’s more to life than sitting in front of a Mac. Work/life balance is incredibly important in what we do, and this book can be read as a quick pick-me-up at any time.”

21. The Thank You Economy

By Gary Vaynerchuk
£8.50
Buy now

“While not expressly a web design/development book, Gary surfaces a lot of important ideas with respect to customer service and ‘user experience’ in a more general sense,” says Gustafson on Vaynerchuk’s dissection of how the modern world has impacted on businesses and how they should behave. “I firmly believe every keystroke we make as designers and developers affects the user experience, and Gary’s book encourages us to take the complete customer experience into account with our work.”

22. The Victorian Internet

By Tom Standage
£9.97
Buy now

According to Meyer, this book is a “compact, fascinating examination of how the internet parallels the telegraph system very closely, and how the world was even more technologically disrupted and future-shocked by the telegraph than we could ever aspire to be”. Standage himself is proud of the book’s longevity, noting on his website that he got to “make fun of the internet, by showing that even such a quintessentially modern technology actually has roots going back a long way — in this case, to a bunch of electrified monks in 1746”.

23. Weaving the Web

By Tim Berners-Lee
From £1.50 second-hand
Buy now

This book is an account of how the web came to be, direct from the source. Berners-Lee crafts an engaging story, also detailing the creation of the World Wide Web Consortium. The book is long out of print, but readily available second-hand.

Open web evangelist, designer and author Molly Holzschlag says: “This is a key work by the inventor of the World Wide Web, and a core, essential read for anyone working in the industry.”

24. Web Form Design

By Luke Wroblewski
£23.75
Buy now

Web forms are commonplace, to say the least. They also happen to make or break the most crucial online interactions – checkout, registration, and tasks requiring data entry – rightly argues this book’s blurb. But the fact remains that lots of online forms are dreadful, hampering usability.

“Bad web forms hurt us all. Luke shows why and how to fix them,” says Meyer on why you should buy this book.

25. Where Good Ideas Come From

By Steven Johnson
£5.99
Buy now

“This book is a must-read for anybody in the creative industry,” believes Budd. Johnson examines how new ideas come into existence and outlines the environments required for innovation to happen. If nothing else, this is an excellent book to show your boss if they ask why you’ve been spending so much time chatting with friends in trendy coffee shops!”

So that’s our top 25 books, which should give you plenty of reading during dark winter evenings. Thanks to all our contributors: Paul Boag, Andy Budd, Andy Clarke, Aaron Gustafson, Molly Holzschlag, Eric Meyer, Sarah Parmenter, Leisa Reichelt, Stephanie Sullivan Rewis, Jonathan Snook, and Jeffrey Zeldman.

If there are any books you love and think should be recommended to all, let us know in the comments.