Clients are often short on words to truly explain their expectations and reactions in detail, over traditional forms of communication. As a designer, you may have found yourself struggling to understand exactly what the client wants from your designs once you’ve submitted a few mockups. Usually they want something to “pop”.

Thankfully, web technologies have advanced to the point that newer, more efficient means of communications have arrived — that are specifically tailored for this purpose.

I like to gather feedback, early and often. For this, I use web based proofing services. They are cheap and very efficient is maintaining an efficient channel of communication with the client. They help keep the designer and the client stay on the same page at all time.

Your design portfolio is your virtual shop-window the whole world can see. Your portfolio not only conveys what you have done, it shows what you can do for a prospective client.

A client is likely to scan your portfolio before deciding to contact you. It is very likely that the reviewer is evaluating other portfolios as well. So how do you ensure that yours stand out amongst the crowd?

In this highly competitive industry, it is not enough to have some excellent pieces of work under your belt — you must also display your work and show a lot of professionalism in doing so.

In my 8 years in the industry, I have picked up a few tricks about how to design a portfolio with a punch and a kick.

Being a sceptic from the very beginning, I was reluctant to take on any CSS pre-processor as I deemed them unnecessary. But my recent experiments with LESS has won both my heart and mind. I must say that the increase in productivity is noticeable and the benefits tangible.

Not only does LESS save time, it enhances manageability of code.

You are a creative designer and you want to show your best pieces of work online. Maybe you want to publicize your services online or you simply want your clients to find you when they Google your name. Either way, you need to publish a portfolio online.

Lucky for you, there are a lot of web services that help you publish your creative portfolio online for free.

A hands-on tutorial demonstrating a few practical techniques for designing cross-browser, standards-compliant functional Search Forms with HTML5 and CSS3 (and a little bit of jQuery).