If you’ve spent a little time researching the various methods of promoting your website you’ve probably found that leaving comments on high page-rank blogs no longer directly benefits your sites rank.

With the introduction of Googles nofollow tag, gone are the days when posting a simple ” thanks for writing a good post ” scored you a quick back-link.

This isn’t to say that leaving comments is no longer useful for your own promotion. Many people view blog commenting as a link building exercise only but there is much more to be gained than a single back-link.

Comments left on popular blogs may be read by hundreds or more likely thousands of people, especially if your comment is near/at the top. If your comment adds to the discussion at hand, perhaps you’ve written a blog post of your own that people can glean some information from, you’re bound to receive some traffic from it.

If you frequent the same blogs, quality comments can also help build a rapport with the blog author, potentially paving the way for some joint ventures in the future.

Comments are a permanent fixture on blogs and should be treated as such, write your comments for the long run, not just a quick link.

How often do you comment?

If you’ve got something to say, do you take the time to say it?

Visit any logo / identity designers website and your sure to come across a portfolio of their work. On the flip side of that coin, David Pache has compiled a collection of over 100 fellow identity and graphic designers own brand marks in his latest blog post, 100 brands of interest.

Davids collection includes a variety of styles. Logos utilizing simple geometric shapes, custom typefaces, graphic-only marks, illustrated monograms and more. Below are a few personal picks from the collection, beginning with Davids own mark.

David Pache.

Sterling Brands.

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I was recently approached by a new business setting out to sell youth clothing and fashion accessories particularly focused around skateboarding. As part of my research into the area I found some excellent illustrative works which inspired this series of self promotional designs for skateboard artwork based on the clothing and skate brand Toy Machine.

I don’t often do illustrative work so this was a bit fun. The theme is a monster from every region monsters typically come from. Sea serpent, abominable snow man etc.

There’s not much in the way of artwork on their site, but they have some bizzare illustrative designs if you care to take the time to find them.

The monster pictured is the intellectual property of Toy Machine and not my original work.

Somewhere between buying a christmas present and convincing myself i need this for work i decided to upgrade my existing DSLR, a Nikon D1H, and get myself a new Nikon D200.

I’ve pinched this little except from DP Review:

The Nikon D200 was announced on 1st November 2005, some three and a half years since Nikon revealed their first prosumer digital SLR, the D100.

It’s fair to say however that the D200 is a completely different beast altogether, it shares far more with its ‘bigger brother’ the the D2X than its earlier namesake.

The D200 has the robust build quality of the D2X, a 10.2 million pixel CCD sensor and a compact design more like the D100. Just as the D100 the D200 has a CCD sensor, unlike the D2X which utilized a CMOS sensor.

It’s clear that this camera is aimed at the same kind of market as the recently announced Canon EOS 5D. From a features, control and performance point of view the D200 is closer to the D2X than any other model.

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Located in Sydney, Altek Security provides network and computer related security products and services.

As their business revolved around digital security, not mechanical security such as locks etc. the blue outline was chosen to represent ethernet cables, while the “E” features 2 modular connectors to re-enforce the concept of networking.

Here is a page of alternate logo ideas explored during the project.

What do you think?

Do you feel this logo design is effective? Would you have done anything differently? Your comments are always appreciated.