- Thank goodness there is plenty of royalty-free, commercial-free icons for social media. Searches can be done by you. Just make sure you include the term “vector” in your search. These will give you the original format of the icons so that you can open them and modify them with a tool such as Adobe Illustrator.
Vector formats are mathematical formulae that combine to create a particular geometric shape. A collection of pixels is called bitmaps, or raster pictures. Because it is optimized for a particular resolution, when you expand a bitmap it will eventually blur or distort the image. You can see my point when you enlarge a JPG image. You will find vector formats in PDF, AI, and EPS files. Ever zoomed in on a PDF file to see how blurry it was? This is because elements, such as fonts, are in a vector format.
Pro tip Here’s the Dreamstale’s 90 free social media icons. Unzip the file to find the Illustrator file (AI), Encapsulated PostScript(EPS), PNG, SVG, and CSS sprites. The license information states that they are free to be used and modified for personal or business use.
The CSS sprite can be a great addition. Sprites can really speed up your site’s loading times. Browsers will request image after image from your server. This can lead to many round trips and take a lot of time. You can use CSS to include all images in one file. This allows you to point to a specific location in the file to display the specified height and width.
social background-image: url(spritesheet.png); background-repeat: no-repeat; display: block; .social-facebook-dreamstale25 width: 48px; height: 48px; background-position: -314px -106px;
What is the result? The result? You should combine all social icons and other images on a website with CSS sprites.
Helps you gain credibility
If your website design can help you gain credibility, you will be able to attract more customers. Many small B2B companies lack credibility. Most don’t know how to establish trust and build credibility through their brand.
Your potential customer can search online for almost anything today. Your potential customers may be looking for information about your product or to verify your company’s reputation. A website is a must for any B2B company. Your prospects may be searching for answers, and a website can help them do that.
Your prospects might switch to your competitor’s site if your website is not available. So that you can build trust, we recommend having your website designed by a skilled WordPress web design company. The question is, how can businesses make their websites look professional?
- Begin with the logo. Make your B2B website’s logo professional.
- Use optimized images of high quality on your website
- Offer useful content
- Use whitespace
- Your website and content should reflect the human sense
As your business facade, your website is your front door, as we mentioned previously. If people don’t know the facade, it’s just the front of the building. Visitors’ attention is attracted to the facade of the building. Humans are able to see the facade and predict what the interior will look like.
Your B2B website design is the business’s facade. You are giving users the ability to see your business image by offering a website. It is important that you focus on the website design and how it will make your customer feel professional. Your prospects will be able to learn more about your business through a website before making a decision on their future.
If you’re planning on visiting another country, you might look at other websites before making your final decision. Your prospects will also be likely to visit your website, even if they have already recommended your business. Every B2B company should have a website.
We recommend that you get one if you don’t already have one.
Adobe Illustrator: How to customize your social icons
It can be great to personalize your social icons with the same primary color as your brand’s theme. Since Illustrator is a popular program for editing vector files, we’ll show you how to customize your icons with Illustrator.
- Navigate to the AI file you saved and zoom in on the icons that interest you.
The square ones will be used.
- Choose the icons that you would like to use.
I am selecting Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. You can hand-select each by holding down the shift key while clicking on each. Only the ones you click on will be selected, as indicated by the blue highlight.
- To copy icons, press CTRL-C.
- Select File > Add a New File in a Tab.
- Copy the icons that you have selected by pressing CTRL+V or Edit > Paste into your menu.
You’ll now see the icons. To make them more manageable, you might have to move them around. These alignment tools can be used to align them and distribute them equally.
- To match the colors, copy your logo into Illustrator.
It was just placed somewhere that is convenient for me so that it can be removed later.
Tip: Click on each icon separately to see the background and logo grouped together. Click on the icon you wish to ungroup by right-clicking it.
- To edit the background color, click on the background.
- Choose the logo color to match the background.
Use the eyedropper tool to do this. Once you have the background selected hover over your logo to select the color that you want to match it to.
The background now matches your logo color!
- Use the background color.
Each icon can be ungrouped, selected their backgrounds, and applied the color using the eyedropper until they are all the same color as our logo.
Pro tip I have a drop-shadow effect on my logo so I will even add that effect. You can either use the effects or add another square to go behind it that is properly colored.
- Export and adjust.
Use Document Setup > Edit artboard to adjust the artboard. Make the final dimensions and then remove the logo.
You are now ready to export! Select File > Save for Web, then choose the file type you want. PNG format is recommended with transparent background