April’s Best: This Month in Web Design
Published April 27th, 2008 in Links - 23 Comments
It’s hard to believe that April is almost over. Here is a collection of the best design-related articles of the month.
Celebration of Vintage and Retro Design from Smashing Magazine.
Smashing Magazine always provides great resources for inspiration, and this one is no exception.
60+ Unusual WordPress Blog Designs from Noupe.
If you’re looking for some inspiration for creating something unique with WordPress, Noura has put together an excellent categorized collection.
5 Steps to Improved Client Feedback
Published April 23rd, 2008 in Design Process - 21 Comments
If you’ve done much design or development work for clients you know that getting effective feedback from the client is critical to the success of the project. Unfortunately, this can sometimes be a challenge. Depending on the types of clients that you work with, you may find that some of them are difficult to communicate with, not because they don’t have opinions, but because they don’t understand very much about the process of building a website.
From my experience these clients can be a bit more difficult to work with, not because they are hard to please or unreasonable in their expectations, but simply because they don’t always understand how much of an impact they need to have on the process. They hire a designer to create the site and they just assume that the designer can do what is needed.
50 Essential Photoshop Text Effect Tutorials
Published April 21st, 2008 in Design, Photoshop Tutorials - 167 Comments
Last month I published a collection of 45 Photoshop Tutorials for Better Navigation, which quickly became one of the most popular posts on this blog. Due to the response, I spent some time finding more great Photoshop tutorials. Here are 50 of the best tutorials for working with text.
Create a Spectacular Flaming Meteor Effect on Text
Tips for Attracting Local Clients
Published April 20th, 2008 in Marketing - 30 Comments
Most web designers work with clients from all over the country or even all around the world. While it certainly allows the designer to expand his or her marketplace, there are sometimes competitive advantages that exist when targeting work from local clients. Because local marketing is sometimes overlooked, I wanted to put together this list of suggestions for doing more work in your own backyard.
3 SEO Tools Worthy of Your Time
Published April 16th, 2008 in SEO - 62 Comments
In recent weeks I’ve come across three SEO tools that I’ve found to be very useful. Here is a look at each of these (free) tools.
Rank Checker
Aaron Wall of SEO Book recently released a powerful new Firefox add-on called Rank Checker. If you’re working on moving your site up in the SERPs, you’ll obviously want to know where you stand and to be actively tracking your progress.
As a Firefox add-on this tool is both free and very convenient to use. With Rank Checker you can input the URL that you want to track and a list of keywords that you are targeting (or just researching). You’ll then be able to choose which search engines to check (including all of the international versions of Google). The tool will then go out and get the data and bring it back to you in one convenient place.
25 Incredibly Artistic Websites
Published April 14th, 2008 in Galleries - 157 Comments
If you spend much time browsing through web design galleries you’ll notice certain trends in design that vary from time-to-time. Right now, there are a number of sites that effectively utilize illustration and other types of very artistic design. Hopefully this collection will be a good source of design inspiration for you. Feel free to mention your favorites in the comments.
How Design Impacts Social Media Success
Published in Social Media - 17 Comments
Web design and social media marketing are two topics that I enjoy studying, and the two certainly impact one another for website owners and bloggers who are attempting to increase traffic to their site. While social media is intended to put a spotlight on the best and most popular content, the look and appearance of a page will often influence social media users and their decision of whether or not they should vote for a particular submission. The design of a site can be either a positive or a negative influence on the voting decision, and social media marketers need to consider appearance as much as they consider the content and headlines.
8 Ways Design Influences Social Media Users:
1. First Impression
The first impression of any visitor, regardless of how they arrive at your site, will be heavily influenced by the appearance of the site. Generally, opinions are formed in a matter of seconds, not minutes, so creating a positive impression is critical. While most of your website’s visitors will have a short attention span, social media users are notoriously quick to leave a site that doesn’t impress them right away.
Congratulations to N. Design Studio!
Published April 13th, 2008 in Competition - 3 Comments
Over the past few weeks we have been running Blog Design Madness, a tournament to determine the best designed blog according to our readers. The tournament was inspired by March Madness, the NCAA basketball tournament. Blog Design Madness started with 64 contestants and each one faced another in head-to-head voting from readers. In the end only one of these excellent designs could be crowned the champion. Congratulations to N. Design Studio for outlasting the other 63 contestants. The score in the final round was N. Design Studio 51, Elliot Jay Stocks 24.
Thank you to everyone who took the time to participate be casting a vote. I hope you enjoyed the tournament and seeing all of these great designs. I would consider doing this tournament again next year, so if you have an opinion one way or another please leave a comment. Also, feel free to make suggestions about how the competition could be improved if it is done again in the future.
Blog Design Madness Final Round: Cast Your Vote to Determine the Champion!
Published April 10th, 2008 in Competition - 7 Comments
The Blog Design Madness tournament has reached the final round! The remaining two competitors have made it through five rounds of head-to-head matchups with some of the best blog designs you will find anywhere. The two Final Four matchups couldn’t have been any tighter. N. Design Studio squeaked past Blog Design Blog 57 to 56, and Elliot Jay Stocks edged Kineda 45 to 44. (You can go back through the past rounds here.) Thanks to everyone who has been voting throughout the tournament. Please take a moment to vote and determine the champion! The poll is set to close at 11:59 PM Saturday, Eastern Time (US).
[poll=64]
Sitemaps, Their Purpose, and Some Helpful Resources to Create Your Own
Published April 9th, 2008 in Tools - 19 Comments
Sitemaps are a great tool for both web designers and visitors. Of course, there are two different types of sitemaps, 1) XML sitemaps (also known as Google sitemaps) and 2) HTML sitemaps. Each type serves its own purpose.
An HTML sitemap can be used effectively to increase the usability of a website by providing a page that links out to every page on the site (or at least to the major pages, depending on the size of the site). Navigation is of course one of the most important aspects to creating a user-friendly site, and when visitors aren’t able to easily find what they are looking for, many will turn to a sitemap. As a result, the HTML sitemap can help to keep visitors on your site by showing them where to find specific information. Additionally, because the sitemap links to all of the other pages on the website, they can be helpful to search engine spiders as they are crawling through the site.
