Greener Gadget Design Competition Opens

Source: GreenBiz.com

OAKLAND, Calif., Dec. 31, 2007 -- The promoters behind the upcoming Greener Gadgets Conference kicked off a design competition last week seeking innovations in greener electronics.

Design firms, up-and-coming designers and students are encouraged to explore gadgets that address energy, carbon footprint, health and toxicity, lifecycle, social development and new materials.

The main thrust of the contest is the minimization of the environmental impact of consumer electronics in areas such as materials, labor, assembly, packaging, transportation, retailing, use and disposal, among others.

Entrants will be judged on innovation, clarity of design, originality, form and presentation by representatives of Greener Gadgets and partner Core77, an industrial design website. Inhabitat and Marc Alt + Partners will present the Greener Gadgets Conference being held Feb. 1 in New York City.

The deadline to enter the contest is Jan. 27. One grand prize entry, earning $2,500 in cash, and two runner-ups, each earning $1,000, will be showcased at the conference.

To enter the design competition, visit http://www.core77.com/competitions/greener_gadgets.asp.

Best And Worst Of The Websites

Resources: http://www.courant.com

While you're making the rounds of New Year's cocktail parties this year, there will be an easy way to establish which of your friends are politically Web-savvy, and which are not.

Just mention the 2008 presidential race and ask if they've seen, say, the compelling "Courageous Service" video on John McCain's campaign website, the entertaining "Five Brothers Blog" on Mitt Romney's site or the impressive Web book "The Plan to Build One America" that can be downloaded from John Edwards' site.

Spending a long, snowy afternoon cruising the campaign websites of the 13 major contenders can also lead to a refreshing insight. With a few glaring exceptions, the websites of most of the Republican and Democratic candidates are thorough and detailed, and make inventive use of videos and Internet "meet-up" technology, such as Facebook and YouTube. Voters who complain that politics in America are shallow and devoid of content probably haven't spent much time on the presidential websites.

But most noticeable is just how accurate a mirror of American life and politics the Internet has become. Each site — its design, its quirks and strengths — reinforces the persona that the candidate has created on the campaign trail.

In the survey on these pages, the Courant ranks the 13 major presidential websites according to three criteria: ease of use, design, and quality of content, particularly on the issues pages. The websites received a grade for each criterion, which were averaged for the overall grade. The 13 websites were visited several times during the first two weeks of December.

On the Democratic side, both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama know that they have to project the encyclopedic reach of front-runners. Both received high marks for overall content when The Courant rated their sites (see the accompanying table). But the website of Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich received equally high grades for his plucky "Defend the Constitution" motto, which underscores his image as a well-briefed, if blunt, progressive.

The Republicans' websites also amply express the personalities of the various candidates. Romney's meaty, well-designed issues pages help define a candidate who prepared early for his run. McCain's reliance on videos underscores his personal charisma. Television actor Fred Thompson, meanwhile, waited until the end of the summer to declare his candidacy and has a slapdash website that reflects his late entry.

A More Prominent Role

The Web first surfaced as a force in American politics 10 years ago, when two computer-savvy California entrepreneurs formed MoveOn.org to oppose the impeachment of Bill Clinton. In the 2004 presidential primary, Democrat Howard Dean, former Vermont governor and presidential candidate, and MoveOn.org played a pivotal role in setting up virtual town meetings and fundraising. On Dec. 16 of this year, the campaign of upstart Republican Ron Paul of Texas raised $6 million in a single day through an Internet pledge effort.

Virtually all of the websites exploit the latest software and digital technology to raise funds, recruit volunteers and steer supporters to events in their states. Innovations such as interactive maps and the ability of Web visitors to create their own ads for candidates also have a conspicuous presence on many sites.

Surveys about Internet use by the Pew Internet & American Life Project indicate that voters rely increasingly on the Web and less on traditional media when seeking information on candidates. After the 2006 midterm elections, for example, Pew found that 15 percent of Americans had relied primarily on the Web for information on the candidates, compared with 7 percent who relied on the Web during the 2002 midterms. By comparison, 17 percent of voters said they relied primarily on radio during major elections, and 34 percent said they relied on newspapers.

Few doubt that Web use during elections eventually will equal or even eclipse that of radio and newspapers.

"With a presidential election in 2008 and with so many candidates linking visitors to their websites with Facebook and MySpace meeting group sites, we would expect to see these percentages for the Internet to continue to increase," said Aaron Smith, a research specialist at Pew.

Art Novak, a professor of advertising design at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia, participated in a critique of the presidential campaign websites this fall for the trade journal Campaigns & Elections. Like many Web experts, he feels that visitors to the campaign websites are overwhelmed by too many "splash ads" and pitches for money when they call up the site.

"It's interesting to remember that radio and TV both started out as informational media before an entertainment component was figured out, and the Web is at that same stage now," Novak said. "So, most of these political websites inundate you with information about volunteering or pitches for money, which makes it hard for visitors to walk away with a single impression about what the candidate is really about."

Most experts agree that the most significant development in 2007 was the use of social meeting sites like Facebook, MySpace and YouTube, which most campaigns provide links to on their home page, encouraging visitors to join existing user groups.

"Barack Obama on the Democratic side and Ron Paul on the Republican side are clearly the most popular with these meeting sites," said James Kotecki, a video blogger for Politico.com who has extensively studied how the campaigns use sites like YouTube for their videos. "My sense is that Obama appeals to younger voters who are most likely to use these social meeting sites. Ron Paul's supporters migrated to the Web because they felt that the mainstream media was ignoring him."

Campaigns are also becoming increasingly sophisticated about using YouTube postings to control their message, according to Christine Williams, a Bentley College professor who began studying campaign websites during the 2000 election.

"What's significant this year is that campaigns or even just individuals using their cellphones post a video on YouTube, and then another campaign issues its own video to YouTube to reply," Williams said. "Campaigns are even learning to use their sites to direct visitors to pre-emptive videos to control the message. It's a whole new way of establishing an election agenda."

Kotecki believes that the generous use of videos on most of the campaign websites could alter campaign politics in another way.

"The Web is a great place for personal stories, because people develop feelings of intimacy about the videos they see on the Internet, and there is no lack of space for the stories you want to tell," Kotecki said. "So you can always slip onto your site all the stories that the magazines didn't cover, the speech that didn't get to TV. You're not as reliant on the media anymore to control what's known about you."

2007-2008 Princeton Premier Registry

Source : http://www.pr.com

Los Angeles, CA, December 28, 2007 --(PR.com)-- Judy J. Johnson, Owner and Creative Director of J. Johnson Design Incorporation, Has Been Selected for Inclusion in the 2007-2008 Princeton Premier Registry. Judy currently resides in Baton Rouge, Los Angeles and earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree from Louisiana State University. As Owner and Creative Designer Judy’s responsibilities range from media web design to annual reports. Aside from maintaining her own company Judy J. Johnson, manages to find time to teach courses in graphic designing at her old alma mater Louisiana State University. J. Johnson Design has been in business for ten years and has over fifteen years of experience in graphic and web design.

When not hard at work Judy J. Johnson, enjoys traveling. She recognizes her social responsibilities; Judy donates to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. She is also a Board Member of the Aneurysm Outreach Program. Vice President Jay Harris Said, “We at Princeton Premier are pleased to welcome Judy J. Johnson in the upcoming registry. She is a proven leader who has excelled in the corporate structure. Her biography will now be listed alongside other business leaders making an impact. We wish her continued success in the future”.

About Princeton Premier:
Princeton Premier is the publisher of an exclusive registry comprised of business leaders and professionals making an impact in their industry and community. The online network is a large interactive business community where their valued members use the web based service daily as an online channel to assist them in meeting their specific business goals.

Dell's All-in-One PC Has the Guts, Design To Compete With iMac

Source: http://online.wsj.com

Something interesting is going on at Dell. The Texas personal-computer behemoth, long associated with boxy, boring machines, has started emphasizing industrial design. And the company, which in recent years seemed to care only about corporate customers, techies and hard-core gamers, appears once again interested in average, mainstream consumers who value simplicity.

The most tangible example of this new approach is Dell's XPS One desktop -- an elegant, handsome, cleverly designed one-piece computer. If it didn't have the Dell logo on it, the XPS One might be mistaken for a product of the PC industry's design leaders, Apple or Sony.

Like Apple's iconic iMac, the XPS One looks like it's simply a sleek, flat-panel monitor. The guts of the computer have been stuffed into the back of the screen.

But this new Dell is no mere iMac clone. It makes its own style statement, even though it shares the same 20-inch widescreen display and a similar Intel dual-core processor with the base-model iMac. Where the iMac is squarish and silver, the XPS One is all black and rectangular, with speakers attached to the sides and a wide glass base. It looks more like a small TV set than a computer and, in fact, comes with a built-in TV tuner.

In my tests, I found the XPS One to be much better designed and equipped than Gateway's iMac competitor, also called the One. In fact, the Dell XPS One is the first Windows all-in-one desktop I've tested that I believe matches or exceeds the iMac in hardware design. That's no small feat, especially coming from Dell.

Unlike the Apple, for example, the Dell has a built-in slot for camera memory cards. It comes standard with a wireless keyboard and mouse, which cost extra on the iMac. Its screen can be turned off with the touch of a button without turning off the computer itself. Its USB and headphone ports are arrayed conveniently on the side, instead of mainly at the rear, as on the iMac.

And, when you wave your hand in front of the black border to the right of the screen on the XPS One, a set of blue, back-lit touch controls magically appear for controlling the playback of music or video. They go away after a few seconds. The Dell also comes with a free year of 10 gigabytes of online backup.

For my tests, I used the least expensive standard configuration of the XPS One, which can be ordered for $1,499 at dell.com/theonepc. It came with two gigabytes of memory (twice the comparable iMac's standard amount), a 250 gigabyte hard disk and Wi-Fi wireless networking, unusual in Windows desktops.

The computer performed crisply and well for me. I installed several popular third-party programs that weren't included, such as Microsoft Office, the Firefox Web browser, Apple's iTunes and Adobe Reader. All worked fine.

I also successfully tested the built-in TV function, which requires a cumbersome external attachment to work with a cable box. I was able to view and record TV shows, something you can't do out of the box on an iMac.

I still recommend the iMac over the XPS One for several reasons other than hardware design. First, there's the software. I believe Apple's operating system, Leopard, is superior to the new Windows Vista operating system, the only choice on the XPS One. In my tests, a reboot of the XPS One took more than twice as long as a reboot of the iMac.

And I regard Apple's built-in software, especially the iLife multimedia suite, as superior to the Dell's built-in software, which includes a group of Adobe multimedia programs that are less well integrated and more complex.

The XPS One, unlike the iMac, also came with a bunch of craplets -- trial software like Yahoo Music and come-ons for online services like NetZero.

Second, the iMac, unlike the Dell, is immune to the vast majority of malicious software floating around, so you don't have to run annoying, memory-hogging security programs. The first time I turned on the beautiful Dell I was met with a warning that I had "multiple security problems," and was led to install a security suite in a complex and tedious process.

Third, defying popular perception, the iMac costs less than the XPS One. The base, 20-inch iMac costs $1,199 -- about $300 less. And even if you double the memory, and add a wireless keyboard and mouse to match the Dell, it's still $1,399 -- $100 less than the base XPS One (though Dell is currently running a sale that wipes out the $100 gap). Even the cheapest iMac has a dedicated video card with its own memory, something the base XPS One lacks.

Plus, while Dell offers only 20-inch screens on the XPS One, Apple has higher-end iMacs with huge 24-inch screens for the same price, or less, than the higher-end Dells.

Still, if you want a stylish Windows Vista machine that runs well and won't cost a fortune, the XPS One fits the bill, despite its unlikely heritage.

Th!nkCreative buys Web design agency

Source: http://www.sctimes.com

Downtown St. Cloud business Th!nkCreative Advertising Inc. acquired a Web development and design firm last month.

The full service advertising agency bought Linked Media Group of Sauk Centre in early November, Th!nkCreative co-owner Kevin Ehlinger said.

Linked was owned by Minnow and Jason Speidel. Linked customers will now be Th!nkCreative customers under the acquisition, Ehlinger said. The Speidels are pursuing other business ventures and wanted to sell their company, Ehlinger said.

Employees will be added to the Th!nkCreative staff to help with the additional Linked customer base.

By joining Linked and Th!nkCreative, Ehlinger said they hope to be able to offer Linked's customers more services, such as creative strategy plans and video production capabilities. Current Th!nkCreative customers will be offered a larger diversity of Web programs.

Th!nkCreative has seven employees.

Web design apps for beginners

Source: http://www.macworld.com


by James Dempsey

For beginning Web designers who wish to leave behind the confines of simple, template-driven apps like Apple’s iWeb (part of the $79 iLife suite), Karelia’s $49 Sandvox, and Realmac Software’s $49 RapidWeaver, the software you’re most often told to buy is Adobe’s $399 Dreamweaver and either Fireworks ($299) or Photoshop ($649).

However, many times, you’re not quite ready for the tools the pros use, don’t have the need for high-end stuff, or you simply don’t have the budget to invest. Don’t worry, though, the Mac development community has your back. (I’m assuming here that you would rather start from the layout side, rather than the HTML coding side, where you’d use code-based editors like Bare Bones Software’s BBEdit or Panic’s Coda.)

Nvu

The first thing you’ll need to get started is a Web editor. There are plenty of options out there besides Dreamweaver, including Adobe’s older Web editor, GoLive , which is still available. I would start, though, with Nvu , a great WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor, especially if you want to get your feet wet in the world of Web design. Nvu is open source, and free, so it’s difficult not to at least consider looking at it.

Nvu is based on Mozilla’s open source Gecko, the layout engine that drives the Firefox Web browser. Nvu offers full support for HTML, Javascript, CSS, and XML. Basic site-creation tools are available, as well as an integrated FTP application to upload your site when you’re done, but Nvu lacks many of the bells and whistles you’ll find in commercial applications. While some will see this as a shortcoming, I tend to look at it as a bonus. By learning the basics first, you’ll get a much better understanding of how Web pages work, and the tools you’ll need to take you to the next level.

Freeway Express

If you’re looking for a little more power from a commercial vendor that has more history under their belt, turn to Freeway Express by Softpress. Designers who currently work in the print design field will feel right-at-home with Freeway’s WYSIWYG editor tools, right down it’s use of master pages and rulers.

Freeway is a huge step up from Nvu as far as WYSIWYG editors goes. You build your layout by moving objects and text around on the page, add links, and can even apply image effects like blur, sharpen and more to your images (with full transparency support). Getting images, audio and video into your layout is easy with iPhoto, iTunes and Extensis Portfolio integration, and of course drag-and-drop is fully supported as well. One of the coolest features is the ability to apply graphic filters on text on a character level, while still maintaining edibility within Freeway. That’s because Freeway doesn’t actually create the image and apply the graphic filters until you publish the site, leaving you with more time for experimenting with your design rather than switching back and forth between applications and waiting for FTP uploads.

Freeway Express sells for $89 for the downloadable version and $109 for the CD. If you’re looking for a full-featured Web editor, Freeway is an excellent first step. Softpress also offers Freeway Pro, which ads numerous features for $249 ($289 on CD). Downloadable demos are available for both products.

In my follow-up later this week, I’ll introduce you to some helpful tools you can use to design your site, as well as track your site’s popularity—all which will work with whichever Web editor you choose.

Web design firm builds on its street cred with London site

Source: business.scotsman.com
By MICHAEL BLACKLEY
A WEB design company that created authoritative online guides to some of the Capital's most popular areas has expanded its operations to London.

Chameleon Design launched the Royal-Mile.com site – which lists every business in the historic thoroughfare and includes links to their websites – in 2005.

It repeated the formula with The Grassmarket.com and Princes Street.com and was approached by the George Street Association to create a similar site.

Now the company has launched its first site outside the Capital with Beauchamp-Place.com, using the same formula to promote one of London's most fashionable and distinctive streets, which regularly attracts a range of A-list celebrities.

Although the sites list all the businesses in each area free, it charges £40 to firms that want a link to their website put on the site. There is also growth potential from possible profits from other advertising space. The new site in London is something of a coup for Marchmont-based Gavin Bonnar, 41, who set up the business, which he runs from home.

The new Beauchamp Place site was set up in conjunction with the Beauchamp Place Association (BPA) after contact was made through Hamilton & Inches, which has a branch in the street, as well as Edinburgh's George Street. The BPA promotes the site and encourages businesses to join and allow the site to link to their own websites.

If Mr Bonnar finds other retail groups that want a site dedicated to particular streets in other parts of the UK, he would consider employing a small team of staff to administer the sites.

"It's fantastic to get the Beauchamp Place site because it's one of the most prestigious streets in London," he said.

Because he has linked up with the Beauchamp Place Association, he said it was not even a problem he had never before visited the street. He said: "The beauty of the internet is that I can work from my house in Marchmont and create a site for businesses in London.

"The main work is in setting up the site, but once it's operational I only need to update it when a

new member wants a link or if something changes on the street." A recent promotional drive saw him send out postcards with images of the Royal Mile on the front to businesses in the street with the logo "wish you were here", referring to the online community of businesses he has created on its website.

The Royal Mile site already has 120 businesses paying for links to their websites, and Mr Bonnar is hoping to get similar levels of interest in the other sites.

Although turnover remains relatively small at around £4000, Mr Bonnar is confident he is now in the position to expand his business rapidly.

If he gets clients who are interested in similar sites for other parts of the UK, he said he would consider employing staff and running a small team to take the business forward. "I am hoping to keep this growing," he said. "It started off small but I think there is real potential."

Home Page Goals

Source: http://alistapart.com/articles/homepagegoals

When I set out to design a website, I do it backwards. I start with the design of the smallest, deepest element: the story page or search results. Then I work backwards to design their containers: section pages, indexes. Then, lastly, I work on the home page.
I do this because each container needs to adequately set expectations for what it contains. If the home page says one thing, but the internal pages say another, that’s going to lead to a user-experience failure.
This also means that, by the time work begins on the home page, there’s a lot of momentum going already. And any lingering anxiety is going to come to a head—on the home page.
Home pages are anxiety-inducing for companies. The home page is your first impression. And like the old saying goes, you only get one chance. So home pages themselves have a unique set of design goals.
Before I get into those goals, here’s a grain of salt. Every site I’ve ever worked on has had strikingly similar traffic trends, and one stands out. Remember that smallest, deepest element I described earlier? This is the atomic element—for a news site, it’s the story page; for a search engine, it’s the search result; for a store, it’s a product page. This page accounts for 60 to 75 percent of all page views on the site. The rest belong to the home page.
This is not to say that the home page is unimportant—it’s hugely important as a first impression. But looking at the numbers, you’ll get far more bang out of tweaks to the atomic element pages than the home page.
That said, let’s look at the unique challenges that home pages present. Remember, when I say home page, I mean the page that lives at whatever.com. The first page a user sees when they show up at your front door.
Any home page has four main goals, in this order:
Goal 1: Answer the question, “What is this place?”
This is, and always will be, the number-one job of any home page. If you ignore this goal, you’ll leave new visitors in the dark.
The first thing a new visitor does when they get to an unfamiliar site is ask that question. If the site does not do a good job of answering it within a few seconds, the user will feel dumb, leave, and never come back. After all, what would you do if you met someone and they made you feel like an idiot? Would you want to hang out with them again?
This is all about making a good first impression.
Don’t be afraid to use good old fashioned text to say: “This is who we are, and this is what we’re about.” Then link to a more verbose about page or tour. That way, the people who need that help have a place to go to find it. And make sure the text you use is excited and positive—and makes the reader feel important.
Don’t be too wordy, of course. Make sure all the words you use are doing heavy lifting. But the explanation has to begin at the top of page one—it’s the most important thing you can do to turn newbies into repeat visitors.
This is especially important for companies trying to do new things. Google can get away with a user-hostile front page because everybody already knows how to use it. But that’s the exception to the rule. If you’re doing something new, sometimes you just have to explain it in plain language, like: Flock is a free, open source web browser.
If a first time visitor to your site’s home page does not understand what it is within three seconds, you’ve failed goal number one, so feel free to skip the rest. The only people who will use the site are the people who already know what it does. Or, ya know, masochists.
Goal 2: Don’t get in the repeat visitor’s way
All that said, the second goal is to get out of the way of the users who already know what they’re doing. These are the users like you, the ones who have been here before and already get it.
One great technique that accomplishes the first two goals in one fell swoop is to make one area of the page dynamic. That area can show an explanation to newbies. But once the user is logged in, replace the explanation with some information specific to that user (which also meets goal three).
Flickr takes this method to an extreme, providing entirely different home pages if the user is logged in or logged out. For them, this is a perfect method. The site is so customized for logged in members, and the service is just different enough from other sites, it makes perfect sense to provide an entirely different experience to each group, and it perfectly meets goals one and two.
Goal 3: Show what’s new
By the time you get to goal three, you’ve already addressed the needs of newbies and repeat visitors. Congrats, now everybody’s on the same page! Now it’s time to impress them all with what’s new.
Too many sites stop after addressing goals one and two. But once a user’s gone through the trouble of figuring out what you do, and then actually coming back, you owe them something: what’s new. You know your site better than they do, so be their tour guide. Suggest places to visit, starting with whatever’s new. Blogs are especially good for this, with their newest-comes-first formatting.
Goal 4: Provide consistent, reliable global navigation
This is a site-wide goal, but it’s important to list here because the expectations you set on the home page will carry forward to every page on your site. It’s the little things that count here. If a link is in the global navigation on the home page, it should be in about the same place everywhere. If there are six links in the footer, those six links should appear in every footer.
Bottom line
Designing for good user experience is about communicating clearly, setting expectations early, and then delivering what you’ve promised. Think of your home page as the opening verse of a song. All you have to do is make sure you stay in tune throughout the user’s entire listening experience.
Illustration by Kevin Cornell

12 Invaluable Sites for Web Design and Design Inspiration

Source: 12 Invaluable Sites for Web Design and Design Inspiration
Nov 21st, 2007 by Sawser
Whether you are a professional or amateur web designer, or simply want to learn more about how web design works, these are great resources to browse and bookmark. This collection covers various design styles, guides and tools as well as free fonts, stock photographs and vector images. These have been organized into three complimentary categories: inspiration, guides and resources. Enjoy!
Web Design Inspiration:
CSS Zen Garden A demonstration of what can be accomplished visually through CSS-based design. Select any style sheet from the list to load it into this page. The Zen Garden aims to excite, inspire, and encourage participation. To begin, view some of the existing designs in the list. Clicking on any one will load the style sheet into this very page. The code remains the same, the only thing that has changed is the external .css file. Yes, really.
Web Design Inspiration is a Flickr image set collecting a variety of successful web designs of all different kinds, over 400 total. It has a great collection of eye-candy for the non-designer as well as inspirational works of creativity to motivate any designer, web or otherwise.
Web Creme provides frequently updated screenshots in an elegant-but-simple blog-like format for web designers to browse. This enables designers to easily check back in should they be searching for some easy design inspiration and regularly refreshed content.
Unmatched Style is a constantly growing community dedicated to acknowledging those who have made exceptionally gorgeous web sites using Cascading Style Sheets and web standards. By recognizing these exceptionally beautiful designs, other designers and businesses can get inspired and find a direction they may wish to take with their own web sites.
CSS Beauty is a project focused on providing its audience with a database of well designed CSS based websites from around the world. Its purpose is to showcase designers’ work and to act as a small portal to the CSS design community. If you are “in need of inspiration”, you have come to the right place.
WebUrbanist is a collectively produced urban art, culture and design weblog that has a simple layout and a profound series of posts with series of Seven Wonders of the World as well as other sources of design inspiration from around the world, including urban art images that provide indirect inspiration for web and other designers.
Web Design Guides:
Web Design from Scratch is for everyone involved or interested in creating web sites - whether novice or expert. It will help you understand what makes web sites succeed or fail, and what can be done to increase the chance of success. You don’t have to be a web designer to benefit from this site. You may have a current web site design project, you may be updating an existing site, or just interested in learning new skills. Also be sure to check out his Current Style in Web Design Guide.
Web 2.0 How-To Design Style Guide: In this tutorial, the author describes various common graphic design elements in modern web (”2.0″) design style. He then explains why they work (i.e. why they have become common), as well as how, when and where you might use each element in your designs.
Top 50 Logo Design Tutorials has an excellent selection of logo design guides with helpful screenshots that will assist you in navigating the various links. Whether you are looking for something detailed and creative or simple and elegant there is almost certainly something useful on this list.
51 Photoshop Text Effect Tutorials. ext and the way it looks is a major part of any design. A great design can be cheapened if the text on the page looks wrong. Any logo is almost entirely text. From water to fire, these 51 tutorials will show you how to create any style of text you want.
Web Design Resources:
Open Source Web Design is a site to download free web design templates and share yours with others. They help make the internet a prettier place. To put it simply, Open Source Web Design is a collection of web designs submitted by the community that anyone can download free of charge!
Blue Vertigo showcases an amazing array of free resources for web designers, from stockphotography and vector clip art to free fonts and brushes. This is truly a site worth bookmarking for future use.
Browser Shots allows you to test out your designs in various browsers quickly and easily. Browsershots makes screenshots of your web design in different browsers. It is a free open-source online service created by Johann C. Rocholl. When you submit your web address, it will be added to the job queue. A number of distributed computers will open your website in their browser. Then they will make screenshots and upload them to the central server here.

For Web Site Design in Tampa check Symbyo WebMarketing

The Top 10 Dumbest Web Site Decisions

Source: daily-web.blogspot.com/

Having worked with web sites for the past eleven years, I've seen a LOT of errors, poor judgment and embarrassing gaffs on the web. Sometimes they are the fault of the client, the web designer, the IT Manager, or the SEO, but human error is always to blame. The saddest thing is that the problems are usually preventable.Here is a líst of what I consider to be the Top 10 dumbest web site decisions ever, in reverse order, David Letterman style :
10) Misspelling a DomainBack in the glory days of the late 1990's when I was working for a large Internet agency, the web designers had responsibility for the registration of domain names on behalf of clients. One particular designer had a face to face meeting with a major client, during which the client asked him to register CarTuneCentral.com (or so he thought!). The staffer did a check and was delighted to see the domain available. He made the purchase and proudly emailed the client.An hour later his boss called him in to his office to say that he'd had a call from a very frustrated client who *actually* wanted him to register CartoonCentral.com. Needless to say the desired domain wasn't available and the whole office dined on his mistake for months.9) Letting the Domain Name ExpireNow what type of company would allow their domain to expire a month after site launch? A very large one, that's who. I'll save the company some embarrassment and won't reveal their name but the site was offline for a total of 2 days while they scrambled to pay their registrar, sort out DNS propagation and cover their tails.8) Flashing your Cyber UnderpantsOne of the most common web site management platforms provided by hosting companies used to store the site statistics in a common folder called /statistics/. You could password protect this folder, but the default was to leave it open to the public and so many unwary webmasters unwittingly published full traffic data for their site on the Internet, open to any person who knew where to look.I learned this the hard way in a public forum from a member who said he had just reviewed my traffic for the previous month and was very impressed. Publishing site statistics for all the world to see is what I call flashing your cyber underpants and I haven't let it happen again!
7) Publishing Sensitive Company InformationQuite a few companies have been guilty of doing this, including AOL, who published a search data report in 2006 that contained the private details of thousands of AOL customers. Although the report was taken offline within a few days, it had already been mirrored and distributed across the Internet. The fallout eventually led to the resignation of AOL's Chief Technical Officer.Although not quite as serious, an ex-client of mine once published a page that had notes on it from the Sales Manager about the best way to strong-arm a customer into purchasing a higher-ticket item. Apparently the web designer didn't realize the hand-written post-it notes were not part of the web page copy. Duh!6) Using an Insulting 404 Error PageI clash with the web design team of one of my clients on a regular basis. Earlier this year, my client completely re-designed their web site and so I recommended they ask their web design team to design a custom 404 error page in case visitors navigated to a page on the old site that no longer existed.Their web design team put up a message that read:"404 Error. You've obviously typed in the wrong URL. Either that or the page you are looking for no longer exists."That was it! No apology for the missing page, no recommendatíon to use the navigation to find what they were looking for, just an insulting message that accuses the visitor of being an idiot. Persons viewing that page would be clicking the "back" button as fast as they could.
5) Taking a Site Offline for MaintenanceI find it fascinating that very large sites run by intelligent people still get taken offline for maintenance on a regular basis. Search engines don't understand the "Back in 15 minutes" sign and the longer the site is down, the bigger the risk.If search bots try and index a site while it is down, they will most likely assume the previously indexed pages have expired and drop them from the search index. This means that all your hard-earned rankings could be flushed down the toilet until search engines can successfully re-index your site. Surely a mirror site for maintenance periods isn't that difficult to set up?4) Buying a Dot Bíz When the Dot Com Was AvailableOk, I'm putting up my hand on this one. I'm not going to reveal the domain but yes, I registered a dot bíz domain back in 2000 when the dot com was actually available. The dot com version of my domain was bought by Yahoo a short time later and turned into a product site. Ack! My excuse is that, at the time, dot bíz sites were rumored to be the next big thing and all companies were being urged to choose them over dot coms. Ok, I was wrong!
3) Allowing a Customer Complaint to Remain on a Site for 12 MonthsWhen I was working as a public relations consultant, I was given the responsibility of re-writing the web copy of a large real estate client. One of the areas I was asked to re-write was the welcome paragraph on the Customer Feedback page where existing customers of the estate agent chain could login and leave comments about their experience.While writing the copy, I scanned some of the customer feedback and came across an aggressive message left 12 months earlier by an obviously unhappy customer. She had used some of the most colorful language I've ever seen (and some that I hadn't) and very detailed descriptions of how she was going to take her revenge on the company for allegedly allowing a tenant to destroy her house. Nobody in charge of the web site had even noticed the comment and I still wonder how many potential customers would have been put off from using the estate agent after reading it.2) Switching a Web Site Off for a 3 Week Christmas VacatíonYes, many moons ago, an ex-client of mine decided to take her entire web site offline (without telling me!) while she was on a 3 week vacatíon over Christmas. Only a month earlier, she had paid me $5,000 to optimize it for search engines.It had just achieved some impressive top 10 results and all the carefully optimized pages were attracting good traffic when she shut it down and replaced the entire site with a 1 page sign that said "closed until after Christmas". I noticed the traffic and search ranking declines in her stats and was completely flabbergasted when I found the site gone. Her response when I confronted her? "Why didn't you TELL ME this could happen?"And the dumbest web site decision I've ever witnessed?1) Promoting a Domain Name You Don't Own:My Alma Mater, the University of Newcastle, have spent thousands of dollars on television advertising here in Australia, marketing their new site for online post-graduate coursework: GradSchool Dot Com. There's only one problem. The domain for this site is actually Gradschool.com.au. They don't even own Gradschool.com!Sadly, this glaring marketing error seems to have totally escaped them and they are happily referring to their brand as Gradschool.com on all their marketing material and throughout their .com.au domain. It's tragic to think of all the potential students typing in Gradschool.com expecting to find the University program. I see that whoever purchased Gradschool.com has slapped up some AdSense code on it so at least somebody will reap the benefits of those thousands of advertising dollars wasted by the University.Don't let any of these web site tragedies happen to you. Make sure that your site decisions aren't in the hands of dummies!

Web Site Design
Your website is often the first interaction your customer will have with your business. Don't let a bad design confuse or drive that customer away. Your website needs to highlight the success of your business, create interest in your product or service, and build trust for your customer.

Website Design for your Customers - It's not what you want

Source: Sigma Infotech
Yes, believe it or not, your website design should not concentrate on what you want or what you would like to see in your website, but it is about what your customers want from your website and it’s design. You can get website designers to make great looking website for yourself, however you cannot get customers to visit and re-visit your website just because you have got a great looking website or you cannot convert visitors in customers just because you have a great looking website design. Neither do you need a website that offers a lot of functionality if your customers don’t need that functionality. If you are selling flowers, the functionality your customers desire from your website will be different to the functionality available on a tyre manufacturer’s website. So in simple terms you need to develop a website design and functionality that your customers expect from your type of business.
What should I be aiming at?
Even before you go to a see a website designer to undertake website design for your business, I would recommend that you do your fieldwork.
It would be useful to understand:
Who your audience is: This probably is the most important step before you go and see a website designer to develop a website for your company. You have to understand who your audience is. Try and estimate who are the people who would regularly come to my website?
What does my audience expect: once you identify your audience, the next step is to understand what your audience expect from your website design? Understanding this will not only help you understand the path you should take with your website design, but will also help you explain your requirement to your website designer.
What will bring my audience back: An important aspect of a good website design and a successful website is the ability to bring the visitors back. In marketing terms, it is like customer retention. For any business it is important to retain customer loyalty, similarly for any successful website, the ability to bring back your customers is paramount. Customer loyalty leads to increase in traffic. Look at some of the successful websites around you: amazon.com, Youtube, myspace. The success of these websites is an example of the power of customer retention and referrals. If you analyse the website design of these sites, it is fairly simple but it offers its visitors what they need: products and services that matter to their audience.
If you think through the above points, you will realise that a lot of information is already available to you (especially if you are an established business). Your website in many terms is an extension of your physical business. The above mentioned information should be available to you in terms of corporate knowledge. Talk to your sale people, look at your customer files and your sales pattern, try and source information from your suppliers. For a new business, it could include analysing your competitors.
In conclusion, I would remind you that try and understand your market before you undertake any part of website design or website development process. Without knowing your market you won’t be able to communicate your requirement to your website designer. It is important to go through this process before you start website development instead of re-inventing the loop after your have developed your website and realised after one year that you are not getting enough leverage from your web design. At the end of the day you will only achieve from your website design what you tell your website designer.

30 Delightful Graphic Design Books

Outlined by Gino Orlandi, Written by Jessica Stockdale
I have probed the web for the most highly recommended and best-selling graphic design related books that can inspire and help you as a graphic designer. These books cover many areas of design, including typography, color theory, layout, design theory, web design, business and even search engine optimization and marketing for designers.These delightful graphic design books will make a great addition to any graphic designer’s library!1. Graphic Artists Guild Handbook: Pricing & Ethical GuidelinesThis is a book you should not do without. It touches on every topic you need to know about how to be successful as a graphic artist. If you want experienced and practical advice on anything from setting prices for your work on the Internet to how to best manage your client relations – this is the book for you.2. Sagmeister: Made You LookDaring designer, Stefan Sagmeister, chronicles almost 40 years of working in this business in this book. Sagmeister conveys his wit and humor into these pages, as he tells you his personal adventures.3. Make It BiggerThis book caters to designers who work with businesses. Read this to be inspired and benefit from the wisdom of years of experience working in the field of graphic design.4. About Face: Reviving The Rules Of TypographyTalking about the large topic of typography, About Face, helps you navigate through the world with ease. Many wonderful and successful examples of typography are provided in this book.5. Typographic Design: Form and CommunicationThis is the fourth edition of a best-selling book. If you want just one book to help you learn about how to properly typography, it’s this one. Whether you’re interested in the history of this art, or how it can be effectively used in this modern-era, this book is chock full of valuable information for graphic designers.6. The Elements of Typographic StyleAuthor, Robert Bringhurst, has written this book, which uses beautiful language to tell the story of how to apply your own artistic sensibility to typography. One treat in this book is the examples of fonts in different languages such as Russian and Greek.7. The Elements of Graphic Design: Space, Unity, Page Architecture, and Type This book’s author, Alexander W. White, is a strong advocate of white space – what you can also call negative space. Many designers feel the need to clutter things up, but less can be more. Learn how to master that idea with this great book.8. Making and Breaking the Grid: A Graphic Design Layout WorkshopThis book focuses on layout. With it, you can comprehensively learn the elements of layout so that you can better use them in your work.9. Designing with Type: The Essential Guide to Typography (Designing With Type) A book that’s been around since 1971, this is something that will introduce you to typography. It offers pointers on how to take into account such things as the feeling of a text, as well as how effectively it is conveyed in different formats.10. Meggs’ History of Graphic Design This offers a wonderful writing up of the history of graphic design. It may be of interest to both current graphic designers, and general artistic-minded people.11. Graphic Design: A New HistoryOwn this book and learn about graphic design history in a new light. The book talks in-depth of the different times of history in correlation to what graphic design’s were used.12. Thinking with Type: A Critical Guide for Designers, Writers, Editors, & Students (Design Briefs)Author Ellen Lupton has written this wonderful book. The book has three main sections: letter, text, and grid. Learn the history of each, how technology can help you, and then see examples in practice.13. The Designer’s Toolkit: 500 Grids and Style Sheets: 500 Grids and Style SheetsAs you may have already guessed, this book challenges designers to re-think their idea of how to work within a grid. There are 500 grid and style sheets ready for you to produce your work on and see what you like.14. Looking Closer 5: Critical Writings on Graphic DesignThis is the fifth and final installment in a series of wonderful books. Within these pages you will find writing on controversial topics that will encourage you to think outside of the page, or the screen.15. How to Think Like a Great Graphic DesignerLearn what you have in common with other graphic designers who have achieved success. What has helped them overcome obstacles may very well help you as well. This book is full of interviews you will find invaluable.16. Seventy-nine Short Essays on DesignThe title of the book tells you what you’re getting, right off the bat. Michael Bierut writes with whimsy and a critical eye in this book that you are sure to enjoy and be educated from.17. How To Be a Graphic Designer Without Losing Your SoulThe work of a graphic designer is not easy, and you probably already know that. Within these160 pages you will discover writing on topics such as how to generate ideas when your mind is void of them. You don’t want to become a slave to mundane tasks and lose your spark, if you feel yourself drifting – reach for this book.18. LogoLounge 3: 2,000 International Identities by Leading Designers (LogoLounge) If you’re crazy for logos then this is the book for you. In this third installment, you will find a myriad of different logos – 2,000 to be exact. Get inspired with this book, and then get designing.19. Logo Design (Midi Series)This is a handy reference book on logo design. Students and professionals alike will enjoy this book.20. Hand Job: A Catalog of Type Fifty typographers are featured in this book, and what they all have in common is that they reject technology, and design their fonts by hand. While the title at first can seem shocking to anyone, it will stay shocking to a designer. When’s the last time you reached for a pen and paper for your final draft? Maybe next time you will, after reading this book.21. Universal Principles of Design: 100 Ways to Enhance Usability, Influence Perception, Increase Appeal, Make Better Design Decisions, and Teach Through DesignWell-written, this book is what it claims to be – 100 ways to enhance, influence, increase, teach – you get the idea. It is easy to understand and follow, and gives you well-researched briefs on a variety of topics that normally you’d have to read about in several different books.22. Adobe Photoshop CS3 Classroom in a BookExperts that make up the Adobe Creative Team have put together this book for you to easily expand your knowledge of the Adobe Photoshop program. Learn how to do things better and faster, all from reading this book.23. The Adobe Photoshop CS3 Book for Digital Photographers (Voices That Matter)To have Adobe Photoshop is one thing; to be able to use it is one thing, but to be able to use it well is another. And that is especially true when it comes to digital photography. If you want the best tips and tricks, this book won’t lead you astray.24. Adobe Illustrator CS3 Classroom in a BookMaster the programs in Adobe Illustrator by using this book as a step-by-stop guide. The Adobe Creative Team will guide you where you need to go.25. The Adobe Illustrator CS3 Wow! Book (WOW!)If you want to be the best with using Adobe’s Illustrator, you need this book. There are tons of lessons in this book to help you learn new tools. Ever wonder how to take a desaturated image and make it appear to be a color photo? Read and learn.26. Adobe InDesign CS3 Classroom in a Book This is a good book for beginners. Make sure to get the second printing, as the first as some typos!27. HTML, XHTML, and CSS, Sixth Edition (Visual Quickstart Guide) You should know HTML, and probably XHTML and CSS as well. So learn it here, with this wonderful book! This is not for advanced students.28. CSS Mastery: Advanced Web Standards Solutions Authors Andy Budd, Simon Collison, and Cameron Moll have written the ultimate guide to CSS! Learn everything you wanted to know, and more – in this book.29. Bulletproof Web Design: Improving flexibility and protecting against worst-case scenarios with XHTML and CSS (2nd Edition)When you build a Web site, you want it to work. This book will help you learn how to get out all of the kinks and bugs from your site so that the widest possible audience can access it without flaws.30. SEO BookWhen you have a Web site, you want traffic. You get that through search engine optimization (SEO). This is the only book you will ever need to master search engine optimization and you can download it!

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