designy’s blog

Swish Rocks

nobody@vox.com(designy) — Wed, 21 May 2008 04:06:34 -0700

I had been keen on rock music for ten years already, when I decided to create a website for my favorite rock band. I knew nothing about web design and made an online research of companies dealing with custom design or templates. There are score of them, as I found out, and I randomly chose Flashmint. I was given three options (my unique website, a template and something which is somewhere in the middle between the first and the second option, but I forgot the name for it). Having considered the prices I chose a swish template where I ordered to make some changes (they called it customization).

I quite like the website I have now; it is cool, with the animated buttons, the picture gallery, the preloader and, of course, sound. A nice final touch is the transitions of objects on the web site. I thought that Flash is used for that kind of things but Swish also turned out to be a powerful tool in creating an appealing web site, as it seems to me and as I can judge from my web site. Now I can recommend swish templates produced by Flashmint to those who want to start up a web site with cool graphics and catchy design.

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Large Preview at FlashMint

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Where Is Your Content?

nobody@vox.com(designy) — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 07:26:30 -0700

One would hope this would go without saying, but as designers we are slapped in the face more often than we would like when clients do not have their content ready from the beginning. The nerve!

What are we mind readers?

There is no possible way, short of pure luck, that one could create a site that would work with any client without first seeing two things:

Their brand
Their content

You just can’t do it, effectively. Obliviously, if they do not have a brand, this might open a whole different box of awful, depending on your design skills, but usually can be quite rewarding. Working within a brand can cause some strife, as it will typically set the mood for the entire site.

More important though is the content. The content tells us everything we need to know about the client. Where they have been, where they are going, what is working, and what is not. By obtaining the content first, it allows us to use our best judgment to help the client see which style of layout will work best for them. With the help of some simple thumbnail sketches, gray box comps, or other methods, we can quickly come up with a visual representation of their ideal layout.

If they left it up to us, lord knows what they would get. That is why I would rather have a client that is proactive about their design. There also is a fine line between proactive, and bothersome (some might have other words or phrases to describe them).

I would be awfully cautious of clients without any content for you to work with. Avoid phrases like such:

Eh, just make it look really nice. I need room for content.
I need lots of room for that menu to expand
What is the largest image I can fit? I have some from my digital camera I would like to upload directly…
Sitemap? Is that something Google offers?

Heck, I would even rather have a link to an SWF and copy all the content myself! Give us something to work with!

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Find the Perfect Colors for Your Website

nobody@vox.com(designy) — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 07:22:10 -0700

Color choice is a crucial decision in every website design. Sometimes you may be designing a site for an existing business that already has an established color scheme, but many design projects will require development of a color scheme. There are an almost endless number of tools online that will help you to find the right color scheme. These tools come in many different varieties. Below we have listed the tools that we have found to be the most useful.

Sample Color Shemes/Combinations:

Color Schemer Scheme Gallery (Editor’s Choice) Browse through sample color schemes that have been submitted by users.
COLOURlovers - sample color combinations
Kuler from Adobe
Daily Color Scheme
Colr.org
Color Combos
Top Color Combinations in Web Design
Color Schemes
ColorBurn Winners

Tools to Help You Develop a Color Scheme:

Website Color Picker (Editor’s Choice) A simple tool that lets you quickly choose background color, text color and link color for a sample page
Color Schemer Online
ColorJack Sphere
EasyRGB - Color harmonies, complements, and themes
ColorBlender
Steel Dolphin Color Scheme Tool
Color Hunter
Color Mix
Color Scheme Generator
Color Palette
Color Mixers
Test Color Combinations
Color Wheel Color Calculator
Palette Man
HTML Color Picking Chart
Color Picker 1.0
Color Picker 3.1

Tools to Get Colors from an Image:

DeGraeve.com Color Palette Generator (Editor’s Choice)
Color Palette Generator
What’s Its Color
Palette Generator

Other Tools:

I Like Your Colors (Editor’s Choice) If you like the color’s of a particular website, enter the URL and you will get the html numbers for the colors that are used on that page.
Color Blender
Web-Smart Palette
100 Random Colors
Multiple Color Tools from Limov.com
Find the Average Color of a Photograph

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How Make Your Language Center Known Throughout The Whole Town for just $ 56?

nobody@vox.com(designy) — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 06:55:57 -0700

How to make your language center known throughout the whole town for just $ 56? Sounds impossible? But, in fact, is very easy.

It seems that IceTemplates, one of the leaders among web site template producers, caters to everybody. Among their large collection of web site templates I have found the one for a language center. Isn’t it a perfect solution to inform people about your language courses? You do not need to waste time arranging presentations and printing literature about your firm. All you need is just organize it into one web site, which will be very easy to customize in html editor.

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Large Preview at IceTemplates

There is no need to waste money buying web sites from web designers. Now you can purchase web site templates at IceTemplates very cheaply and customize them to fit with your individual needs. Besides, you get free hosting, so all package at one for just $ 56? Too good to be true? Not in the least. If you are searching for quick and effective advertising, do not waste time and establish your presence on the web, because all the rest have already done it.

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Top Web Design Blogs Ever

nobody@vox.com(designy) — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 06:39:33 -0700

Here is a short list of most best web design blogs to get inspiration from:

Smashing Magazine - A favourite of many designers.
Modern Life - Easy to read, lots of eyecandy, all the things I like in a design site.
KillerSites - KillerSites.com’s blog.
SmileyCat - Web Design blog by Smiley Cat
Vitamin - I particularly like the articles in their design section.
Beauty In Design - Mainly Joomla oriented with tutorials and templates.
esn studio - Web Design, wordpress, SEO and more.
Webmaster Source - Useful resources for webmasters.
Webmaster Plaza - Webmaster info including how to make money online.
Web Design from scratch - A great resource for beginners.
Problogger.net - This site is not about web design as such but is a great resource for beginner to expert bloggers. It’s one of my favourites, very detailed information about just about anything you could think of on the subject of blogging.

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