Design-Design » website

Encouraging Keen Readers

Peter Simcoe — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 14:59:33 +0000

The web is full of content ranging from interesting and valuable insight to all the way through a sea of bland generic information and detail to outright lies and cynical speculation. Keeping up to date with information and making the most relevant information available through various channels to your audience is crucial to firstly, respect, secondly, attention and third and most importantly, customer / reader loyalty.

Existing Example

For the benefit of providing a good example for this article, we will take the example of a client of mine – Torse Ltd – as they have a particularly tricky dilemma in the way they present information to their current and potential future customers. Torse Ltd is an energy broker based in Nottingham in the East Midlands of England. Their ongoing struggle is with 4 aspects of providing information for their customers:

Dealing with the tarnished reputation that energy brokers and similar services have across the UK. Torse Ltd happen to be an honest, straightforward, straight talking company with a loyal customer base. However, when dealing with potential customers they must wrestle with the generally corrupt and devious reputation these type of services have acquired.
Providing a detailed and customised individual response to the energy requirements and recommendations for each client, ensuring that the right energy contracts are provided for them. This means that it is very difficult to create an online energy assessment form where ‘one size fits all’ – a contract is assessed and finalised using human judgement and experience. The problem here is that on initial impressions Torse are then at a disadvantage because they cannot offer an immediate web based answer to the question “how much can I save with Torse?”.
Generating high quality and useful output from the media channels available to the company. The energy market is a notoriously fluctuating beast with sensitivity to changes in world affairs and economics. Keeping up with all of this and generating good quality content is a difficult task.
Producing content that is relevant to business owners with varying degrees of knowledge and understanding is a skill that requires a deep understanding of the activities, motivators and range of knowledge that your audience will have and providing a medium level of depth for the majority whilst catering for those who need to know more about specific aspects of the subject to make an informed decision by providing access to these. The browsers and HTML were designed for this purpose amongst others.

Opportunities

Website static content

Generating web content describing your aims, services, products or even terms is usually at the very least a time consuming task, but is also usually a very difficult task in that taking the principle of not wasting potential clients time – you want to provide the least complexity that provides maximum results. Almost every product or service we use has a level of complexity beyond our desire or need to know and so we pick and choose the elements we read to ensure we know the most in the shortest time. This is where it becomes tricky – where do people begin to switch off and either lose interest or experience information overload?

News items and dynamic content

Quality news items for the purpose of blog pages on a website, or even in a PDF newsletter, are tough to write – no matter which sector you work in. Why? Because a really good news item delves into a subject that is either brand new or provides a different perspective for consideration whilst reaching directly to the audience. If you are writing bland, generic, self congratulatory news items for the sake of writing then you are doing more harm than good both in terms of your time and effort and the reputation you are trying to establish – provide news items clearly targeted for your audiences needs, aspirations and expectations and provide a unique style or perspective to ensure that they begin to pick you out from the wealth of web pages clambering for attention. Essentially, do alot of in depth research and ensure you can be bold, daring and get your facts right all at the same time!

Short messages and pointers

I am really talking about the power of Twitter here – limited and overrated as it is, it does have a place. It is the marketing answer to a quick heads up about the latest goings on in a company and if written intelligently, can provide the public and followers with an insight into completed projects, upgrades, new offices, news items worthy of attention – communication that your audience wants to hear that could impact upon or benefit them or communication that relays your honesty and commitment to a specific product or service.

Other websites recommending your services

Carefully selected partnerships or lists of ‘friends’ can really be an advantage in sharing good quality sites – the visitors of one site are recommended to the other sites of a similar or ‘of interest’ nature. These are often found in a footer or sidebar of a website and almost act as mini-ads for the partners / friends. Facebook has not been mentioned here yet and for many in business to business based services it is not an appropriate or particularly productive channel in my opinion.

Affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing on the web has the potential for increasing traffic and sales from your website via groups of people online who are given the task of selling your products via blogs, adverts, links and other methods familiar to those browsing the web. However, I personally think that in certain circumstances this can lead to the web being populated with biased reviews and misleading or exaggerated information. Why? Well, if you are paid to review a product or can make money from people buying a product or service you are more likely to write a dishonest or misleading review unless you have the ability to only sell those products or services that you rate the highest. Affiliate marketing is a method that works but there is no doubt it is open to abuse and tends to populate the web with exaggeration or misinformation.

Other media types

If there are other methods for communicating your message then these may be attractive to returning viewers. Creating episodes of video content, a series of exhibition or a podcast can ensure that returning readers find something of benefit to them each time therefore increasing the real value of the site.

Measuring Success or Failure

The key to keeping customers interested in coming back to the example site, www.torse.co.uk, is to make it of value to the reader. How do we measure what is of value to customers? There are various tools and techniques that could be employed to establish where customer value could be attributed:

Web Statistics

There are many ways of obtaining webstats including the use of Google Analytics and most web hosting companies will have their own statistics generators from log files on your site. How are these useful? Well, you can establish where people are spending most of their time and which pages tend to get overlooked. Then it is a case of analysing whether it is because the information is buried or simply not of interest. Once these trends have been analysed it is down to the analyst to provide insight as to recommending change, removal or redesign of a page.

Voting via Google +1, Digg, Stumble Upon [or other]

Allowing your readers to easily “like”, “+1″ or “digg” a news item, page, gallery or portfolio could generate a whole raft of interest from other sites designed to highlight or promote popular news items, useful websites and those pages that are of particular interest to internet groups. The traditional “like” system on Facebook is currently facing a small but growing challenge from Google’s +1 and with Google having such dominance over the web, it is important to take note of this development.

Direct feedback via survey email or phone

This has to be handled fairly delicately in many ways so as not to annoy your existing / potential clients or even use data you have access to in the form of email addresses, phone numbers or addresses in an illegal or inappropriate manner. Sending simple customer surveys through phone, email or even postal channels can provide an insight into what aspects of your content were useful to them and what they as readers or customers would like to see on the site in the form of articles or frequently asked questions. In many instances a guide to content can be found by assessing the enquiries made via web forms or phone and looking at how these can be covered on the website to answer these questions.

Increase in sales

Another indicator of success can be an increase in sales. However, attributing this to web content can be a difficult task though using tools such as Google Analytics, iMapt and other similar tracking tools can provide an insight into the popularity of your content and consequential activity. Paid for tools such as iMapt do provide additional insight into activity on your site and in some cases provide live warnings when someone enters the site.

Conclusion

Web content should be very carefully researched in terms of what your audience need to know to enable them to make a purchase or agreement to use your services. The methods for assessment listed above should provide guidance as to the value of certain sections of your site. Where appropriate, senior members of the company should play a reasonably large part in writing text, selecting images or at the very least proof reading prior to release [if a marketing 'expert' does the majority of creation] – no-one knows more about the company as a whole than those involved directly with its running. A copywriter could be consulted for additional evaluation of your content, further distilling the message to something direct, meaningful and making conversions to purchase or sign a contract an easy and informed decision.
There are both free and paid-for tools available to make assessment on how your existing and potential customers are using your content. These should be used in conjunction with a process of content distillation to assess points at which customers pursue or abandon your message. Just because people are moving through your site does not necessarily mean they value what you have to say.
Use external affiliate networks and telemarketing companies with care – they can do more damage if not correctly vetted in that their interest in receiving commission and further work from the companies they are promoting could lead them to exaggerate, omit or make misleading claims about the benefits or terms. I’m not against using external resources in this way but remember that an external company will never have the same dedication to your company principles and ideals as you even if they say they do.

What is an RSS Feed? Using RSS feeds can save you significant time in collecting...
Creating A Social Network There are so many opportunities to connect and create networks...
Cafepress.com Review Feeling like you want to express your creativity all over...

Augmented Reality Review

Peter Simcoe — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 12:30:14 +0000

Augmented Reality can be defined as

…..a term for a live direct or indirect view of a physical real-world environment whose elements are augmented by virtual computer-generated imagery. It is related to a more general concept called mediated reality in which a view of reality is modified (possibly even diminished rather than augmented) by a computer. As a result, the technology functions by enhancing one’s current perception of reality. – Wikipedia

I have recently been asked to look into creating an example of Augmented Reality to promote the Design School at Loughborough University. Specifically the Industrial Design and Product Design courses. The promotional item brief was that a marker would be sent out to potential students on a sheet of A5 card and when the user clicks the link on the website and places the card in front of a web camera, elements will appear to rise from the card and give the impression of appearing in the real world. Here are a couple of excellent examples of AR that have inspired the research undertaken:

The advantage that Augmented Reality has is that it is new and novel enough to get people interested in viewing promotional material that features the technology but is accessible enough through the use of Adobe’s Flash Player, which is loaded onto around 95% of computers, for many people to view it. So in a way, now is the time to explore and take advantage of the buzz surrounding this novel concept.

There are a variety of companies involved in the production of Augmented Reality products and they do vary in cost. For example, FLAR Toolkit is freely available for programming your own creations – it does a reasonable job of optimising your PC or Mac to support Augmented Reality through the use of Adobe Flash Player.

However, if you are looking for a more bespoke solution with dedicated programming and development and do not want to use basic Flash open source programming, I recently got a quote from AR specialists Total Immersion for an academic promotional item that would have cost £17,000.

So there are some differences in terms of expenditure….but ensuring that the majority have the correct player to allow your creation to work may simply come down to a cost / distribution calculation that can quickly be made!

Gaming Experience

Particularly relevant is the release of Playstation’s Move and Microsoft Xbox’s Kinect technologies. These will, in their own way, promote the AR cause through examples such as EyePet, where the user can interact with a 3D animal that appears in the same room as you or Sports Champions where the user can hold and manipulate sports equipments with great accuracy [ie it maps the movement of the user perfectly] and Start the Party is the closest example of Augmented Reality gaming with the user appearing on the screen with the other interactive elements [similar to EyePet].

Lets take Sony’s Sports Champions as an example. Whilst it does lack the polish and style of other Sony releases and plays like a series of minigames that were used as a demo for the Move…. so does the price tag. At £25.00 on release, this title provides the user with an interesting immersive experience in Frisbee, Table Tennis, Archery, Bocce, Beach Volleyball and Melee. The most flexible and natural experience is the table tennis where I would estimate 70% accuracy to real life. There are some glitches that detract from gameplay but overall its an enjoyable experience way, way superior to any Wii game due to the complex data transmitted from the Move controllers to the software. It really does allow you to get involved with the action.

Mobile Experience

Augmented Reality Apps on mobile phones use similar technologies to the PS3 Move in that the hardware must detect the orientation and direction of the user and then apply appropriate data [usually graphics] to the viewport. Mashable.com have provided a series of examples of mobile phone apps that provide the user with additional information in their viewport [often on Android or iPhone based hardware] ranging from viewing the nearest tube station in London to understanding the approximate location and direction of people tweeting nearby.

Mobile phones do lack the hardware power that larger desktop PCs and Macs have but are able to handle some basic AR features that provide information or entertainment to their users.

Conclusion

FlarToolkit, Mobile Phone Apps and the development of console gaming technology allowing immersive experiences all help to push the technology forward and explore the idea that users can physically interact with their worlds with more than their keyboard, Mobile Phone browser or PS3 / Xbox control pad. It allows the user to recognise information in a spacial context – siting direction and distance in many cases. There has even been some development work in vehicle design where simple AR is used to enhance the users view of a road or to make data about the surrounding area [such as navigation elements] more convenient by presenting them as part of the windscreen view.

As computing power and the quality of webcams increases, so will the capability of augmented reality to truely help us explore new dimensions and spaces from the comfort of our own home or office.

3D Lenticular Technology Lenticular printing has been around for many years but with...
Avatar James Cameron's new film Avatar was made using tools available...
What is a QR Code? Quick Response codes are quite common throughout Japan and many...

Cafepress.com Review

Peter Simcoe — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 17:06:15 +0000

The first point to make is that Cafepress.com is an easy way for home users with basic software and computer to create designs and get them printed onto cups, coasters, t-shirts, clocks and other accessories for friends, societies, clubs or events. I personally designed and printed 2 t-shirt designs, a couple of clock designs and four mug designs as complimentary samples for some clients, allowing me to see what the quality would be.

Quality

The quality varied depending upon which product you ordered – the t-shirts were excellent quality with crisp edges and flat, solid colour – even on black t-shirts [though I haven t yet washed them a number of times to see how the colour will handle detergent]. The cups were pretty good considering that they were single custom printed items [though sharp edges were a little more blurred than I expected them to be]. However, the clocks were fairly mediocre to poor due to the cheap plastic used and poor design style [the printed element of the large clock I purchased was bubbled due to heat or moisture.]

Customer Services

The second point to make is that the level of customer service is pretty good. There were two or three products out of the 12 ordered that were either broken [eg cups] or were not to expected standard [I could not access the "bubbled" area of the clock to flatten the raised areas]. When customer services were contacted they readily provided replacement items in the case of the broken mugs or a refund in the case of the clock after I supplied images of the problem.

Wasting Resources

The third and most important point is that the whole process generated a huge amount of packaging and waste which, although the process was alot of fun and the results were pretty good in the case of the cups and the t-shirts, was quite a shock to me and a disappointment. As a designer I need to be aware and concerned by waste and in this case it was something worth thinking about. The problem is that it would be near impossible to provide Cafepress services without the incredible amount of packaging and processing.

Many of the products were created in the Czech Republic then delivered to the UK and the cups, for example, were made in China – which again, takes incredible amounts of energy in terms of shipping transportation.

I was keen to explore alternatives to this process and in certain cases, products may be more efficiently produced in terms of time, packaging and energy waste by purchasing locally. For example, KallKwik in my home town of Chester, create custom designed cups for approximately the same price and the covered area of the cup is larger than Cafepress’s.

Testing

Tested products in terms of their quality and style:

T-Shirts – 80% – nicely finished though unclear how much washing they will withstand
Mugs – 60% – pretty good, though due to the printing process, sharp edges are blurred
Coasters – 40% – reduced colour palette created colour banding on constant tone
Clocks – 30% – poor quality plastic and construction let this idea down

Conclusion

Cafepress.com is an interesting idea, well executed and carefully marketed. It is a website I will look to when creating one off gifts and novelty items – for example, designing a custom styled t-shirt is far easier, less messy and more efficient using Cafepress than buying a home made silk screen t-shirt making kit and producing it yourself. However, it is worth noting that the amount of packaging required to ensure that your product reaches you in one piece and the quality of some of items [noting the cheap and 'tacky' large plastic clock] should make you think twice.

Why bother calibrating? Calibrating screens to represent the colours you will see at...
Finepix Real3D printing With the renewed interest in 3D viewing technology and the...
Guide to good print Print designers take their company's cashflow into their own hands...

Is printing redundant?

Peter Simcoe — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 08:48:17 +0000

With the recent launch of Apple’s iPad, some people will begin to question once more whether such technology will replace the need to print onto newspaper at all. In fact, personally, I consume news mainly through RSS feeds from various sites and less through TV. I never buy a paper to see what is going on in the world [but have occasionally read other peoples].

Ubiquitous Internet Access

Whilst iPad users and other media techies would love to live in a world with ubiquitous internet connection and immediate updates where ever they may be, we are still a way off this due to cost and technical capability – which makes a journey on the London Underground feel like a retro flashback to those pre 90′s days when mobile phones either did not exist or could only be found in cars. So, why are we still using print and not investing in creating a free, universal internet connection for all to download and consume content? Well, in short – it is still difficult to replace the trusty, versatile, battery-less, relatively low cost book, magazine or journal with an electronic equivalent with such desirable tactile and convenient features, though modern internet browsing products such as Smartphones, iPhones, Kindle and the Netbook are becoming less expensive, lighter and thinner. Advertising, printing photographs or creating physical bound books will continue to be a viable option for many businesses or authors for the foreseeable future.

Personally, I do not invest a huge amount of time and effort into print design as it does not fit with the business model I have for creating new leads or promoting projects. However, I do have 2 business card designs for different situations – one with a focus on my primary design business and the other with a focus on the network of portfolio, blogs and social networking sites I use such as YouTube and Flickr. I also designed a printed brochure to promote my business back in 2007 which I still use and refer to for some of my previous work.

Greenbarnes Ltd, a client of mine, uses a variety of promotional formats including a large amount of printed advertising and so I asked director Mike Barnes a few questions about his perspective on print – with particular focus on promotion of a business or product.

Interview with Mike Barnes, Greenbarnes Ltd

Is printing redundant?

I suspect that the answer to this depends largely upon your target audience. I recently read that, on average, it takes 7 contacts before a new customer is persuaded to purchase. In our own case, at least 2 of these are likely to be in printed form.

Do you use web technologies to promote your products?

We have what I believe is an effective website and e-shop which are promoted via a number of online directories plus a Google Adwords account. We spent some serious quality time getting the Greenbarnes website user experience right and feedback would suggest that we got this spot on! However, something like 50% of those arriving at the site do so by typing the address into their browser because they have seen our ad in one of the wide variety of trade and specialist publications that still form a significant part of our marketing mix.

Any ideas on why this might be the case?

A significant part of our client base is made up not of individuals, but of committees such as parish and parochial church councils or architects and designers who need to convince their clients. These are not people who can be persuaded to part with their credit card details and buy on impulse. They will inevitably end up sitting around a table and discussing the purchase before making a decision. This is where a second form of print, be it a glossy brochure or a printout of a pdf file downloaded from the website comes into its own. Sitting round a laptop to study detailed information online is simply not as convenient in the majority of cases.

So have there been any noticeable changes since the internet?

Whilst the volume of printed information that we mail out has declined sharply over the last few years, there is evidence that this trend has begun to plateau. There will always be a significant majority for whom print is the most usable medium. And let’s not lose sight of the other opportunities it offers. We have recently embarked on our first trials of large scale e-marketing, but seem to be getting results by following up the hottest prospects with direct mailing of brochures. In another first, we have also embarked on a campaign to include printed inserts in magazines as this not only affords the opportunity to try new publications without committing to series of ads, but also allows us to create extra impact in those publications that we have inhabited for many years. We may ultimately produce less by way of volume, but as part of an overall marketing mix, I believe that we will be producing better targeted and more tightly focused print in combination with the newer marketing technologies available.

You can see Greenbarnes products by visiting their main ‘brochure’ site or visiting their e-shop where a selection of their standard products can be purchased swiftly, securely and efficiently over the internet.

Effect of your work

One thing that is more difficult with printed promotional material is the ability to gauge the effectiveness. How many people saw your article, promotional photography or call to action and directly made a move? How many people even read the page the article was on? This is where internet technologies are much more useful – a writer or advertiser will have access to information related to who saw the page the information was on? what browser they used? the city they were in? what pages they came from and how many people moved on to other pages and after how much time?

Another client of mine, picture framing company Gesso and Bole Ltd, use print in a slightly different way – print is part of the complete product rather than the means to selling or advertising. I caught up with Jim Anderson and asked him a few questions

Interview with Jim Anderson, Gesso and Bole Ltd

Is printing redundant?

For us, printing is pretty fundamental; if printing was dead then we wouldn’t have anything to put in our frames. Obviously this isn’t the case – and we’d argue that rather than becoming redundant printing has just changed tact.

How has printing changed?

For many picture framers, printing is now something that’s done in-house. Many framing shops and galleries now have their own wide format digital printers which enables them to print exactly what their customers want, when the customers want it. Traditionally if an artist was going to produce a run of prints, the whole run would be done at once and the artist would often be left with hundreds of prints languishing in a warehouse somewhere. Now, these prints are done on demand when a customer orders them.

Is this change a good thing?

Yes! As well as being more cost-effective, printing on demand is far less wasteful than speculative printing. It also means that picture framers have more control over the whole process, as sizes etc can obviously be adjusted if printing is being done in house.

Gesso & Bole Ltd is a bespoke picture frame maker based in Derby. You can find out more about Gesso & Bole at www.gessoandbole.com or by following them on Twitter @gessoandbole.

Smelly Internet?

Another factor is the limited interactivity or media that paper will allow – though it does allow olfactory senses such as perfume samples, the smell of a quality paper or where the internet does not. Internet advertising allows for animation, audio, video and the ability to be tucked away, to suprise or to provide sequential information within a small space.

The basics

OK, taking this to an intellectual low – can you roll up an electronic ‘Guitarist Magazine’ digital subscription and place it in your back pocket like the paper equivalent – ready to read later on a lazy Saturday afternoon by the river? Not really, though some might like to try it. If you find that annoying fly sitting on the window [the one that's been buzzing around all afternoon] – do you hit it with the iPad, Smartphone, or the paper newspaper?!

All this aside, the book, the magazine, the paper is still the lightest, physically most accessible medium available. People often have a desire to remove themselves from the computer screen to more natural surroundings without the glare of an LCD monitor, phone screen or the general electronic buzz of electronic equipment. It seems that print is here to stay for the foreseeable future.

Finepix Real3D printing With the renewed interest in 3D viewing technology and the...
Travel and Inspiration Travelling is a great way to be inspired as a...
A Brief Introduction to Design-Design "You need to tell the client what he wants and...

Google vs Mark Hillary

Peter Simcoe — Sat, 22 May 2010 15:46:22 +0000

Here is the email I’ve just sent to Spencer Kelly, the BBC Click presenter after watching their report on the copyright battle between Mark Kobayashi-Hillary and Google.

Dear Spencer,

I have just watched your 22 May BBC Click article about Mark Kobayashi-Hillary’s struggle with Google and the YouTube copyright issues he was presented with leading to the suspension and removal of his YouTube account. I understand Mark’s point regarding freedom of speech and the ability to present arguments on the web but to really understand why Google had a problem with his content I would need to see exactly what was written, featured or even implied in his articles as a blogger and YouTube clips as it is not in Google’s interest to create negative publicity like this. I am suspicious that there is much more to this than presented in your show such as some of the fine detail that we were not made aware of that would offend such an internet giant – we did only really hear a superficial argument on either side [probably for legal reasons] but the implications of what was said were very serious.

Mark’s argument in the programme was that the musicians themselves had encouraged him to feature their content on his YouTube account. This simply does not stand up against the fact that mainstream musicians, artists and performers are usually under the management, both legally and artistically, of bigger corporations who will not stand by and allow certain global and political issues sit comfortably beside footage of their performers in whatever context. I would think that as a visiting lecturer to Universities and many significant companies and institutions presenting his understanding of “globalisation, politics, and the technology issues” [probably attached to a significant hourly rate of pay], he would be aware of the exact implications of his actions and therefore it should come as no surprise as Google is a company like any other – it wants to make money and protect it’s interests like any other. Should someone use their “free” blogging or other tools to question the business methods or policies of some of Google’s partners [both current and potential future deals] or affiliations then it would be understandable that it would react with strong disapproval and potential removal of an account that breached standards in any way. From some limited experience, Google does usually give people reasonable opportunity to remove or adjust their accounts accordingly and so this makes me think that Mr Hillary may have overstepped the mark in other ways.

Of course, I do not know the fine details of Google’s disagreement with Mark but as I said, Google [or any other global company with a reputation to uphold] would not do this sort of thing lightly considering the extent of other ‘dubious’ copyright content on YouTube and the web in general.

Keep up the good work!

What is an RSS Feed? Using RSS feeds can save you significant time in collecting...
YouTube Video Editor Recently I have been experimenting with the YouTube video editor...
Google Wave Google Wave is set to redefine the way we collaborate...

What is WordPress?

Peter Simcoe — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 13:03:20 +0000

WordPress is an Open Source blogging system with many famous users backing it such as No 10 Downing Street, . The most common incarnations can be found in three formats – a blog hosted by WordPress at http://sitename.wordpress.com, a local hosted version blog created by installing it on a server with PHP and MySQL capability available from http://www.wordpress.org and the Multiuser version available from http://mu.wordpress.org [though there are not many examples of this currently].

If a company requires a website and the WordPress engine is chosen for this purpose then there are several things to consider:

Advantages

Free open source code available for personal or commercial use – WordPress has been adapted for a more Content Managed System approach in recent years which allows the creation of whole websites using the system.
Support from WordPress.org in terms of software updates and upgrades
Support from a global WordPress community in the form of forums and template designers
Use of strict, high quality coding standards compliant with all major browsers
Ability to create additional functionality through the use of plugins

Disadvantages

A good level of CSS knowledge and basic Photoshop and PHP [at least] are required to change and update a template
Some groups claim that it is not a true CMS system as its primary development purpose was for weblogging or blogging

If you are looking to create a website for your company, organisation or academic project then WordPress is worth a look. Be aware that to create an individual feel to your site, it will require additional time and effort from a programmer and designer There are a variety of templates out there which will save a designer time but the trick is to apply these templates whilst remaining true to your company identity. You can see some examples of WordPress sites at www.simcoe.co.uk.

Templates

Popular sites for downloading templates are:

http://www.themeforest.net
http://wpremix.com
http://templatic.com

Most of the time you will only require a single user license for which you will normally pay between $30 and $75 [$US]. Its worth browsing these templates to see what WordPress can actually do for you and what it has helped create already.

A mini-website on a budget of $0.00

If you re on a budget or simply want to try the system out have a look at www.wordpress.com and sign up for an account. You can blog for free but there are a limited number of templates available to you and it is not as flexible as the version you download from www.wordpress.org and upload to your own server such as those purchased at 34sp.com.

If you want to see a brief video on signing up go to WordPress.TV and find out more. In addition, this YouTube video has been useful to some people too.

Community

This is just an aside really, but I’ve recently discovered BuddyPress for WordPress MultiUser which, if you are creating a site for a group or groups of like minded people, allows contribution to different group blogs or even hosting of personal blogs on the same server with the main site acting as an overview of sitewide activity. I have found that the BP Groupblog is a very useful part of this community based plugin. BuddyPress is excellent – but as of December 2009 seems to lack the ability to upload individual avatars for users. This will hopefully be resolved in a near-future update!

Conclusion

Get some inspiration from the gallery, forum, wiki or online magazine examples
Try out the online demonstration of the theme thoroughly
Talk to your web designer about the pro’s and con’s of the template

< Home >

Creating A Social Network There are so many opportunities to connect and create networks...
Design Tweets This Week! Latest Tweets from the Simcoemedia Network. These tweets are designed...
A Brief Introduction to Design-Design "You need to tell the client what he wants and...

Resizing Photoshop images

Peter Simcoe — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 10:33:43 +0000

If you shrink your images for a website using Adobe Photoshop on a regular basis then consider changing the default settings for the way images are reduced. The image to the right shows the EDIT > PREFERENCES selection where it is possible to set all the defaults for the program. In this case we just want to look at the GENERAL settings where it is possible to change Image Interpolation [essentially the way that images are handled when enlarged, reduced or warped in some way] to Bicubic Sharper – therefore preserving and enhancing the sharpness of the original image as it is reduced. If you spend the majority of your time enlarging images then it is worth considering setting the default to Bicubic Smoother [though it would be ideal to invest in a paid plugin that enhances your image enlargement rather than the Photoshop engine - eg Photozoom Pro]

Spend some time experimenting with these different settings and find the results that give you the best image quality. However, be guided by Photoshop’s instructions also ie Bicubic Sharper for reduction and Bicubic Smoother for enlargement. It makes a difference to the clarity of your product shots, environment photography and much more.

Anaglyph 3D Images Following the interest received in Design-Design's 3D MPO files, we...
10 Free Useful Online Tools There are a few simple online tools that can assist...
Finepix W3 3D Review Review of the FujiFilm Finepix W3 3D Digital Camera -...

New Simcoemedia website

Peter Simcoe — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 10:53:50 +0000

Simcoemedia was created by freelance designer Peter Simcoe and has been trading for nearly 8 years now. The company mainly works with small to medium sized businesses and academic institutions with web and print based marketing, design and promotion related projects. This often requires skills in documentary video making and project management. Take a look at the new website produced to show off some of these projects and if you re interested in working with Simcoemedia then you can use the contact page or call +44 (0)7704 629906.

Writing Skills for Designers Do graphic designers need good writing skills? This article looks...
A Brief Introduction to Design-Design "You need to tell the client what he wants and...
Your Digital Footprint Having a significant digital footprint of quality content is not...