The Portfolio: Things to pay attention to.

One of the most important things to look for is not always how cool the other sites a designer has done appear. Most first timers look at high end web design and then are in for a let down when they hear the price tag. They usually end up then looking for the cheapest thing they can find. This can also be a big mistake. Also there is another problem with this approach. If the site looks fantastic because you’ve found a fantastic designer that doesn’t mean they are going to build the site properly.

What you are looking for is someone with a decent amount of talent who can build a site that will make your phone ring. The site should mirror your image so look for someone who shows examples of flexible design. If you find a designer who can design in many styles you’re probably on to one of those good ones who can take a peek inside your head and give you exactly what YOU want and not what they want.

Getting what you want:

Which leads me to my next first timer foul. Don’t over do it on the “what YOU want” thing. A good designer is going to have reasons for doing things that you might not understand. Let me give you a few examples.

You might want a serif font for your site but your designer tells you that you should use san serif. He/She says you can use it for headlines but avoid it in the copy. You say no. Bad communication on the designers part. What he/she really meant to say is that studies have shown that people generally have a better reader experience with less eye strain with san serif fonts on displays. Serif fonts cause less eye strain while reading on paper and therefore are fine for magazines but on the web you should stick to san serif. And to go even further you should keep your columns around 500px wide at no smaller than 13pt font size. If you want to appeal to the widest audience and give your visitors the most pleasant reading experience you pay attention to these studies.

That should be enough to tell you that your designer at least cares about making your website be the best that it can be. There is no benefit in telling a client to choose a specific font for the designer other than the possibility of the client becoming more successful and bringing future business to them. That is a good thing. You’ve found a smart one

Of course this is a two way street. If your designer cares about you and is knowledgeable about his/her craft make sure you are fair to them. Finding and establishing good working relationships is the key to successful business. These key relationships make all the difference in the world.

Thinking Ahead:

Relationships and websites both take time. You’ll find some site mills out there that turn sites out in a couple of days but you can imagine what you get with that. That makes me think of template sites. They are great to look at and get an idea of a possible direction that you’d like to go but I would advise against ever publishing a template site. The code is going to be the same as a hundred other sites and you’ll just blend into the background. They’ll pay as much attention to you as they did to building the template. Done.. publish.. sell to the masses. I know I wouldn’t want to be treated like that. Anway, my two cents on template sites.

Back to timelines… One thing that clients don’t consider before they contact the designer is the content for each page. They start the process with the designer. Which is by the way a good thing to do. A good designer will help you a lot with site structure. They call it information architecture. If you’re designers heard of it that’s really really good. If they just say “make me a list of buttons” that’s kinda bad. Anyway, you’re going to be providing content to your designer based on what you guys come up with so make sure to plan ahead and give the process time. Most freelance designers and small firms work with a limited staff and are working on multiple projects so time gets shifted around pretty dynamically based on how fast content is delivered or created. Anything worth doing is worth doing right. And doing things right sometimes takes time. Plan ahead and you’ll save yourself stress. Don’t wait till the last minute to get your designer involved.

Search engine optimization or SEO:

The next big thing to know is about SEO or Search Engine Optimization. A good designer will also know a bit about SEO and they may end up making some strange suggestions to you. This is a bit tougher to explain but think logically about what they tell you and see if it makes sense. Think about it like this. Google goes out and looks at every website on the internet and learns things about it and then when someone searches for something it says “hey they might like this site I found”. It’s sort of like a good friend telling you what they think you’re looking for. So you’re site is going to have to reflect that. But it’s not just quite that simple. Because it’s not really your friend. Its a complex program that does this automatically. Basically a robot. So it’s looking at what your site is saying very literally. It won’t get “beat around the bush” type lingo on your site.

Think about how you search for things and that will help you understand SEO if you relate that to what I’ve said above. If you are looking for a painter in your area and you lived in Indianapolis you’d probably type “Indianapolis Painters” and whatever comes up first is going to be what Google thought you wanted. In this case it’s a site called www.indianapolispainters.com that is a local painting company in Indianapolis that offers residential and commercial painting services. In the title of their URL is the search phrase you typed. It’s no wonder they came up first. They can still be beat but they’ve also optimized the site in other ways. It’s done mostly with copy, urls, and some stuff called meta data. There is some linking strategy and all that gets a little more advanced. If you’re getting further along in the process than you probably should be at this point. You should have had a site up for awhile with typical SEO… which is good copy that makes sense that quite literally describes what you do or who you are and what services you offer.

More later:

This blog is getting a bit lengthy.. i might break it up and work on it some more later. I’m tired. bbs.

I get asked by a lot of clients to do something “outside the box”. Typically this is exactly what an artist wants to hear but lets think about this… If you make some “out of the box” web design and it looks cool as hell but nobody clicks around or calls then your client just lost out..  and if your client loses you lose. You’re not going to get many call backs from clients who aren’t getting any business.

The reason that a lot of web designers today don’t understand how to layout a website for optimal user expereince is because they’ve learned software not business and not art. While many of these people have more talent than they know what to do with they lack the fundamental science behind “visual communication”. But that’s fine because I’m going to give you a small tidbit right here and if you feel like searching Google for “visual communication” I’m sure you’ll find some excelent books on it or some exclente articles on the web.

I used to call this the “F-map” because it looked like an F to me but now they are calling it the Google Golden Triangle because most people are searching with Google. So most of the research behind this is actually directed at SEO rather than the design of your own site. But lets face it people have grown accustomed to looking at layouts just like they have reading left to right. So we’ll use the Google Golden Triangle Heatmap as an example for how you should look at designing your own website. First though take a look at this: Google SEO Heatmap (it’ll open in a new tab or window.. come back

Ok so now that you’ve seen the heatmap which basically is a triangle in the upper left hand corner of your screen that extends about a quarter of the way down and across your screen. This is the most valuable real estate on your web pages. Usually you’ll see a logo and a link to the home page here along with a tagline. This is the “first impression” of your website. If you’ve done it properly you should be able to invert that triangle and black out the rest of the page and still know what the site is about. If you’ve done than you’re on your way to being a good visual communicator in the age of web.

As for the rest of it like rules of thirds, grid theory, color theory, etc.. you’re on your own for now. Perhaps I’ll write more articles on it but I’m thinking about re-doing my main website and incorporating all my various blogs into it. I have 64 domains.. of course they aren’t all developed but it’s a bit much to keep up on Anyway, I wanted to put this here for some buddies.. hope this has been informative. ttys!

Here is the article:

http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2011/05/17/what%E2%80%99s-a-domain-name-worth/?ref=IMEDIANEWS

If you’d like to see some of the domains I have for sale I have some posted here.. not a complete list I think: http://www.bradleystone.com/domains-for-sale/domain-list.htm

Gross right? LOL.. well the trick is to spray the ice tray down with Pam or something like that and then run it under really really hot water. This only leaves the smallest film which I’m guessing fills in the small micro fishers in the plastic of the ice tray.

I can’t tell you how often you’ll have to repeat this. Might be worth buying new trays from time to time but so far so good. I’ve only sprayed mine once but I haven’t refilled them often enough to give you a time line on how long one application will last.

I hope this proves to be useful information to someone!

(EDIT): Well it’s been 30 days exactly since I tried this little experiment and they are still popping out just as well as the day i first sprayed the ice cube trays with Pam. So if your ice is stuck in the tray Pam and hot water is your friend!

(EDIT2) OK, well the spray lasted about 45 days before I noticed it starting to stick again. I sprayed it again and right back to brand new.. hell better than brand new. I feel like I have a teflon coated ice tray

CONCLUSION: You can certainly put some life back in your ice cube trays with vegetable oil.

What is your environment?.. because that is what is effecting you genetically of course..?

Duh, it’s nature.. name one thing that ISN’T nature!?

So nurture all of nature and you nurture ALL of nature.. by default you are automatically included in that by the way

The more healthy, efficient, and logical our interaction with Earth (even though technically we are a part of it for eternity… stardust you know:).. the better off we are.

I’m going to have to learn how to scientifically harmonize my everyday life with the rest of the world. Better start reading!

cya

I’ll start blogging shortly. I have a bunch of stuff from an old zine I did called “Sumo” so I’m hoping to get that on here as well as a new one in PDF form that I might as well pass your way too.

I’ve been thinking that instead of doing PDFs or at least doing along with PDFs is a blog… instead of the old “Sumo” zine that people used to know and love I think this will be my new fortress of Sumotude.

Enjoy!

-b