Archive for the 'Web Design' Category
Help for Youth in BC
Bluelime has helped The Crisis Centre with their websites for years, including maintaining the Youth in BC site. Until recently the latter was easier said than done because the site was, well, a bit of a tangled mess under the hood. Little changes took longer than you might expect because of old-style coding. To the viewers eyes, it was visually overwhelming and not very user friendly. Given the number of resources offered on the site, and especially the potential state of crisis that viewers may be experiencing, ease of finding information and ease of maintenance are crucial.
Recently we designed a new site incorporating Youth in BC’s new branding and built it with WordPress so that staff can do most of the maintenance themselves. They’ve been receiving positive feedback from their audience, including:
The site is way better than the old one. Lots more info on so many things now.
…Which was music to my ears. It’s actually the same information, just easier to find. Mission accomplished 
The Pros and Cons of Content Management Systems
I read an interesting article a few days ago by Johnathan where he examines the dark side of content management systems – CMS for short. His arguments focuses mainly on the markup and the aesthetics of the site. Once the site is live and you’ve provided the client with the ability of changing content, images and copying and pasting from Word, then one must face the fact that it’s now out of your hands and God knows what the site will end up looking like.
I’ve been developing websites for over 5 years now and find it amazing how everyone now seems to want a CMS. Additionally with the use of WordPress, I no longer desire to create static websites. The issue that I have with CMS is that damn “copying and pasting” and I put 100% of the blame on Microsoft. Super bloggers and geeks aside, most people I know use Word to write their content and rely on it for formatting and spell checking. Unfortunately when it comes to incorporating it in WordPress, copying and pasting leads to strange formatting which ends up ruining the aesthetic of the site and adding extra code.
Viral Marketing: Go Backstage for Free Music
If “Free is the future of business“, then the folks at Backstage have created an interesting marketing tool for all the Radiohead wanna-bes out there. They offer musicians a platform for sharing free music and gathering a database of interested listeners. For the rest of us, it means a few free tracks in exchange for our e-mail address and for recommending the page to a friend. You fill out a quick form, and the downloads are yours.
At first I was irked by the requirement to give a friend’s e-mail address in the form. But then I realized that’s the hook their model is hanging on. You probably have a friend who likes the same music as you, and since you’re recommending a freebie, and Backstage promises not to spam them, they’ll probably forgive you for sharing their address… Probably. There’s a bit of a leap of faith in that assumption. I think this requirement to share a friend’s address will affect their uptake on the offer somewhat but it also makes viral marketing more effective than it would be otherwise. So the net effect is probably a positive one for them.
What do you think?
The survey for people who make websites
Now in it’s second year, the annual A List Apart survey is seeking your input. If you work in the web industry as a graphic designer, SEO consultant, copywriter, project manager, programmer, etc… do your part and be counted. Once the results in and compiled, A List Apart will publish the results which will give us a better idea of what’s happening in our industry. The survey only takes a few minutes. I took it and so should you.
Collaborating with Graphic Designers is very Inspiring
I’ve never called myself a graphic designer. I’ve designed business cards in the past, but I don’t think that any of them would win awards and I only ever did these once the logo was supplied. I curse every time I open illustrator and I’m convinced that I only ever used 20% of the Photoshop features. I consider graphic designer, people who know their Pantone colours from their CMYK and care passionately about paper and print material.
Don’t get me wrong, I love printed material, but I wouldn’t know how one goes about selecting the right paper and ink. As a result of “lacking” this skill, I’ve been very opened to working with other graphic designers. Usually they will approach me in the middle of a project and say something like this:
“We’ve been working with company ABC and did a bunch of printed material for them and now they want a website. Can you help us?”
In the past few years, I’ve been working more and more on other people’s design and have learned a great deal. It’s simply staggering the number of different approaches to web design there are. I must be missing something about Illustrator’s capabilities, because it seems to be the favourite tool amongst graphic designers.
I recently finished a project for the BCRPA’s Physical Activity Strategy (PAS) initiative. I had the pleasure of working with Dean Kujula from Kube. Dean created the icons for the PAS website and prepared a website design. Once approved, Dean asked me how I would like to receive the files and what version of Photoshop I was using. I was quite impressed with the result. The file contained multiple folders, each carefully labeled and ordered. I don’t think that I’ve ever worked with such well organized material.
I constantly meet newbie web designers who want to do it all; logos, branding, brochures, cms, web design…. I’ve come to the conclusion that working with experts and people who are more talented then you is a much better way to expand your knowledge.
Use 4 Design Principles to Gain Market Share
Jared Spool of UIE has written a little case study of how the company Pure Digital has captured 13% of the video camera market in just a few months. They designed the Flip Video camera with 4 principles that really made a difference:
- Think like a minimalist. The camera has just a few buttons to do what the vast majority of users want to do: record, play, delete, zoom, scroll through movies, and control volume during playback. Compared to multi-level menus in most cameras, this minimalism creates an ease-of-use that sets them apart.
- Remove your customer’s worries. Their different approach to batteries means the camera owner doesn’t have to think so much about the batteries and is more likely to use the camera as a result.
- Eliminate that which has no value. They loaded the software onto the camera instead of a disc, so there’s no need to install software on any computer you go to. The camera does it all seamlessly.
- Integrate the next step. Realizing that the next logical step after making a movie is to share it. so, they made it easy to email your video or share it on YouTube
I think these principles are great ones to keep in mind whether you’re designing a website, a physical product, or a service, and especially if you are designing an end-to-end customer experience that may include all of these things.
Open ID – easier Internet logins
For anyone who spends time on the Internet and takes advantage of social media technologies in particular remembering a growing list of passwords and login details can be a challenge. Thankfully, there is a solution in the making in the form of OpenID.
Open ID is an open identity system that allows you to use one single identification (or digital identification) across many of your favorite sites. Participant sites include the likes of Ma.gnolia, pbwiki, 37 Signals, Technorati and Plaxo.
With Open ID, you register once for an ID then use that to identify yourself on different sites. The result: you don’t have to remember numerous login and password details. It makes surfing much faster, more secure and less of a pain.
Developed by the OpenID Foundation an organisation that was formed in June 2007 to help promote, protect and enable the OpenID technologies and community, the group is quickly expanding and some of the behemoths in the industry are now OpenID providers.
To claim your ID use a reputable providers such as MYID, Claim ID or Vidoop and make the process easier by using a downloadable browser plugin like Vidoop’s to manage your standard logins.
At last my brain can take a rest and doesn’t have to store all those endless password details.
Karma yoga at Bluelime Media
One of my New Year’s resolution this year was to deepen my yoga practice and integrate yoga philosophy in my daily activities. I was already practicing 5 times a week, so I’ve now increased to 6 and sometimes 7, I attend workshops whenever I can with visiting teachers and went to my first yoga retreat a few weeks ago. I feel better than ever, but I still haven’t found an way to involve yoga in my Web work.
Ideally my goal would be to develop and create sites dedicated to yoga. I’ve had the pleasure to work with Barbara from Bluecitrus for many years now. When I first met her, she had just launched Chakravibe, an e-commerce website selling yoga jewelery based on the chakra colours. Built using OS-Commerce platform, the website functioned very well, but was difficult to update and maintain and the code was a complete nightmare to decipher. When Barbara approached me earlier this year and asked me to help her move the static pages to WordPress, I decided that if I wanted to get involved in the yoga community, this was a great first move.
Joseph and Ben took responsibility of the OS-Commerce component and moved everything to a sub-folder. I took care of re-creating the design using up-to-date HTML/CSS and removed all of the tables and set up the WordPress templates. I doubt that many people have noticed that the website has changed. Except for a few pixel adjustments here and there and the changes in url, the website is identical. We’ve also added a blog allowing Barbara and Teresa, to write posts and tell us what’s new. So far the results have been very positive. Barbara is very pleased that she can update the content and post new images and Teresa has been writing great posts.
I’ve spoken to a few yoga teachers and have plans on creating more WordPress yoga templates this summer. Hopefully when things slow down (fingers crossed), but if you know and yogis looking for a blog, send them my way.
And if you are visiting the chakravibe website in the next little while, enter the code code CV20122J09 and save 20% on on any Chakravibe product. This Spring special is only available for for a short time, so hurry.
Hone your business skills and swing into leadership
If like me you have the pleasure of living in Vancouver, you might be getting a bit annoyed with the amount of rain we’re having these days. Looking on the bright side, all of this moisture is great for grass and in particular golf courses. I’m not much of a golfer and in fact have never golfed, but I must say that my interest was peaked last week while working on “Swing Into Leadership“, a website for one of our clients, Jacque Small. Designed by Bill Sangalli, Jacque hired Bluelime Media to build the it.
Jacque is a business coach who offers a series of “golf sessions” where she combines golf and business coaching. More particularly Jacque assists business people look at their habits, attitude and vision. The whole concept seems very interesting and from reading the rave reviews, even non-golfers have enjoyed her sessions.
If you’re looking into “getting into the swing of things” you should check out her site. Jacque is a great coach and full of energy. Even if you don’t golf, you’re bound to improve your business game.
Inspiring Blog Designs
Smashing Magazine has published another great list for inspiration: 45 More Excellent Blog Designs. It’s a great illustration of how much variation there can be in blog design.
Perhaps the most interesting is Chris Contolini’s mash-up of Google maps with his blog.
I also enjoyed Ideate’s Television-styled YouTube player – even though the video was no longer available, it’s a nice treatment.