TYPE

FWA – Milk

Requiem

Life’s a journey

Rebuild

PYRAMID EXPERIMENTS

Text Shatter

Outsmoked

Going the wrong way

REJECTED PROJECT

3D

Print Juice

Spirit

Helvetica

Milk Sucks

Boxstyle

Various Type Designs

3D Type Experiments

type installations

Stay Green. Go Red.

UUtheory: Developing the Double U

SORRY FOR THE SPAM

Dream wallpaper

COLORS

CADBURY

Because 3D is Awesome

Love Me Hate Me

Demencia

New Honda Insight 2009

kylebean.co.uk

philszrama

3d typo

Inlingua – Business English

Gancia One 360º Campaign

new work by Serial Cut

LADY CAPRICE n°10

Tutorials

How to Create High Quality Metal 3D Text in Photoshop

Create a 3D Text Scene Using Photoshop

create 3D text

How to Create Explosive Typographic Effects in Cinema 4D

Using Typography from PS to Create a 3D Text Render in C4D

Create a Stylish Grunge Poster with 3D Typography in Photoshop

3D Valentine’s Day Typography

Create an Extruded Glossy 3D Text Effect in Photoshop

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Yodaa

Ready Made Design

The Pixel

Calobee Doodles

Dripping in Sunshine

Adobe User Group Nederland

Indiqo Media

Blog Maison Ecologique

Web Design Beach

Manufacturer of Ornamental Shrubs – Maria Papazova

Nottingham Web Design

Barn Festival Bob Gard

Pacific Ohana Hostel

Taothiep

Above

Freelance Logo

Ashok Hotel

Stereo Focus

Fator Criativo

So, what do you guys think ? I liked how some of the website uses parallax and jQuery to improve user interaction. Is there any sky website we have missed? Shout it in the comment.

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55°

ATOLL

August / December 2008

Broken Type Experiment

Computer Arts + Hugo Boss + EVK

December / February

Design Collector Calendar 2010

Hajime Sorayama Tribute

Last Minute

Microcity

MS // Modified Structure

MS // 009

Omega Code

PSDTUTS

Retro Futuristic II

Retro Futurism III

Retro Futurism

Retro

SlashThree

Tri’Angel

Triobelisk

Trust the Future

For more articles by Matthew Heidenreich, visit DeviseFunction.com

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1. Make it your own

As you can see below from John Lasseter’s office in Pixar, he has definately made it his own. John Lasseter personally was the director of Toy Story 1 and 2, A Bugs Life, and Cars just to name a few of his accomplishments. Clearly you should not be afraid to make your space yours!

2. Keep it Original

Volkswagen turned what would normally be another factory line into the coolest factory around. Just because what you might be doing may be dirty and greasy doesn’t mean you can’t have design. Just look at the comparison

VS a stereotypical factory line:

3. Make it Fun

Unless you have been living in a cave for the past 10 years then it should be no surprise that working at Google is the place to be. After being voted as the number #1 place to work year after year it’s easy to see why. And yes, pets are allowed.

4. Don’t forget that the goal is to be effective

I realize that Apple stores are not examples of typical workspaces, but nobody can argue the effectiveness of their designs. According to a Morgan Stanley analysis 14% of new visitors to Apple stores turn into customers. I must admit that simply browsing around an Apple store makes me want to open up Photoshop and get creative and I would bet that I’m not the only one.

5. Stay within your budget

The architects at Clive Wilkinson in Los Angeles are a perfect example of keeping it fresh and working within a budget. When building their office the designers were working with a limited budget and had to improvise. What came from their budget cuts is an office space that has been talked about by many. Say hello to shipping containers!

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I’m not so sure about this second point, though. I understand where Giannattasio is coming from, but I think the argument assumes a singular design methodology. It assumes that the designer needs to actually create the design as one, organic unit, much in the same way that an artist would create a painting. In fact, the article explicitly states that “Great design relies on an open dialogue between the artist and the medium.”

Now that is an interesting statement, which really puts the article’s argument in perspective. The assumption that I see here is that effective design is an organic process, which brings the entire visual composition of the site to the forefront.

“So what?” you ask. Isn’t that what design is all about?

No. At least not entirely. Design is about making intentional and purposeful choices for framing content (as discussed here). Obviously, visual treatment plays a huge part in that, and as designers we pay a lot of attention to that part of the job – maybe even too much from time to time. But that’s not the entire purpose of design.

The most beautiful website in the world can fail miserably if it’s inaccessible and difficult to figure out for its users. Good web design makes content easy to understand and presents clear, usable navigation, all on top of being beautiful. By focusing too much on the Photoshop side of things, we are in danger of becoming too focused on the visuals.

Not that I think that this is what Giannattasio is advocating. I’m sure if you talked to him about it, he would agree about the importance of usability in design. I just think that raising Photoshop up as the defacto web design application automatically insinuates (whether intentionally or not) a certain predisposition towards ranking the visuals above the actual usability, and that’s always a dangerous line to walk.

The Tools Debate

The other interesting thing that we see from this article actually comes out most strongly in the comments, where there is a lot of discussion about the appropriateness of Photoshop as a web design application at all. One of the prevailing sentiments seems to be that we should use Fireworks instead. This position certainly has some merit, given that Fireworks was actually developed specifically for the creation of graphics on the web.

But, really, does it even matter in the end?

Personally, I don’t use Fireworks. I’ve played with it a few times but have never really had the time or opportunity needed to become comfortable with it. And honestly, I’m fine with that. So far, I’ve been able to do all of my work just fine using Photoshop for all my raster graphics.

But, that’s really not the point.

The point is that I don’t think it really matter what tools I use. When a client hires me to create a website, they’re not hiring me to make a website in Photoshop or Fireworks or Dreamweaver or Coda or any other application for that matter. They hire me to make the a well designed, usable website that helps them meet their overall objectives online. That’s it. And, as long as I accomplish those objectives within the allotted timeframe and budget, the tools I use are really just a matter of personal preference.

Turning to metaphor, it’s kind of like trucks. I live in a small town and, while I really don’t care for trucks one way or the other, (and hate driving them), many of the people I know love their trucks. I’ve also noticed that they tend to be extremely brand loyal. Some of them drive Fords and hate Chevys. Others drive Chevys and hate Fords.

To me, though, it seems like a pointless debate. When I need the use of a truck (thereby putting me in the role of the client), there are a few basic things that I care about. It needs to have four wheels, be able to haul whatever it is I need to haul, and not breakdown in the process. Beyond that, I really couldn’t care less what kind of truck it is. It just needs to work.

The same is true of our websites. It doesn’t matter how they are made. In the end, all that matters is that they work.

Making it Work

Of course, when I say that a site needs to work, I mean more than it just has to appear pretty in the browser. As already discussed, there are issues of usability to consider, and this has a huge impact on whether a site works properly or not. If it doesn’t, its like a really polished and detailed truck that only had one speed, or which only turns left. It might look nice, but when it comes to fulfilling its primary purpose, it’s totally useless.

Making it work is also a matter of standards and semantics. Building a site for standards is going to make it more cross-browser friendly, and better equipped to stand the test of time. Semantic code adds an increased level of logic to the document structure, and makes it more readable.

This is all important, and when I say that all that matters is that a site works, I am not pointing to the sort of “it just works” that encompasses poorly coded sites that render without any visual issues, but which are filled with under-the-hood nightmares. I’m talking about a beautiful, usable, well coded site that the designer or developer put together in whatever way works best for them.

A Man of Many Methods

To be quite honest, that approach is not only going to vary from designer to designer. It’s probably going to vary from project to project. Personally, I’ve used all kinds of different techniques and methodologies for the websites I’ve created. Sometimes, I will do exactly the sort of thing that Giannattasio advocates, opening up a new Photoshop document and mocking the whole thing up in a mass of layers, Smart Objects, blending modes, layer styles and so on. This method is always a lot of fun on the font end, though if I don’t watch myself it can turn into a bit of a nightmare when it comes to actually coding.

Other times, I’ll start a bit more organically, with a pencil and paper. I may print off some grids or get a blank sheet and just start sketching out layout idea or concepts. Truthfully, I probably don’t do this as much as I should, but I only really find it useful in certain kinds of situations – or sometimes when I’m struck by an idea but don’t have my computer nearby.

Recently, I’ve also done a few projects where I just skip the whole Photoshop stage and start building the site right in Coda. I’ll start with a basic HTML structure and then just start building and building. The basic structure will develop into a simple grey prototype, full of placeholders. Then, depending on what’s available to me, I’ll start pouring bits of content in or adding in graphical elements like backgrounds or icons.

I’m sure that I’ve used a slightly different methodology for every single site I’ve designed, because every single site is slightly different and requires a slightly different approach or toolset. It all depends on the context.

Choosing the Tools

To show you what I mean, let’s look at some examples. These aren’t my websites, but a really gorgeous and beautiful examples. Here’s how I would approach them.

The first website is for the FoundationSix web design firm.

For me, this is exactly the kind of design that would start off in Photoshop, for a couple of different reasons that have to do with the graphically rich quality of the site. All the visuals are really integrated. Yes, there are clear and obvious divisions, but the textures, shadows and highlights all really rely upon each other, and so I would want the create the look of the site using the precise pixel control of Photoshop and then just slice things up as necessary.

In this case, the graphically rich nature of the site just lends itself to being built first in Photoshop, then sliced up and expertly coded after the fact.

Now, let’s look at our other example. This design is for a culture site called Executive Edits.

This is a simple and minimal type of site, with very little in the way of extra graphics. There’s no way that I would mock up a site like this in Photoshop. To my way of thinking, it’s just not worth the effort, because there’s no major component that I could do in Photoshop that I couldn’t do with HTML and CSS while working in Coda. As such, why would I want to go to all the work of making a static, raster mockup, only to have to go back and recreate the entire thing later?

For me, it would be much faster and more efficient to jump right into the code.

Again, it’s all about context, and context can include a number of different things. Earlier this year, I wrote an article entitled “5 Things to Consider Before Designing Your Next Website,” in which I differentiated between mockups (static) and prototypes (interactive) and pointed to five different areas you might want to consider before deciding how to begin a project. These areas include:

• the client
• the purpose
• the graphical requirements
• the audience
• yourself

I still think that these are excellent areas to consider, and that doing so can help you to determine which tools might be the best for a given web design project.

Conclusion

So, to wrap it all up, the point that I really want to drive home with this article is right there in the title. As designers, our primary focus needs to be on the design, not on the tools we use to get there. As long as, in the end, we produce beautiful, standards-compliant, usable, semantic websites, isn’t everything else just a matter of taste?

Don’t misunderstand me here, though. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t have passions or convictions about the tools you use. You should. And you should have reasons too. Just using the same old tools because that’s the way you’ve always done it probably isn’t the best way to approach things. Even I, wrapped up in Photoshop, am going to try to find an opportunity to build an entire site using Fireworks over the next few months.

Who knows, maybe once I get comfortable with it, I’ll even make the switch.

I’m also not saying that there’s anything wrong with Giannattasio’s article. I may not agree with it all, but it was a well written piece that certainly made waves in the community and sparked some really interesting discussion. As I noted in my last article, we need more of this kind of thing, so kudos to Giannattasio for having the courage to step out on the subject and defend a tool that he’s clearly passionate about, and with which he creates really beautiful work.

Just remember – the design comes first and the tools come second.

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The bundle, which includes some of the most prestigious brands in the business, began on August 2nd and will continue through the 16th.

Here is a line up worth checking out!

Billings is a time billing program for professionals who want to simplify quoting, invoicing and time tracking.  Includes customizable templates for those who want their invoices to make a good first impression.

Value:  $39.99!

Mojo-Themes offers high quality themes for WordPress, Tumblr, HTML, and PSD. With the bundle you get three top selling WordPress themes: Signal 8, Apollo, and FolioStudio.

Value:  $135.00!

Flux is a state-of-the-art WYSIWYG engine that creates the code for you as you drag and drop web page elements. If you prefer to have control over how the code looks, you can also switch to a code that allows HTML, XHTML, and CSS.

Value:  $63.99!

Mastering Photoshop, the new eBook from Smashing Magazine, is written for advanced and intermediate designers who want to brush up on their workflow and improve their Photoshop skills. The eBook contains 178 pages, explaining fundamental techniques that Web designers need to know to produce high-quality work in Photoshop.

Value:  $19.90!

Subernova is a sleek project management tool that lets you track time, send invoices and estimates, collaborate with others and keeps your business smooth by keeping tabs on late payments, deadlines and more. Get a one year membership!

Value:  $149.99!

Dry Icons is another icon site with exclusive resources. They created a special pack for the Bundle.

Value:  $150.00!

WP Bakery is a new WordPress theme store that is giving away 2 templates for the Bundle: Cubixoid and Simplic.

Value:  $70.00!

Icon dock is one of the most trusted places for stock icons. Bundle Hunt includes their Moi Icon pack!

Value:  $60.00!

Designious is a well-known resource for designers around the world, offering more than 6000 stock graphic files. The Bundle includes the Giga Vector Pack.

Value:  $179.99!

Photocase is a strictly curated stock photography platform focusing on modern, creative photography. They made an exclusive of the most popular 100 photos (extra large size)!

Value:  $500.00!

Vandelay Premier is a new membership-based community managed by Vandelay Design. They prepared a special pack with high quality textures, backgrounds, Photoshop brushes and more!

Value:  $27.00!

Site 5 is a web hosting company specially created for web designers. They offer free migration and a guaranteed 99.99% uptime. Get 6 months of the HostPro + Turbo Plan.

Value:  $83.70!

The Bundle Hunt was founded by Noura Yehia, Claudiu Cioba, and Mostash (the small team of social media professionals). This obviously is an amazing deal with everything being valued at $1,400 for only $49.00!

To purchase the bundle visit Bundle Hunt.

Author Bio: I am a 26 year old internet entrepreneur and co-founder of MOJO-Themes.com. In addition, I have been involved with custom design and development for the past 6 years out of Salt Lake City, Utah. Feel free to contact me on twitter and let me know your thoughts or just say hi! @bradynord

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So with all the effort you’re putting into your site, why restrict yourself to just one language market?

If you decide to just stick with a single language for your web presence, you’re cutting out a huge number of potential customers from the 1.8bn people currently online around the world. If English is your language of choice, then your native-speaking web audience will account for less than a third of all web surfers (internetworldstats).

Going multilingual with your web presence is especially crucial for online businesses, since research shows that 85% of consumers – even multilingual consumers – will not buy from a website unless they can read about the product in their own native language (Common Sense Advisory).

So how exactly do you go from being a monolingual website with one target market, to being a world-conquering behemoth with virtual branches in countries around the world?

Localizing your approach

The one golden rule is that you have to ‘think local’. This means deciding which countries are going to have a gap in their e-commerce market for your product, and then developing individual local web sites for each market, written in their language, designed for their aesthetic preferences and marketed towards their culture.

For starters, it’s important to have individual top level domains (TLDs) or subdomains for each local site, with their location set to the target country in Google Webmaster Tools.

This is for two reasons – for increased credibility with your customers in each country, and more importantly for your SEO, as Google looks to return relevant local content for local searchers.

Aesthetic preferences

Different cultures have different expectations in terms of what they like in a website – just take a look at the differences between Coca Cola’s Japanese site and their Swedish site, or McDonald’s UK site and their Indian site.

Essentially, you need a design framework that is consistent in its branding but flexible enough to change between local sites. Also, think carefully about your color scheme – colors can mean very different things between cultures, as this graph shows.

Be sure to take into account different navigation requirements between left-to-right and right-to-left languages – using a horizontal navigation system and symmetrical design should solve this.

Lastly, using CSS as your design tool will keep your content separate from your design for easy language changes, and using Unicode UTF-8 as your character encoder will make it easy to switch scripts between 90 different languages.

Content designed for the audience

Naturally, you’ll need your localized sites to be translated into the language – or even languages – of their target countries; no good building a site for China and then having all your copy in English.

More important than just translating the text, though, is making sure that your copy is written with its intended audience in mind, by a native speaker of the language with some experience of writing marketing copy. For instance, while an irreverent tone in your copy will go down well in the UK, the exact opposite is true for Germany.

Also, getting a language professional to either write, or translate and check, your copy will protect you from any embarrassing linguistic gaffes, like the time Coca Cola launched in China and had its brand name translated as ‘Ke-Ke-Ken-La’, not realising until after they’d printed thousands of signs that, depending on the dialect, their new brand name meant either ‘bite the wax tadpole’ or ‘female horse stuffed with wax’.

It’s not only linguistic missteps that can get you into trouble, either – not having a local’s understanding of the culture can also cause problems, such as when Pepsi was sued in 2004 by the Indian city of Hyderabad over a TV advert which saw the Indian cricket team celebrating a win while being served Pepsi by a young Indian boy – the city (somewhat reasonably) claimed the advert glorified child labour.

Tailored marketing

When it comes to your SEO, the most important things to know are to target the most popular search engine for each market – for instance Yandex for Russia rather than Google – and to never translate your keywords.

Direct translations are often not the most popular search terms – keywords are not really ‘words’, as such, but rather the phrased expression of a desire – as such, each language market will have its own particular way to describe such a desire. This may be a slang phrase, a term in the local language or phrases adopted from English or another language.

The only way to be sure that you have the right keywords is to research which keywords are used the most in each market with a keyword tool like Google’s, or if possible get an in-country SEO expert to assist.

By putting yourself into the shoes of the web users in each of your target foreign markets, you stand a much better chance of beating the local competition and growing from a local phenomenon into a globally successful business.

About the author

Christian Arno is the founder and Managing Director of global translation agency and localization specialists Lingo24. Launched in 2001, Lingo24 now has over 120 employees spanning four continents and clients in over sixty countries. In the past twelve months, they have translated over thirty million words for businesses in every industry sector and their projected turnover for 2010 is €7.3m. Contact Lingo24 with a translation request mentioning DesignM.ag before 30 October 2010 and you’ll get a 10% discount on your first order.

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Podcasting – This plugin takes a file from anywhere on the web and offers it through an iTunes like feed on your WordPress blog. This is useful to also play the file on the web with a special player that is included.

Podcasting – Blubrry PowerPress Podcast Plugin – This is a plugin designed to offer full podcast support through iTunes and offers a large amount of customizable interfaces. It was created for podcasters by podcasters.

MTR Podcast Recorder – This is a special WordPress plugin designed to pull real time data and save it to the WordPress installation location. All sound information is saved in MP3 format with the famous LAME encoder.

Podcast Channels – This plugin allows blog owners to offer podcast feed channels on their WordPress blog. Offers increased functionality with Meta data which could be changed by readers as well on their own machine.

PodPress – This WordPress plugin allows you to add additional features to the WordPress design which can be easily put to use as the ideal platform for hosting a podcast.

Related posts:

1. 7 WordPress Stats Plugins
2. 5 Download Manager Plugins for WordPress
3. 7 Security Related WordPress Plugins

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Google Analyticator – A useful plugin tool that is designed to offer you the ability to insert the Google JavaScript needed to your page to properly be used with Google analytics.

Ultimate Google Analytics – This plugin allows you to add the needed JavaScript without the need to make changes to your site template. Very useful for any WordPress blog that needs statistics tracked through Google.

Going Up! Web Analytics – This is a free web analytics application that can be used to track live data as it happens on your site. It uses tools like “site spy” which offers these capabilities.

Google Analytics for WordPress – This plugin is designed to automatically track all links and segments for everything through Google analytics. This is a very useful tool if you need to know where your traffic is going after they visit you.

AdCenter Analytics – This is designed to add the Microsoft AdCenter tag to your WordPress blog. It is very useful to track clicks and other statistical data.

Related posts:

1. 10 Free Tools for Tracking the Performance of Your Design
2. 5 Search Enhancement WordPress Plugins
3. 5 Download Manager Plugins for WordPress

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Post Templates – This changes the post template for individual posts or even for entire categories if you specify. This is very useful for blogs that need to change the default template for their posts quickly.

Simple Post Template – This plugin allows bloggers to really take advantage of their posting format by adding a template to their posts. It is highly customizable and easy to use.

Custom Post Template – This is a versatile post template plugin that has increased functionality. Allows you to create different post templates and offers a drop down menu to select the one you wish to use easily.

Single Post Template – Easy to use template manager that offers a drop down list of preconfigured templates. Very useful for a blog that has many different styles of posts but requires help with templates.

Serial Posts – This is a tool that can be used to create special templates to use with your WordPress blog. It is complicated, but can easily do much more with your blog posts once configured properly.

Related posts:

1. 4 Ecommerce Plugins for WordPress
2. 4 Page Order WordPress Plugins
3. 5 Social Bookmark WordPress Plugins

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