1 – Don’t crowd your limited space with too many elements. This is particularly true for marketing collaterals that only have a small space to work with (e.g. postcards, business cards, flyers, etc.). Leave ample space for your target audience to rest their eyes (this is what you call white space). More elements will only distract rather than enhance your message, which is the most important aspect of your marketing collateral.
2 - Consider using large images and pictures instead of small ones. They attract higher readership and appreciation.
3 – More visuals tend to attract more than words. Hence, use your illustrations and print design to enhance and emphasize your message. If you can, produce an image that is almost half the size of your entire page to prove your point.
4 – Consider designing a layout that your target audience would actually read through. Don’t let a space or text go unread. Strategically place your print design and text to help you scatter your target reader’s viewing all over your print ad.
5 – Be careful with how you use your fonts and types. For an effective communication tool, avoid using too many capital letters. Your text would come off as very stiff and loud. Our eyes tend to be more appreciative of lower case letters that’s why you have to provide normal writing to your marketing collateral for easy reading.
6 – Consistency is key. Placing your information in the same place where your target readers expect them can make for a better reading material that can be easily remembered.
7 – Again consistency must be present in your page layout and other design elements.
Source : What To Remember For Successful Print Designs
Monday, May 12, 2008
Successful Print Design
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Social Media sites for Web Designers
If you are a web designer, there are a number of niche sites that you should be aware of. Here are five with a brief description of each.
1. DZone
DZone is a community of web developers and software developers, and it probably provides the most technical content of any of the sites listed here. As the largest community listed, DZone also has the potential to send more traffic than any of the others.
How it works:
- You create an account.
- Users can submit a link to an article that is development-related.
- Members can vote up or down for the articles.
- Anyone can subscribe to the RSS feed.
- Currently, there are over 9,000 subscribers to the feed of popular links.
- Currently, there are over 1,000 subscribers to the feed of new links.
A submitted link doesn’t need to get that many votes in order to be made popular, but votes don’t come easily. The content is highly targeted, and anything non-developer related will be shot down and probably deleted. If one of your links makes it to the front page (and gets sent out to the 9,000+ subscribers) you can easily receive 500 or more visitors in a day. The DZone community seems to include a large number of del.icio.us users as I have had several posts rack up bookmarks and make it to the front page of del.icio.us immediately following traffic from DZone.
2. CSS Globe
CSS Globe is not a typical social media site where members vote on submissions. It specializes in web standards and design-related content.
How it works:
- Members create an account (have to be approved).
- Members can submit links with brief descriptions.
- The links go out to CSS Globes RSS subscribers.
So essentially CSS Globe is more of a user-controlled blog than a social media website. But it sends links with descriptions rather than full blog posts. Links can receive as much as 200 or more visitors in a day from CSS Globe. Actually, this week I’ve had over 400 visitors in a day from CSS Globe. If you have quality design-related content and a good headline, CSS Globe is easy traffic.
3. Pixel Groovy
Pixel Groovy is a user-controlled tutorial directory. Topics include CSS, PHP, JavaScript, Flash, Photoshop, Illustrator, and more.
How it works:
- Members create an account.
- Members submit links to tutorials/articles.
- Submissions are voted up and down by users.
Pixel Groovy’s RSS feed currently has over 1200 subscribers. I’m not sure how much traffic it sends to top stories because I have not used it very much.
4. Design Float
Design Float is a Digg-Style social media site that focuses on design related content, as opposed to Digg’s general approach.
How it works:
- Members create accounts.
- Members can submit links and vote (actually “float”) on other submissions.
- Much like Digg, users can add friends.
- Top stories are posted on the front page.
I’ve submitted to articles to Design Float and been pleasantly surprised with the results (100 - 200 visitors to each). It appears to be an up-and-coming community for designers.
5. DevelopersNiche
Like Design Float, DevelopersNiche is a Digg-style site, with a niche focus. It works exactly the same as Design Float, so I won’t re-write that information. DevelopersNiche is the smallest community of the sites listed here and will send the least amount of traffic. However, that means it is easier to get your submissions to the front page and get a little bit of exposure.
Source : 5 Niche Social media sites for Web Designers
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
CSS based Design - Website Design Tips
53 CSS-based techniques you should always have ready to hand if you develop web-sites.
3. CSS Tabs
4. CSS Bar Graphs (CSS For Bar Graphs)
5. Collapsing Tables: An Example
6. Adam’s Radio & Checkbox Customisation Method
8. CSS Shadows (CSS Shadows Roundup)
9. CSS Rounded Corners Roundup (Nifty Corners)
10. Drop Cap - Capital Letters with CSS
11. Define Image Opacity with CSS
12. How to Create a Block Hover Effect for a List of Links
13. Pullquotes with CSS (Automatic Pullquotes with JavaScript and CSS
14. CSS Diagrams
15. CSS Curves
16. Footer Stick allows for the footer of a Web page to appear either at the bottom of the browser window or the bottom of the Web page content – whichever is visually lowest.
17. CSS Image Map
18. CSS Image Pop-Up
20. CSS Image Replacement for Buttons
21. Link Thumbnail
22. CSS Map Pop
23. PHP-based CSS Style Switcher
24. CSS Unordered List Calender (CSS Styled Calender)
25. CSS-Based Forms: Techniques
26. CSS-Based Tables: Techniques
27. Printing Web-Documents and CSS
28. Improved Links-Display for Print-Layouts with CSS
30. CSS Teaser Box
31. CSS Tricks for Custom Bullets
33. CSS Zooming
34. Creating a Star Rater using CSS
35. The ways to style visited Links
36. PDF, ZIP, DOC Links Labeling
37. Displaying Percentages with CSS
38. Image Floats without the Text Wrap
39. Let visitors decide, whether or not will they open link in a new window
40. Simple accessible external links
41. Zebra Table with JavaScript and CSS
42. Vertical Centering with CSS (Horizontal and Vertical Centering with CSS
44. Image Caption with CSS (Styled Images with Caption)
47. Hierarchical Sitemap with CSS
48. Snook’s Resizable Underlines
49. Switchy McLayout: An Adaptive Layout Technique
50. StyleMap: CSS+HTML Visual Sitemap
