Sunday, July 18, 2010
Personal Portfolio Website
My next project is to create a personal portfolio for myself as a designer. I will be using this site to provide information about myself and my design projects. Most of the projects will be from my classes and activities at La Roche, but there are a few exceptions. I've been spending a lot of time looking around at different online design portfolios and thinking about the qualities that I like and don't care for so I can get a better understanding of where to start my design. I've created an identity for myself within the past few weeks, and it is the SE picture on the page here. I just finished my business cards last week and I couldn't be more excited about them! They're so much more different than anything else I've created for myself. I have the best of intentions to make my portfolio site just as good and innovative. Hopefully enough people will see it and like it so that I might have a job opportunity when I graduate in the spring.
Use of Social Media for Small Clients
Small businesses and non-profit organizations can make use of social media in numerous ways to their benefit. I came across this article on my twitter feed the other day that is relevant. Social media is only mentioned at the bottom of this article because it's about the broad category of online marketing, but it says that "No organization can afford to ignore the growing importance of online social media channels such as Blogs, Facebook, and Twitter. You can expand the reach of your nonprofit if you can leverage these highly popular new social media in a creative and innovative manner." This article comes right out and says you should use social media tools because they're popular and because they're popular, if you're on them and use them to the best of your abilities, you'll get attention. As I've said before, to fully take advantage of the exposure social media can get you as a business or organization, you need to budget time to spend on it. You need to offer things that other people will see and interact with or things that will enrich a viewer's experience online. Links to things similar to your business or organization, offers or advertisements are things that you can post again and again and in different ways so that the news is never old. It's important to keep a fresh look to yourself on the social media so that people won't see you as boring or uninvolved or anything else negative. The point behind using social media is trying to get as many positive things out there about yourself as possible. However, in another article I read, it also seems kind of fishy if every item of feedback about your business or product is positive (especially as relates to an e-commerce site, but it has its place in blogs and other social medias too). Social media can also be seen as opportunities to correct "common" misconceptions about your company, organization, or product. Small businesses and non-profits can benefit from implementing social media on their sites by gaining new customers, gaining new supporters, acquiring financial donors, and correcting any misconceptions. To do this, they can advertise or post links of interest or events or specials using their social media. The more they say, the more they get out there.
You have to be careful to some extent, how you suggest social media. I think it depends heavily on the client. If it's a young or progressive client, chances are they'll know about social media, but they may or may not see it as a marketing opportunity. In that situation, you just have to show them how much social media can do for them. Perhaps one way of doing this is quoting some statistics of how social media works in action or showing some of their competitors (or even unrelated big names) using social media. If the client is unfamiliar or wary about social media, you'll obviously have to work harder. A good approach for this might be that it doesn't cost to advertise through social media, but it does to do whatever they're doing now. It would be good to point out how they could strengthen their marketing campaign all around to be more effective.
These types of clients may well feel overwhelmed about using social media. They may have no idea how to use it or how to use it for business instead of just pleasure. Social media will get them more exposure and free advertising, which is important to someone with a limited or nonexistent budget.
The Impact of Social Media on Pop Culture
Social Media is an explosive technology that has greatly influenced Pop Culture. I think because social media has so many different functions (little to no cost advertising, keeping in touch with people fast and efficiently, etc) it will absolutely become something bigger and better and more relied upon. I've run across several examples of the use of social media from places you might not have expected.
Kretchmar's Bakery, in my home town, created a fan page on Facebook and they use it religiously. Everybody in Beaver knows about Kretchmar's and it's fairly impossible not to, but Facebook helps people as far away as other countries remember fond times involving their beloved bakery from way back when. Recently, Kretchmar's has used their Facebook page to advertise different weekly specials during their 50th Anniversary sale. They don't put any signs in the window of the bakery and the only way to know about these sales are to be a fan on Facebook. Utilizing social media has been a great decision on the part of the bakery because they have spread their fan base, their customer base, and increased buying habits of their customers. I know that I, for one, have specially looked for their weekly sale announcements online and my family has made special trips down to buy things we would not ordinarily.
The Beaver Library has a Facebook page as well, which was quite unexpected due to the age of the people that work there. I became a fan, thinking they'd release titles of new books, and library events and programs. Unfortunately, the updates are few and far between and they either advertise events at the last minute or way too far ahead. Unlike Kretchmar's, they don't have many photos and make few posts. Beaver Library's idea behind utilizing social media was a smart one. Library demographics are traditionally older, more mature folks, but by being on Facebook, the library is trying to turn that around. They want to get more people involved with the library and more people to get excited about and utilize the library. Because Facebook's users are among a large age range, the library can generate interest in a very large group of people including teens, parents, middle-aged, and just generally forward-thinking patrons. This kind of exposure, if handled right (which, it needs improvement), could change the demographic of the library and transform it from a stodgy old-book smelling, low energy environment into a vibrant (yet still reserved) culture-enriching place. The large remodel they did a few years ago on their actual building was the beginning of this transformation. I feel that if they continue to utilize social media tools, they will be ahead in the long run.
Even the Pittsburgh Zoo is using social media to drive its supporters. They're offering specials like "like the zoo on Facebook and post a message to our wall, print it out and bring it and receive $5 off the price of admission." You have to do something and get involved with the zoo (or other organization or place of business) and you will receive something in return. Social media advertisements are a classic example of a call to action campaign and because any of the social medias are so easy to interact with, it's all the more effective in terms of ways to advertise.
Social medias are growing among the private population too. Twitter is often used to gather people quickly. That can be used for both good and bad, but it is a tool nonetheless. Twitter is especially useful for call to action campaigns as well because all it does is allow the user to post updates and spread it around the web (more so than Facebook because of privacy options, I believe). On Facebook, you can make "events" and invite friends. These can be degrees of public or private, even by invitation only. This makes it much easier to plan surprises and gatherings of varying sizes. Using Facebook for these attending these events is good because Facebook will remind you when the event is coming up too. Because of this social media technology, there is less paper waste and less of a grape vine effect (wrong messages). My cousin, a hater of technology and the internet, has a blogger blog set up for her 8 month old baby. This way, everybody in our family with internet access can go to the blog and check for updates when baby Avery does something new. Also, Allison doesn't have to have pictures printed, scan them in and email them and then we don't have to download the pictures because we can go back to them in cyberspace. Words cannot express how much better this is than email and besides, you can't lose track of it like an email: everything stays on the site and while you can become a blogger member to receive updates, you can also just go to the web address every week or so. In these ways, social medias (Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Myspace, etc) help families and friends connect and stay updated about each other without having to interact much or spend a lot of time. You can also have a more broad friend base than you would have in real life because social groups don't really exist online as much and there's no rule about how often you have to talk to your online friends.
There are good and bad points with social medias, but I think the good far outweigh the bad. Because so many people are growing up in the age of computers, I think that more people are being exposed to social medias and seeing them as a way of life, a lifestyle. Computer technology in general has led to society evolving into a technology-driven world. The use of social medias will continue and increase in popularity because they are a catchy fad or trend of the computerized world and those things rarely go backwards.
Resources:
As this article says (http://chris.pirillo.com/social-media-in-education), I don't know why students don't use social media in the classroom! I think that if they did, they would learn quicker how useful it can be and not just see it as a way to "catch up with friends, chat about their day and play games." I think I fall into that category, actually. I have used social media tools for educational purposes, but I also use them for personal purposes like those mentioned. It's hard for me to make the transition of using them for personal purposes to using them for professional purposes. If there were a gateway, I think that would be a good thing. In some of the other articles I read where the 30-39 year olds and 60-69 year olds are making the most of social media tools, I believe it because they have been introduced to them as business tools, not necessarily social tools. I think using social medias in an educational setting is one solution for this.
The Social Marketing Blog (http://www.scottmonty.com) seemed a bit overwhelming when I first looked at it (just because of the amount of relevant information). I thought the toolbar at the bottom that coaxes you to share this page and update thus and such is somewhat obtrusive and annoying and by this point in my readings on social media, overwhelming. However, why wouldn't you want to share this blog? It's about social media marketing and hands you access to all your social media outlets at the bottom (in that way, it's smart). So what am I going to do? I used it! When I started reading the blog, I immediately grabbed the article titled "The 1.0 Homage." I saw it as sign that it's okay for me to really learn to use social media and it's okay for me to feel overwhelmed at the newfound complexity of my life and the 5 million things I now need to check daily. I can always take a short hiatus or simplify my life in other ways, but it's an important tool that's out there that I need to take advantage of. The "I See England, I See France" article was also interesting. From having done my research, I already knew the vast age range of people who took advantage of Facebook. This post shows that the largest group of users is 18-25, but also that 61% of Facebook's users are over the age of 25. This alone makes it a great social media marketing tool to take advantage of. The statistics from other countries were also interesting to look at in comparison to the U.S. statistics. As a female, the "Online Ad Targeting Is Pretty Much Like Dating" article was intriguing. I don't necessarily agree with all the points, but it was interesting to see a main consensus and the article was written in a refreshing and jovial tone. "Advertising to Gen Y on Social Networks" was informative because it had a list of ways to reach Gen Y on the social networks and kind of gave marketers a job.
Other informative links:
http://www.studio1c.com/blog/17-internet-marketing/197-using-flickr-as-an-online-marketing-tool.html
I'm thinking about acquiring a Flickr.
Designing for the Mobile Web
Designing for the Mobile Web is a good thing to be able to do because of the increasing number of people using the service. Steve Jobs even said there will soon be ads and interactive ads for iPod Touch and iPhone. He said you will be able to fully interact with the ads on top of any other open application(s) you may have and then easily return to doing what you were after you're done with the ad. I think this brings a whole new world to users as well as designers and programmers. That many more people will be seeing business ads too, which will help the companies who embrace this newest feature. Of the people who have smart phones, who doesn't use apps? I'm betting no one, because they are so addictive! There are seemingly apps for everything and yet more apps are being created every day. If you can make an app and get it out there either as freeware or as an application for sale in the Apple Store, you will be rewarded with exposure and possibly even money. Limitations of designing for the Mobile Web would be things like size of the page, readability, usability and different programming. I would think it would be very advantageous to be able to design for the web because the pros far outweigh the cons. Over the few years smart phones have been out, they've drastically become bigger and better and I think they're an important technology to understand because one day, people might only use smart phones. Because it's a constantly growing technology and it's always good to keep up with / be ahead of the curve, starting to learn about designing for the Mobile Web now is a great idea!
Here are some good links to get you started:
http://www.cameronmoll.com/archives/000398.html
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/01/13/mobile-web-design-trends-2009
http://articles.sitepoint.com/article/designing-for-mobile-web
Some good templates for iPhone design:
http://pineappleiphone.com/themes/free-iphone-templates
http://developer.apple.com/programs/iphone
http://www.teehanlax.com/blog/2010/06/14/iphone-gui-psd-v4
http://plugins.movabletype.org/iphone-template-set
Don't forget to visit the iTunes app store for inspiration as well!
Here are some good links to get you started:
http://www.cameronmoll.com/archives/000398.html
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/01/13/mobile-web-design-trends-2009
http://articles.sitepoint.com/article/designing-for-mobile-web
Some good templates for iPhone design:
http://pineappleiphone.com/themes/free-iphone-templates
http://developer.apple.com/programs/iphone
http://www.teehanlax.com/blog/2010/06/14/iphone-gui-psd-v4
http://plugins.movabletype.org/iphone-template-set
Don't forget to visit the iTunes app store for inspiration as well!
Thoughts on E-Commerce Web Design
At first, when I got my first exposure to online shopping, I was very wary of it. Of course, you always used to hear about the dangers of plugging in your credit card information online too. That was before I had to buy textbooks online and make vacation reservations online. My first online purchase was textbooks for school. I was really nervous about plugging in all my information, but it ended up okay. When they were delivered, I picked up my books at the bookstore and everything was fine. The next purchase I made was getting a book for class (not a required textbook, but rather just for extra reference) off of amazon. That purchase went well too, though I was a little disappointed with the quality of it. My mom's friend had told us how to look at the sellers and see if they're reliable or not, so that was a big help and a large confidence booster heading into it. I've done online ordering a few times myself now, and my parents have done it several times as well. Now that I've had the experience, coupled with the preponderance of online opportunities these days, I feel much more at ease shopping online.
It's pretty easy to know which kinds of sites to trust and which sites not to trust. Even from the basic look of the site: if it's tacky or not, you can decide whether you'd want to buy something from them or not. If there are too many misspellings or other grammar errors, it might be best to steer away from the site as well because obviously they don't see it important to represent themselves in a professional manner. It's a lot easier to trust big names and companies that say they offer security or won't share your information when you plug in your information.
I think online shopping is only going to increase in the future. So many stores offer it, and many even offer online-only products. The only bad thing is the shipping, but sometimes you can make yourself feel better about spending the money if the item is on sale anyway. Lots of times there are even deals on shipping. If environmentalists step in the way of the construction of more shopping malls and land development, I could see the online shopping experience even going virtual and taking over our in-store shopping experience. It could be a holographic experience where you could select and try holographic clothes on yourself. It could also be an online experience where you have a personal avatar who walks through a virtual store and picks up clothes and tries them on. Honestly, that would be really exciting, but I don't think it'll happen for awhile. At most realistically, I would think you would be able to browse a panoramic view of a store. However, I do think online shopping will be even bigger soon and that almost every business will have an online store and the number of customers to make it worth while.
Three examples of E-Commerce sites, varying in design, function, and subject are: As Seen on TV, Cheese Supply, and Threadless.
I looked at the As Seen on TV site and immediately thought: this is so accurate. When one thinks of As Seen on TV products, they probably think sleazy, tacky, cheap quality, etc. It's pretty much the same impression when you look at the website. At least it's consistent, right? If you go to the site knowing exactly what you want and what it's called, you won't have too much trouble, but if you want to browse, you will find this site to be very lacking because it's so busy and unorganized. Personally, I would not want to shop on this site.
When I looked at cheesesupply.com, I was kind of saddened because a website about cheese has so much more potential than this site exemplifies. By name alone, I expected the site to be more "surplus store" organized. Really, the only way to find what kind of cheese you're looking for is to go by category (not even cheese name!) and then narrow down or to do a search if you know the name. The nature of the site is impersonal, mostly because of navigation and how old-looking the site design is. This site would benefit from the article we read about CSS styles you can't live without where it talked about special radio buttons and such.
I think the threadless site is definitely the strongest website of the three. Just from looking at it, it seems to be the most modern design-wise. Everything on the site is clearly organized and very easy to browse through. It's also really easy to filter your results to get exactly what you want out of the site. The site is fun and amusing and very functional. It's easy to get around the site and shop.
Of all the sites, I think the design and usability rank from best to worst as follows: Threadless, CheeseSupply.com, and As Seen on TV. I think CheeseSupply and As Seen on TV are fairly close though, their most obvious difference would be their design. Their organization is about the same, though CheeseSuppy seems a bit more categorized and easy to navigate (but that could just be that As Seen on TV overwhelms me whereas I like cheese). The design is bad in both cases, but in different ways. As Seen on TV's design is just tacky, whereas CheeseSupply's is old.
I also found some articles and sites for good E-Commerce websites.
I thought it was really interesting that this article mentioned Magento because I had just stumbled upon that site at work the other day and looked at what they had and explored their options. Since I didn't know much about WordPress (prior to building a site using it recently), I found it interesting that there are E-Commerce templates / themes / plugins. I think this was a really great article because it shows how many resources are out there to serve as starting blocks for these kinds of sites. In the examples that were given, it was also interesting to note the similarities and differences between the templates, especially in the things that tended to stay the same versus the things that changed. Links are always on the top or left, categories are always on the left or right, and the main area is subdivided. There is either a header or a large image area, but usually not both. Some of the sites look more plain or industrial or based on function, while others are more focused on design. I think every one has a search bar, so I'm assuming when we do ours we'll have a search bar, which will be a nice thing to know how to do.
I think this article was very informative because obviously, it told us 15 mistakes not to make when we design E-Commerce sites that we might have not thought about otherwise. I think a lot of these are easy to realize if you think about your own experiences with online shopping. For example, the inclusion of plentiful, detailed product information is common sense since, when you go to purchase a product online, you want to learn every single thing you can about the product before you buy it. The tip about putting contact information at the bottom of every page was useful because when I've done sites, I've only ever had a contact page. Putting it at the bottom of every page is certainly more convenient. I didn't realize the ideal checkout process was one page with all the information on. I would think it would be easier and nicer if the information you had to supply was broken up. The tips for making an adequate site search engine have to be right on because that's what I hope for when I visit a site. The reminder to have a good FAQ section with the basic questions was helpful because it's probably one of those things that would be easy to forget. The discussion of tiny images makes me wish I knew how to code for zooming in on an image. I hate when I visit sites and the image sizes are inadequately. When it comes to putting multiple product images, it's hard to remember to leave room or get them from the right angles. For this, I would just say to pause and think what you would want to look at on the product if you were purchasing it. The tips on Poor Shopping Cart Design were informative and made me nervous about attempting an E-Commerce site because there's so much to think about. At the same time, it makes me want to attempt one even more. I just wish we were going to make it functional so we could really test it out. It was interesting to learn that you can find programs that let you manually relate things to items being considered for purchase instead of just letting the program do it itself. I really like that Amazon does that, but with all the categories they include (recently viewed, etc), I think it tends to junk up the bottom of the page a bit. The tips on categories make me think sitting down with a good old paper and pencil to make a sketch of your online store before you or someone else creates it is a great idea. You can list which products will be displayed and in which categories they will appear. This way, you can group them ahead of time and have the categories finalized before the site is designed and you don't end up with too few or too many things in a category. I hate sites that hide their shipping charges, especially after reading this article and finding out how easy it is to include it on the site. I think this article really helped me to be ready to design an E-Commerce site.
I think reviews on products on sites are a great idea and I'm a user of them, however I think they can easily get out of hand. How you filter that unbiasedly, I'm not sure. For smart people, when they read through the reviews, it's usually fairly easy to see if someone really knew what they were talking about or if they went into using their product dumbly. For less experienced or more innocent people, that might not be the case and it could end up hurting business, which is obviously bad. It was interesting that this article said that bad reviews were okay and actually didn't hurt business that much. Reading so much about comments makes me wonder how you allow for them to be posted immediately (like on blogs) and how the blog technology works. I would think the best feedback system would allow for marking a rating without logging in and an optional comment section for which you must log in (which you would be able to do in that box). Showing the ratings in a box is a good idea. This makes me wonder if these things are programmed in or if they are widgets / plugins and things that can be used outside of things like WordPress so they are updated instantaneously (approximately). I also like the idea of asking for feedback on reviews because then as a businessperson, you'll know how people regard what kinds of things are being said about the product you're selling. I do think this article might place a bit too much emphasis on reviews and how amazing they are, but I did learn a lot from it and I think it's a good technology to use.
I found this article really informative because it made me think a lot. Especially with an E-Commerce site, it's ridiculously important to mull over how your site should function and you need to think about that before you design. When you're tight on time, it's easy enough to go right to thinking about page layout, but it makes it so much easier if you start with functionality of the site. I liked the question that was raised about including offers on the websites because while those exist in both real life and online, I never thought about how hard it would be to make that happen behind the scenes. I also had no idea that google and amazon offered payment services similar to PayPal. Setting up a merchant account sounds very complicated, but that could be my inexperience. Dealing with digital products seem even more complex. This article was over my head in a several ways (especially in details), but it did help me realize how complicated the world of E-Commerce is, or can be.
I found the in-depth view of Google Analytics to be quite informative and I think it's an even greater tool than I thought it was when I first became aware of it. When I read about the visualization tools, I was amazed and my inner geek wants to get my hands on all of them because they not only sound cool, but useful. I won't try to rank them, but I did find the heat map particularly interesting. The Product Page Tips were some of the same things mentioned elsewhere, but there were some useful new tidbits. I had no idea there were that many ways to test your site either.
It was really helpful that the selection of websites chosen for this piece were of a variety of subject matter and styles. It was really informative to see what all could be done with an E-Commerce site and that they don't all just have to be plain and boring. These designs are really inspiring and I'm sure I'll be looking at them again.
Writing Tools for the Web
Professionals are turning to social media to give their work more exposure. Sites such as Blogger, LinkedIn, and Twitter are becoming more popular, as well as Facebook pages, Wikis, and RSS feeds. These tools are popular because almost everyone sees them and they are free or low-cost. Forum technology is gaining more popularity to promote work and extend feelers as well. When researching this topic, I found that there are a lot of networking options other than just having your own website to explain and show your work. People even make careers out of being bloggers.
I found an interesting article about writing for the web at Web Pro News. Its main emphasis is that print writing and internet writing are entirely different things. These 10 Commandments of Internet Writing are really simple things to improve the way people read your site, blog, or other postings. This is a link to a book description that gives a similar overview. Here, they say, "The formula is simple - be honest, put the customer first, and don't waffle." This book (advertised on the site) covers many different kinds of online writing from web marketing to news releases, newsletters, webzines, and Weblogs. An article on Associated Content gives you five ways to keep a web reader's attention. The emphasis here is that web readers are very different from print viewers, mainly because they're in it for the quick access to information and are looking for an easy-to-read style. The main topics here are: be specific with your information, describe exactly what your site or blog will do for your visitors, get personal and write in a way that shows how personable you or your service is, and bring true content to your website by giving your readers real value (in other words, give them the full, detailed content especially if background is needed to understand a topic). While researching, I also found many advertisements for classes specifically on writing for the web, which tells me it's becoming an even bigger trend and now involves things other than just Blogger. HigherEdExperts gives a listing of information covered in a Web Writing Boot Camp. Who knew there was such a science to it? However, I think that's what makes it such a useful tool for professionals. If you can do something right, you should probably do it a lot and / or use it to your advantage.
LinkedIn is a professional resource for not only keeping in touch with your past and present, but it is also a resource for job opportunities and networking. I don't personally have experience with LinkedIn, but I heard the guys I work with talking about it the other day. It seems that LinkedIn has a sort of "group" technology and more specific forums that people can invite each other to and follow and participate in. In this way, LinkedIn seems to be becoming a bit more like Facebook or MySpace. With Facebook and Myspace, you can publish your business online and have people follow your news, updates, and happenings. When one person becomes interested in you or your business, all of their friends become exposed to it. In this way, it is a very powerful word-spreading tool. If you present yourself as a professional with good web writing on these sites, then you are more likely to be taken seriously and you may even get some good leads from it. Wikispaces, while I don't think I understand their full purpose, are also useful for business communication or promotion. You can easily put in text, upload images and files, link pages, and install widgets. You can create discussion forums, get statistics on your visitors, tag pages, and customize your wiki with text formatting, custom domains and custom themes. You can also set your wiki to be public, protected, or private, depending on exactly what you're using it for. Wikis seem like simple solutions for simple things. For example, I don't think a graphic designer would get much use from a wiki because it seems to be a little too generic and more geared towards discussions and such that a class might have. I know wikis are seeing more use in the classroom setting as an alternative to Blackboard or Moodle because they are effective discussion tools. I could see them possibly working for some people with some careers, but not for all. Based off of the article "How To Use Wikis For Business", I think wikis are most helpful in project management within a business.
Other Blogger-like tools are: RSS feeds, LiveJournal, TypePad, WordPress, and Blogger itself. The only reason I count RSS feeds as a "Blogger-like" tool is because it gets a message out very quickly, just as Twitter technology or a mass email does. Everyone who subscribes can get instant updates, so this makes it a good tool for advertising purposes, as well as keeping people up to date on your professional progress. This way, people can stay easily informed by getting the latest information from the sites / topics they're interested in (http://www.whatisrss.com). Twitter accounts and blogging among professional companies as well as individual professionals and regular individuals have been growing. One reason they are becoming so popular in companies is so that the companies can promote themselves to a larger population of people as well as so they can increase communication within the companies themselves. LiveJournal is a site on which you can create a private journal or create a blog, discussion forum or social network. It is a networking site, like so many others. The way I see LiveJournal is kind of like a glorified Facebook because you can connect with people, shop and send gifts, advertise, and use it on your mobile phone. One unique thing is that you can turn your journal into a bookstore-quality book. TypePad gets more away from the profile idea of LiveJournal and more towards a blog. You can design and customize your own blog with TypePad and use search engine optimization and social media optimization tools to promote your blog. You can choose from many preexisting designs or create one yourself and you can update your blog from anywhere. It's very simple and doesn't involve any fancy knowledge, yet you can have complete design control and have access to smart layouts and advanced editing features. There is also a feature with TypePad that if you see something interesting online, you can click "Blog It" and it will put the link on your blog, much like sharing with Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. TypePad even has ways to grow your audience by getting your blog noticed on search engines and creating a community (for those who share similar interests) and you can get stats that tell you how many people are interacting with your blog. TypePad is not free, though, so it is an investment to be made. Wordpress and Blogger are two other popular sources for blogging and site-making. Personally, I haven't dealt with Wordpress much yet, but I have heard about it and I have used Blogger. With both you can use templates or create custom designs for your site / blog. I found an interesting debate between the two here. Both also seem easy enough to use. One person on this discussion said that Blogger would be better than Wordpress if you wanted to keep your blog private. I think that Wordpress has more ways to customize the look and feel of your blog as well. While Wordpress has templates that you can buy, there are also free templates. Another advantage of Wordpress is that it has plug-ins that enable you to optimize your site for search engines and Blogger does not. Thus, I would think that for personal use or small-time traffic, one would use Blogger and for things with the potential to grow and spread, one would use Wordpress.
I can take advantage of most of these tools as a student to let people know what I'm doing while I'm in school so that it can help launch me into the professional world. When I am a professional, I can use the same tools or the higher-end tools to represent myself as being more professional and getting my business out to many different kinds of people in many different places. Blogs, and specifically Wordpress, would make it very easy to create portfolios of my work, in particular. Today, I will be creating a LinkedIn profile for myself. I also have Twitter (@sarahegolf) and YouTube (violet13ske) accounts.
Perception of a Site x 5
http://www.sourceforlearning.org is a website for a not-for-profit company that offers teachers, students, and parents many different learning resources. Upon first glance, from a non-designer perspective, it's not horrible. Honestly, it could be a lot worse, but it could be a lot better too. The gray is a turnoff, based on the vibrancy of the logo. The bold white type is abrasive to the eyes. The layout of the links on the side and the resources at the bottom with the main area nestled in the middle just below the header is a good, solid layout. The search, share, and contribute boxes look a little awkward thrust up in the top right corner. Because of the harsh devising line between the lined gray and dark black, the logo going off the main page area looks awkward as well, though it is nicely lined up with the points sitting right on the edge. I don't know why the browser background is black, I would at least make it the same dark blue from the logo. That's another point: not all the blues on the page are the same. I don't know how many people would pick up on that, but I would think it could be distracting. The main section of the page looks very flat with the image slapped on. The resources at the bottom overflow their containers, which gives a very unfinished view of the site. Let's hope these people can provide better material than they can hire a web designer. The links on the left side are okay…until you hover over one with a "drop down" menu. It literally drops everything else on the page down and expands the page so everything fits with the new links. Compare the first screen capture with the second for a better idea of the awkward expansion. With the page expanded, there's empty blue space at the bottom under the white resources bar. I'm not sure it would even help if that bar were anchored and blue space was added in the main page area. I just think the way these links work is distracting and unprofessional. Also, not even every link has a drop down, which doesn't follow the standard parallelism of if A has two sub-points, B and C also need to have two sub-points. I'm not saying each link has to have the same number of sub-links, but they do need to have some parallels. The sign up link for the email is acceptable, but I feel like it could be customized for the organization. A small detail that wasn't paid attention to is in the section at the bottom with the chunks, the titles are blue then red, unlike the logo, which is red then blue. It's nice they tried to tie that in though. I do like the logo for the site.
http://www.visitmyrtlebeach.com is a tourist website for visitors to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. I really like this website. I open the link and feel like I'm already at the beach because of the color scheme and general atmosphere of the site. As a non-designer, I think this site is fantastic. As a designer, I think this website is pretty darn good. The logo could be better, but at the same time, it suits given the competition. I would venture to call myself an expert at things Myrtle Beach and I've used this site before. The changing picture bar at the top is great, and really paints a great picture of the area. The transitions are subtle waves and adds another dimension to the site. There's a current conditions area at the top of the page next to the search bar and for any tourist, this is a great, must-have feature. The links across the top are fine enough. I don't happen to like the ampersand in that particular typeface, but it fits with the style of the site and the other type that's used. I love the links in the picture bar. They're beautiful and take after web 2.0 icons with the glass shimmer reflection and their shape and size. The links are colorful and color-coded, which is nice. Links within the text are a nice soft blue that is included in the theme colors of the site, so it fits in, but it's recognizable as a text link. The links along the right side are colorful too, though they do not necessarily coordinate with the links up top, which is disappointing. The page might be a little long, but it doesn't have an overwhelming amount of information on it either, so I think it's fine. Because of the importance of applications and being connected to them these days, I would say the twitter, facebook, and youtube icons should not just be slapped at the bottom of the text in the main area of the page. I'd also say that the email updates and plan your trip bars as well as the Myrtle Beach Events section shouldn't be at the very bottom of the big link bar down the right column. It's not often you find links listed along the right side of the website, but I think it's fine in this situation because of the links in the upper left. Overall, I think this is a pretty good website.
http://www.juggle.org is a site for the International Jugglers' Association, which is a resource for jugglers. From a non-designer point of view, I think the site works, but it's a little messy. From a designer point of view, I think the website could use a lot of help. The site is very white - the boring and plain kind of white, not the effective, minimalistic kind of white. The logo needs a lot of help seeing as there's word art in it. The links along the side are stuck in bars with random underlines within the words and it just looks bad. The site is organized well in terms of the placement of information within links / categories. The photo gallery at the top is weird because of the pictures themselves, but also because they repeat within the bar. The flyer / image on the welcome page is too big because it doesn't all fit above the fold (at least on my laptop). Surprisingly, the site features a donate button, a login, and a translate-the-site option. The structure of the site is rather typical with a header area, a link area on the left and a main page area. The text, links, and color theme could use a lot of improvement and once those areas were taken care of, I think the site would be a lot better.
http://www.subwayart.com is a site for Rochelle Weber, a Subway Station painter. Her logo is interesting and it is recreated with her landing page, though the page is a little flat like grid paper instead of being interesting like the logo. The only links are on the main page in the box. There is nothing to demonstrate the link being active. Once you click on a link, it puts a small amount of information on that gridded background and at the bottom, there is a "return to main menu" link. I think even a non-designer would find navigation of this site rather cumbersome. All of the text on the sub-pages is very plain and is contained in a white box. It's so boring and flat instead of having an artist feel to it like it should. This site probably doesn't show the artist's true personality. The virtual gallery isn't as bad as I expected given the rest of the site, but it is still a pain to use. You have to click on so many different things, just to get where you want to end up and there's not even that much content to the site! I think the gallery especially could be a lot better. After all, she's using it to promote her work. The structure of the website isn't like anything I've seen before, probably because it's so oddly constructed.
http://www.butlerfarmshow.com is a website for the Butler Farm Show in Butler, PA. It is atrocious and just as bad as the juggling website. The logo is horrible and there's even a cow in it. The creator tried to make the pictures fun and put them in overlapping bubbles. The home page is labeled "Home Page" and has a list of links. The photo at the bottom advertising the farm show did not display on Safari. There are a ton of links and they are literally organized in a table. Someone with a basic web design class or access to the software must've done this website because the websites I did in high school were on par with this from a graphic standpoint. The page is pretty much just ugly. This is a classic example of a website layout as well, with a header area a the top and links underneath it, followed by a main content area. I found the major arena events page particularly amusing because of a construction logo (see screen capture). The links could be better organized to make it easier to find things. There's not a whole lot to say about this site because this site really is nothing. I think this is a case of a website having no redeeming qualities and needing to be completely redone.
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