I recently had the opportunity to write a short article plug for .Net Magazine (Bath, UK), a well-known voice in the web editorial world. Oliver Lindberg, an associate editor with .Net Mag, approached me looking for a designer’s angle on a topic unique to business alignment for design and the web. The resulting editorial piece took a brief look at how designers and business owners can tactfully remain competitive, relevant, and keenly aware of their point-of-difference within the industry – namely the web development venue.
The online studio here is usually painted black, and my physical office space, a nice earthy brown. Though recently, it was painted green – metaphorically speaking. I recently teamed up again with Tim Hamilton and the crew from web development studio, Astonish Designs (Austin, Texas), on a web dev project for the Green Business Bureau.
Since jumping into the web design world, I’ve been on a conquest to see what opportunities and challenges exist in this vastly dynamic medium. Challenges like how and where a web page is viewed. For example, some projects demand designing for desktop computer monitors emerging at 20-24″ sizes, a palm book, and iPhone – all under the roof of a single project. Or another scenario where content and images are constantly changing, creates a dynamic layout environment. These challenges certainly make web design a discipline of broader, full spectrum thinking. Whereas the print medium provides the designer WYSIWYG control over the process and final output, as Jason Santa Maria cites in his discussion video above.
I was surprised today when I received a message from an individual citing a clear and blatant copy of my site. After identifying it as a near carbon copy of my site design, I did some digging. Wow. Ever heard the term, “that’s just the tip of the iceberg”? That’s what I discovered. In the 15 minutes I spent panning the web for look-a-likes, I found a dozen sites either outright copying my site design, and an array of folks out there copying either chunks of stylistic elements, or copying textual content verbatim. I was also surprised to find that even some of the links on these plagiarized clones went back to my site!
With the business growing, and an ever-widening array of project types coming through the doors, I’ve found myself designing an increasing flow of web applications. While I’d like to keep the main volume of work centred on corporate and ecommerce websites, it’s always an exciting opportunity to jump into web application design. Web applications? Think 37signals’, Basecamp, or any back end user interface for a website such as a user login portal, shipping/receiving tools, or communication and data management tools like mobile push/pull and intranets.(Please note: While I’ve never designed any of the 37signals’ apps, I use them as a source of inspiration for my projects.)
Though “Rap” is not really my thing, one has to appreciate the valuable tips and advice that music and song bring when marriaged with learning. Here’s an interesting video on good web development practices. Maybe I should do a tutorial in-song. Acoustic guitar, bad singing, and some cool tips. Other than scaring away a few people and sending the neighbourhood dogs into a howling frenzy, this song-and-learn concept could be pretty neat. What do you think?
Admist the torrent of activity in the studio here over the last two months [by the way, what happened to January and Feburary?] I thought a new blog post was in order. This time though, a little less business oriented. Ok, down-right, completely, non-business-related. ; )
What if you could stay in touch with all your friends, business associates, acquaintances, and pets (ha, ha) with a tool usable on your computer or mobile device? You have 140 words to share with everyone, what you’re doing. You share as often as you like, and don’t have to decipher complicated pages overpacked with content. I’m talking about the wildfire phenomena, Twitter.
Speaking of web developers, designers, or any one involved with implementation, they tend to be viral marketing idealists by nature. Search Engine Optimization via keywords, meta tags, Google AdWords, advertising on IP detected or interest-based topic, region, psycho-demographic parameters. All this in an effort to network create a trail back to the desired web site. With the more recent media-rich nature of the web, powered by faster internet connections and greater bandwidth, it has enabled a whole new breed of cross-medium platform marketing. This cross-medium platform marketing, has also spun off into sects. Those being fan sites of a character from a TV spot, or special interest culture sites, blogs, or YouTube series’ spawned from a branding campaign.
With the new year now into full swing, I’m happy to introduce some tweaks to mikeprecious.com. I eagerly worked over the month of December like a busy elf, trying out some new ideas to further build on the existing design platform. The original iteration of the site came in the Winter of 2008 and has, like most sites out there, undergone tweaks, nudges and modifications as new content was posted and more traffic arrived at the site. Fortunately, the site was logistically designed from day-one to be relatively versatile to updates.
It was a design, image retouching, and copy writing bonanza. I was recently approached again by the development team for Mark Evershed Golf, to provide some supporting web advertising media, page designs for commerce sections of the site, along with web-and-print based gift card designs.
I'm Mike Precious, a designer based out of Brantford, Ontario, Canada. Head over to the About page to find out more about me. Or get in touch by clicking here. Thanks for dropping by.
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Here is a collection of links to both industry related and general interest sites, you may find enlightening. Enjoy!
