Clean (clutter-free and simple) website designs are very popular and give your website a very professional look. Here are 5 examples of clean designs that we hope will really inspire you.
Even those who have great aptitude in writing sometimes find themselves with literally NO WORDS! Unlike our verbal language, writing is actually one of the most difficult activities that we humans use to formalize communication sin la boca (without your mouth if you don’t speak Spanish). It sounds simple but as Wikipedia has defined it: writer’s block is “a condition, primarily associated with writing as a profession, in which an author loses the ability to produce new work. The condition varies widely in intensity. It can be trivial, a temporary difficulty in dealing with the task at hand.” Uh, yeah- I couldn’t have said it better. But what does one do when the deadline is looming and the children are to bed and it’s man vs. machine and you realize…I’VE GOT NOTHIN’! Thank God writing pro’s like Mike Rose (famed UCLA Graduate School faculty member and author) even acknowledges that it truly is “an inability to begin or continue writing for reasons other than lack of basic skill or commitment“. Whew…I’m off the hook a little! But now what do I do about it?
Why do you we do this to ourselves…it‘s supposed to speak back to you right? Like in some gone from a book to the big screen movie—the leading character is some highly paid British actor/actress paid to throw their laptop out the window of their 5th story NYC walk-up in utter despair. Yeah…in the real world most of us don’t have the kind of money that allows for those despairing moments. So I have opted not to spend hours wasting good wine or time employing this useless tactic. Instead I think it’s best to stare at something else. Walk around your house- look at some pictures, clean, cook, do a little laundry or run an errand. Heck, play with your kid or a game of chess with your spouse. Do something else besides stewing in the quagmire of I have no clue. You would be amazed how making the best salmon with a lemon dill sauce can jump-start a blog idea. Personal Example: One day I was frustrated about a concept I dreamt about (and DID NOT GET UP & WRITE IT DOWN.. I know bad, bad, bad) and was about to scream when my daughter asked me to color with her. As I was taking note of how precise my “staying within the lines” was and how the unbridled charm of a child’s Crayola skills were, yes the cliché lightbulb went off. And before you knew it, while she was still coloring outside the lines, I was pecking away on my laptop. Writers cramp over came writers block and I was grateful for it.
You know what they say in real estate…Location, Location Location. And I agree. After a very busy weekend and stressful morning I found myself not able to color in anybody’s lines or muster up enough energy required to even stare at a blank page. So what else could I do to get the boost usually relegated to a high-priced cup of Starbucks coffee? I went outside. Yup in the lovely 70° weather, I listened to the sounds of a almost perfect May day in Connecticut. And before I knew it, several titles/concepts came to me which enabled me to write this blog AND birth 2-3 ideas for some other projects. Fantastic right! Sometimes a simple change of location can do wonders for inspiration. Being jailed at your desk is not worth it when you can get some fresh air and use the objects/sounds/feelings around you to motivate your imagination. Like an artist who can use a host of colors or materials to create their masterpiece, so can writers. And I’m not talking laptop vs. plume…I mean what you use to connect ideas/concepts/words together to tap into your linguistic intelligence and unlock the door to your next novella.
1.) Interview a customer about particular concerns/challenges as well as solutions and then blog about it. I’m sure they will love the attention & it gets their name advertised in social media for free. Or you can opt to share an anecdote about an issue that occurred in your own business, from the problem to the solution.
2.) Dialogue with industry-friends via social media and let the responses shape a blog post or video blog with them weighing in on topics relevant to industry news items.
3.) Consider product or service comparisons, a Consumer Reports of sort but on issues like social media, graphic design, use of WordPress themes vs. traditional HTML websites.
4.) Report on a conference or webinar you attended giving perspective to real issues facing people in your own industry or some great highlights and tricks of the trade that you learned.
5.) Address customer questions you’ve received on the same topic/aspect of service. This lets them know that you’re listening and are willing to receive feedback once it’s out on the www.
6.) Expand upon a comment you wrote on someone else’s blog & parlay that into your own blog post. Tread lightly here, these are your peers after all. But bringing in a different angle never hurts.
7.) Correlate what inspires your daily life into the business world and create a blog connection. Hence, look out for my upcoming blog “Coloring In and Out of the Lines in Social Media” – thanks to my daughter’s crayons.
Have you ever been to a website that loaded very slowly? Did that website have some images that loaded abnormally slow, even though they weren’t that large in size? The reason for that may be that the images were re-sized improperly, most likely with a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) webpage editor such as Adobe Dreamweaver. This problem could have been avoided if the images were optimized.
Adobe Dreamweaver is a very powerful webpage editor that can be used to customize just about everything on your website, including specifying or adjusting the resolution of your images. When you click on an image you have inserted into Dreamweaver, you get the properties window, which allows you to specify the size of the image (resolution) and a host of other options.
Notice in the the above example the image file size is 4162K. That means it’s about 4162 kilobytes (or about 4 MB) which is very large. Also notice that the W and H (width and height) values are both in bold. That means that the current size of the image (266 x 140) is not the actual size of it (4096 x 2160). If you click on the refresh button next to the image size Dreamweaver will resize the image to the proper size (4096 x 2160).
If you change the size of an image using Dreamweaver’s image properties tab, you will just be changing the image’s resolution and not the actual file size. Using this method to downsize large images will make the images load very slowly.
This is NOT a good method for re-sizing an image for a webpage!
Dreamweaver wasn’t designed to be used for editing images. The purpose of the width and height boxes in the properties tab is to specify a resolution (size) for the image or object you have selected if there are no dimensions specified. A much better way of optimizing images is with Adobe Photoshop.
Using Photoshop to Optimize Images
If you have Adobe Photoshop, then you have the perfect tool for optimizing your images to display on your website. Here are some quick and easy steps to optimize your image in Photoshop:
1. Open the image (File > Open)
2. Re-size the image with the image properties window (Image > Image Size)
Notice at the top of the window where it says “Pixel Dimensions:” that the file size of the downsized image is now 109.3K which is a whole heck of a lot smaller than the original image file size of 25.3 MB.
3. Instead of “Save” or “Save As” use the “Save for Web & Devices” option (File > Save for Web & Devices).
If you look at the top right corner of the Save for Web & Devices window you will see these options:
Most of the time, I alternate between the 70 and 60 quality setting depending on the size of the image. I have set this image to the JPEG High preset, which gives the image 60 quality by default. If you are re-sizing an image for a thumbnail (320 x 240 or below) 60 is a great setting because you won’t see any degradation in quality from the original. I use the 60 quality setting most of the time, unless the image is very large (1024 x 768 or larger).
Original quality vs 60 quality
The original on the left is full quality (no compression) and the optimized on the right is 60 quality. At this smaller size, it’s hard to see any degradation in image quality at the 60 setting. As you can see, the optimized image on the right has an estimated load time of 3 seconds for a 56k dial-up connection. Of course, most users today have cable and other much faster connections, but it’s nice to know that even on the slowest connection, the image still won’t take too long to load.
4. Upload the new and improved image to your website!
Now you’re ready to load the optimized image(s) into Dreamweaver or whichever editor you use for your website.
Video of Image re-sized using Dreamweaver vs. Photoshop Method
As you can see in this video, the image that was optimized using my Photoshop method (on the left) loads a lot faster than the image that was re-sized using only Dreamweaver (on the right). The optimized image loads almost instantaneously!
Many more small businesses are waking up to the idea of blogging. This makes us at Design Theory pretty happy because we preach about the importance of a blog for our clients and partners. Though not all blogs are created equal, there are different platforms, designs, and purposes. Still each blog’s purpose is to capture an audience and keep them coming back for more week after week, post after post.
Idea 1: Make Your Blog Easy to Leave Comments
This one should be a no brainer, but you’d be surprised at how many blogs are out there that have great content, yet lack the ability for readers to post comments. There are so many plugins and applications that allow users to use many different social and popular mediums to easily submit a comment. A free and commonly used one is Gravatar. Receiving a comment on your post is one of the most gratifying moments of blogging. Good or bad, it’s still people taking time to speak out about your work. Be sure to promptly approve your comments and reply. Unapproved comments is a sure-fire way to show a reader you don’t care about what they have to say.
Idea 2: Make Your Blog Easy to Be Shared
It’s safe to say most blogs out there are using open sourced platforms like WordPress, Drupal, or Joomla. So utilize the plugins available to allow your readers to quickly share. Most are pretty easy to install and configure. Since a lot of blog article titles get shared through social media be sure to choose some of the more popular ones in your settings. Some examples are TweetMeme, Shareaholic, Google+1, and the Facebook Like Button.
Idea 3: Write More Help Topics
A common misconception with business blogs is to use this as an advertising stream. That’s actually not a good way to use it. In fact you’ll want to write more posts that actually help your readers and less about your own services and products. More successful blogs out there are blogs that constantly offer quick tips on fixing, making, creating, and developing things. And if you can condense a long dissertation to some cliff notes and still offer a productive outcome, you’ll create a nice following.
Idea 4: Get The Word Out
If no one knows about your blog, then no one reads your blog. An easy way to start promoting your blog is with your friends and family. Get them to read it to find errors and offer suggestions. For them that may be enough to get them to read it to try to tell you all you’re doing wrong. Its better coming from them than strangers. Then use social media like Twitter and a Facebook Fan page to further spread your great articles. Install some SEO plugins to help optimize your content for Google too. Include tags in your posts to help with indexing. Lastly, sign up with directory sites like Digg and StumbleUpon and submit your articles to them.
Idea 5: End With A Call To Action
Sometimes finishing your post is harder than starting. How to leave or Segway from your final points without sounding redundant. Try ending off with asking your readers to perform an action. Encourage them to comment their own points, a controversial rebuttal, a quick assignment that they can perform on their own for their own gains or improvement. This is also a great place to plug your service to help wrap up all that you talked about while offering your reader a time-saving deal or money-saving opportunity.
Getting creative on websites can sometimes feel constrained due to traditional layouts and verbiage, and most certainly when it comes to navigation bar and menus. Many of us think that we need to have the standard, cookie-cutter menu navigation bars that have become the “norm” for almost all websites. You know the type:
Most are similar in wording and format. I’m not saying that there is anything WRONG with this per se but if you can, know that outside of conventional thinking and web design, you can get creative without compromising easy navigation of your site.
Websites are certainly your worldwide face but even the prettiest of girls can use a little makeup. Sometimes that’s demure or other times an unexpected shocking red lipstick drives home a certain affect. So can your website. Don’t be afraid to try and incorporate some artistic menu design ideas. I had a ball researching some pretty interesting and witty design elements for menu navigations.
I thought this was a great use of the industry-driven design even with the typical wording. Another idea would have been to use the bricks themselves as the navigation bar.
You don’t see many vertical layouts for navigation bars so this really stood out to me. I bet it does the same for the current and prospective clients too!
Most of us would enjoy seeing a fun and innovative menu layout. This one made me comment out loud when I saw it “oh, that’s different”!
Don’t be afraid to use representative artwork and images either with or in-lieu of typical or generic menu names. It gives a personalized look to customary naming conventions.
When to keep it standard vs. using Atypical menu choices
I would say this is probably governed by the industry you’re in. If you are let’s say a law firm, then maybe you wouldn’t use the layout above but creative wording can be your breakout of the blue suit moment. Don’t be afraid to use your thesaurus here as long as you don’t compromise the ease of use and appropriate industry jargon. Example: I’m a recent law school graduate looking to work at “JP Law Firm” and upon reviewing their website, I see a menu item titled “The Brief” (which is a legal term for a written document presented in court arguing why the party to the case should prevail). It would not be a tough leap to guess they were using that instead of “About Us”. It’s a witty play on words which can be a little amusing and personally, I’d be impressed by the break away. Not everything needs to be starched and buttoned up. So with this said:
This is NOT a good method for re-sizing an image for a webpage! 
