Rick Howard

One would think the election in 2004 would have helped the democratic party from so much flip-flopping but alas, it seems Obama has now taken up where John Kerry left off.

Take a look at the 2 screenshots below:

How does one go from beautiful smooth fonts and styling to the organized chaos of the second image? How could a presidential candidate allow his initally smooth facade be desecrated by fonts, in different weights and sizes and faces. Is this the work of a over-eager campaign worker at 2am who is just trying to get a glimpse of the presidential hopeful or just design gone wrong? I have another suspect, The Content Management System!

I have found that most CMS’s allow a little too much in the way of customization. Giving your clients full access to edit their sites may seem like a good idea at first, but quickly you find that the inexperienced can find many ways of “improving” their websites. Improvements that can make or break a design.

With ARCedit, our custom CMS, we restrict our users from blink tags, red fonts on green backgrounds and abnormally sized images in order to keep the designs as clean as we can. It may be a lot of hand holding, but the payoff is in not compromising your designs.

Thus establishing your platform, keeping it organized and getting your point across without confusing your future constituents.

In sad news, it has been reported that Steve and Barry’s has filed for bankruptcy. Apparently the $8 price for everything didn’t go over as well as they had hoped. The good news is they may not have to close all the stores and could rebound with a better plan, but it is more likely that they will liquidate.

Pay attention aspiring T-shirt designers, cheap might help you start but it won’t help you sustain.

For more helpful advice on apparel design, read gomediazine.com’s article on mistakes made by designers in the apparel and music industry.

The ARC team just returned from the unveiling of the Fayetteville Cumberland County Chamber of Commerce new identity. Excitement is around the corner as the Chamber helps the local community by bringing in new businesses and aiding existing businesses.

ARC Design was proud to be a part of the event by building their website and doing some other identity work.

You can view their new website at http://www.fayettevillencchamber.org/

It’s a simple fact that everyone can have a web site, but not everyone can do web design.

Using Kim Komando, Leo Laporte, Lockergnome and HTMLGoodies will help you but there are other elements involved in web design outside of knowledge of code and how to use frontpage.

This is why it is important for your business to select a web design agency that knows what they are doing.

Here are three tips on how to make the best choice:
1. Does the business have a website?
It sounds like a stupid question, but I have heard commercials for web design services that only list the phone number. You can also find plenty of online ads where the only thing listed is a yahoo, hotmail or gmail address. Hiring one of these is like hiring an amish electrician, if they haven’t experienced your wants, how can they serve your needs.

2. How does the portfolio compare to the site?
You should never choose a design company based on their website. You need to delve deeper and view the designs in their portfolio. Some companies invest more time into their own site than the sites of their clients. Don’t judge a book by it’s cover.
3. How easy are they to find in the phone book?
This really shouldn’t matter. If you wanted a car mechanic, you wouldn’t look under the heading of personal injury attorney. You should be looking online for a web design company. The whole point of having a website is having people view it. If you can’t find a full service design agency through a search engine then how long do you think it will be before anyone finds you.

To some these may seem like common sense, but amazingly some companies are still in business because unsuspecting business owners don’t know what they are looking for.

Cd covers, we look at them all the time, but do we realize that some of them have beautiful design aspects. Some may not start good trends, like 90s rap cds, more specifically anything from Master P’s No limit label, so bad they were mocked in a photoshop friday on something awful(Not for kids). Other are showing how the graphic design world is everchanging. Most notable are “Emo” bands who use simple typography and minimal imagery to show their proverbial hearts on their (CD) sleeves. You don’t have to take my word for it, look at the links below and see for yourself where the design trends may be going.

Stumbled across 15 Inspirational Album Covers on Alyssa Anduiza’s blog. Just days after seeing The Beautiful Unknown: Inspirational Drum & Bass Vinyl Covers.

Both were found through Design Float who have a searchable site where there are several other “Cd Cover” posts.

Go Kids!

I realized its been awhile, i actually had plans of grandeur. A redesign was imminent on the horizon, then like all other redesigns before it, I decided I didn’t like it when it was almost done. So back to the drawing board.

Today I present a few good links. I need to figure out how Cameron does his linkage so that I can just put some useful links up when I find them so that these link posts don’t fill up my blog with ways to leave.

No matter, these links are solid.

Blogdesignblog.com offers up the 25 Must books for Web Designers, Amazingly I have read 3 of these and they were great. I guess I need to get to reading the rest. Unfortunately, the library doesn’t carry a lot of them and I am not paying $40 for a 10 minute read book.

Visual-blast.com has 124+ Free Photoshop Actions, even more amazing, I don’t have any of these out of the 40 I already have. I never realized pre-made actions existed but some of these are beyond basic Photoshop usage.

Noupe.com gives us 101 CSS techniques that other designers are using, why aren’t you? It could be you don’t need them, but more than likely you are using some derivative.

Recently my boss Adam has been pushing “Call to Action” as the thing we need to be doing. If you don’t know what a call to action is, wikipedia says it is “an organization that advocates for a variety of causes within the Roman Catholic Church.”

We will not be using that definition, rather we will define it as “An element that deviates in design from its surrounding elements in order to draw attention to a specific instruction”. That specific instruction is usually to click or type something in order to get something.

I can’t argue with the logic of it. It is easier to get people to do things by telling them exactly what to do. A child is more likely to clean his room without being told the benefits of it than a web visitor is to sign-up for a newsletter without knowing why.

So remember you can’t just say “Sign up for my newsletter”, you should say “Sign up for my newsletter and receive great information”. If you are still confused about the call to action, you can check out Attitude Design’s appropriately titled article “Calls to Action - Click Here“. It contains actual examples that are being used across the web of Calls to Action.

DO IT ALREADY!

Logoblog posted their list of 6 things to look for in a Logo Designer.

I would add to this list the ability to sketch.
If a designer can’t sketch out 10-20 designs, then it is highly unlikely they will be able to come up with a quality logo. Very rarely does a logo come about on the first try, so the ability to draw out a good number of ideas will help you more easily find the best one.

This would add another quality to the list, which is patience. If you don’t have patience, then you will have frustration. We all know how hard it is to design when we are preoccupied with designer’s block.

What is quoted below is a post I made on my old blog March 25, 2005 -

While Some would say that Web Typography still sucks. I would say it isn’t a big issue. The average web user notices nothing strange about serif or sans-serif fonts compared to their favorite magazines unless pointed out to them. Although I do highly agree that it is either too complicated or too much work to include the font of your choice in a website.

This is of course is a blessing in disguise as 1,000,000 geocities members would soon prove by using fonts like Bullet Holz or even worse Kefka.

This Article on Using CSS to Embed a font has another danger listed. The font must first be downloaded before the page will be seen. In a world of high-speed internet, this wouldn’t be a problem, sadly we aren’t in that world yet.

It’s just another case of trying to figure out “Is this something we really need or not?”. As a designer I think not, Images and flash can get our messages across with minimal use of a ‘designer’ font. The text on web pages are easy enough to read with what’s available, no reason to complicate matters. As a web surfer, the answer is also no, I don’t want to waste my time deciphering someone’s font choice.

Comfortability breeds clarity.

Its amazing how in almost 3 years, the ability to use your own custom font still hasn’t found a simple remedy and yet is still a feature that isn’t needed. As blogs have become the new Geocities (meaning overpopulated with a lack of design or overuse of a template), it’s better to keep the type simple before readability becomes a huge problem.

Smashing Magazine has done a showcase of RSS Icons. You may recall a post I did about a previous RSS showcase.

Smashing Magazine’s review is a bit more thorough. You will find more examples and more helpful links.

You can still download my RSS Icons Zip file with a PSD and 2 AI files (One CS2 and one for older versions) of the basic icon for faster editing and customize your own RSS icon!