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Posts from the ‘Web Design’ Category

17
Feb

The Brand Media

TheBrandMedia

One of my latest clients is MPM Solutions. They needed a complete implementation of their online business, “The Brand Media”. It is a marketing firm that aims at providing the best possible opportunities for growth for advertisers as well as their viewers.

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22
Jun

PSM Advisors


I was recently approached to make a website for an upcoming Procurement and Outsourcing firm, PSM Advisors. Check out the website and some details of this design in the complete article.
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3
Apr

The Biggest Mistakes of Web Design

Find out what are the most common mistakes that you can make while designing a website, or getting one designed, and how to avoid them. Even though some effects/features might look appealing, they can hurt your Search Engine rankings, and even repel your visitors/customers away!

1. Splash Screens
Try and avoid splash screens like the plague. Seriously. They are just not worth it. Splash screens are the images/pages that you show before your homepage loads. They can have something like “Click here to enter” on them. This is BAD. People like a smooth, streamlined web-experience. Expecting them to read some introduction about you and then click a link to continue reading is like reading a book with one word on each page. People like websites which require minimum effort to traverse. (I am a student of Algorithms :P ) This raises the next point.

2. Too many choices
Basic HTML or Flash based? Dark background or Light background? And in case of large portfolios: Sort by Month, Year or theme? These are questions that you need to answer yourself as a designer. Such choices should not be placed in front of the viewer. Website viewers are fickle-minded. They will get distracted easily. And now with tabbed browsing in all browsers, the attention span has reduced further as multitasking increases. Keep it simple, keep it light. The user wants to see some content, and that should be made as simple and fast as possible.

3. Too much effort required
Users don’t like it when they have to click on the same thing repeatedly to get on with their work. This can become as issue if you are displaying your content in small parts and the user has to click on “Next” again and again. This can be easily seen from the fact that one the most hated features of Windows Vista was the User Account Control which asked the user for permission to proceed with something every other minute. Windows 7 has improved on this vastly.

4. Window Resize or Pop-up windows
Under NO circumstances should a website automatically resize the window. The reason for this is again the point number 3. The user will have to resize his/her window once he/she is done with it. NOT good. Same goes for pop-up windows. They will most probably be blocked by the browser and the user will have to Control-click on the link again. BAD.

5. PDF files
Come on. Even you hate this. Who likes it when you are browsing through a site casually expecting the next page to show, and suddenly the browser hangs up as it starts opening Adobe Acrobat/Reader to open a PDF file you have uploaded directly? No one.
Some possible solutions are to either convert it to text and add directly to the page, or state very clearly (maybe a nice icon next to the link) that you are about to open a PDF document.

6. Ads
Who doesn’t want to earn some money by putting up ads? Everyone does. But the viewer is there for the content that he probably saw an excerpt of on Google. Dont make him search for the content on the website. Put the ads on the side or at a place where it does not compromise on website readability.
Another important point: Do NOT try to make the ads look like the content and trick the user into clicking on it. This will probably piss off the viewer. The user is more valuable to you if he/she returns to the site for another visit.
And yet another thing to avoid: Flashy ads. Also avoid flashy stuff in general as the internet surfer’s mind is tuned to ignore content which blinks, jumps or tries to get attention in any way. Keep it simple and straight forward. Plain text helps in your search engine rankings too.

7. Music and Videos
I like music. You like music. Even your viewers like music. But, background music on websites is very BAD. Especially when it auto-plays. Not everyone is expecting to hear music if they are surfing from the office, or from home at night. Avoid it at all costs. You can share your playlist in form of links to pages which play the song. Or of you want to put the player on that very page, do NOT autoplay. Let the user decide this for themselves.
The story is similar for videos, but not the same. Videos take up bandwidth. They require buffering and a medium to high speed internet connection. Do not put a toll on the user for visiting your site.

8. Speed Reading
If your website is more about the text content, and less about the images then proper alignment and typography is very important. People who like to read long articles on the net are usually good at reading, and they can be made to stick around your website if your website has a good font, good layout and most important of all, good grammer. “Nuthin irritate reader more then bad eenglis”. Write in your native language if you are uncomfortable with English. Target specific people instead of trying to please everyone and then failing miserably.

There are a lot more points which can be stated in this article. Most of them are common-sense. But unfortunately, that isn’t very common. So think about what you are about to design before you actually sit down to design.

Signing off,
The Photoshopper

29
Mar

DesignCranium – My Personal Portfolio


I have finally launched my own website for displaying my web/graphic design portfolio as a freelance designer. “Design Cranium” features some of my best works in both website and graphic design. More details about the website after the jump.

As you can see from the above screenshot, the website features a horizontal JavaScript scroller for some basic info about me and my work. The complete portfolio is on another page which can be found here. There is a lot of dynamic content on the website for displaying my latest blog articles and twitter updates. There is also a provision for “News Flash” style content which can be updated easily without editing the code.

The contact form uses PHP to shoot me a mail whenever a user clicks “send message”.
The testimonials page lists out the comments of people I have worked with on previous projects.

I am now available for freelance design work at very affordable prices! For full details, check out the website at www.designcranium.com

If you have any suggestions and/or comments, please share!

20
Jan

CICR Website

CICR: Creativity and Innovation Cell in Robotics is the robotics society in the Jaypee Institute of Information Technology (Noida, India). I developed this website (complete design + code) as a part of the website for the college’s annual festival – Jive-X. Detailed breakdown of the page, links and more info after the jump. Click the link below to jump to the complete article.

The website was designed under the following conditions in mind:

  • It should work on older browsers like IE4+ etc.
  • Dynamic news content which can be updated easily
  • Simple, fast loading design with minimal images
  • Grunge/rough feel
  • optimized for 1280×800 resolution
Design was completed in Adobe Photoshop. Coding was done in Adobe Dreamweaver.
I have used XHTML, CSS for designing and PHP for the dynamic content.
The code is fully W3C compliant as can be seen from the following screenshot. :)



The website is yet to be uploaded. It will be uploaded under the main festival website at www.jive-x.com
Please do comment!!
8
Jan

CommonWealth Games 2010


A friend of mine is making an “un”official website for the Commonwealth Games 2010 which are to take place in Delhi, India in October 2010. (Oh boy. Not much time left now!) The website aims at providing latest new updates, pics, new developments etc along with facilities such as information about Delhi, Food and beverages, Accomadation etc. in Delhi for tourists and athletes. The website is online at http://www.cwg-delhi.com

Please keep in mind that only the design is complete and uploaded, there is no active content as of now. Please view the complete article for more web-design related aspects of the website.

The website has been made using HTML, CSS, PHP and JavaScript along with JQuery. The PHP handles the dynamic content fetching from the website owner’s blog at http://www.knayam.com. The owner is an active blogger and an avid writer. Do check it out.

The website also provides customized twitter updates using PHP. Scrolling news headlines at the top and latest scrolling pics in the middle complete the page. There is also a custom count-down timer counting down (duh) to the date 3 October. Thats when the games start. They end on 14th October.

One more thing. My Google PageRank just moved from 2 to 3!! YAY!

One more thing. I am launching my own website very soon! Will post with the name and link as soon as I have got the hosting. The website design is ready, and I will be putting that up too within 2-3 posts.

3
Jan

Leap The Divide

So.. A post after a very long time. Sorry for that. No excuses I guess.
I have been busy with web-designing. So my next few posts will be regarding the websites that I made during my holidays.

View the complete article for full-size image and links to the website.

The website is called “Leap The Divide”. It is a non-profit organisation that provides low-cost and high-quality outsourced services while creating a positive development impact. (quoted)

Check it out here or copy and paste “http://www.leapthedivide.com” into your browser window.

23
Jul

Nuclear Waste Website Template Design

A website theme/template with Nuclear Waste based colors. (What does Nuclear Waste look like??) Fully W3C compliant, Valid XHTML and CSS friendly. An easy to code, visually appealing design. The colors provide a nice contrast giving an easy-to-read interface. Large buttons and prominent text makes navigation easy.

Hi all!

Its been a very long time since I last posted. My college started (summer break over) last week and suddenly I was thrown into a mash-up of sweaty bus-rides, non-stop lectures and long practicals.

Anyways, I might do a tutorial for this theme soon. I am also working on a website for the Robotics group CICR (Creativity and Innovation Cell in Robotics) for my college, so that has a naturally higher priority. :)

Here is the full version of the theme:

If you liked this, please do leave a comment. If you didnt like this, please leave a comment. ;)
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