50 Beautiful And Creative Portfolio Designs Advertisement Design portfolios come in various forms. Traditionally, they have been print-based and something you would carry to a client pitch or meeting to showcase what you’ve done and how you did it. Today, many designers take advantage of the Internet to publish and showcase their work via their online portfolios. Having your work displayed online removes the geographical restraints that traditional portfolios impose on you. With many portfolios online, it’s often hard to stand out from the sea of competition out there. In this showcase, you’ll find a variety of beautiful, unique and highly creative portfolio designs. You may also want to take a look at the following related articles: Creating A Successful Online Portfolio1031 In this article, we review five pitfalls that commonly plague portfolio design. 50 Beautiful and Creative Portfolios Pikaboo2 This portfolio showcases a creative navigation scheme; use the scroll button on the mouse to navigate up and down the showcase.
Video: Social Media in Plain English | Common Craft - Explanations In Plain English I’m sure you’ve heard the buzz. Social Media may be the next big thing. What’s it all about? Let’s take a visit to Scoopville, a town that’s famous for ice cream. For over 20 years, Big Ice Cream Company has been making high quality ice cream with a big factory in town. The residents of the town were content. The Smiths decided to make pineapple ice cream. Of course, some ice cream was more popular than others and that was okay. It didn’t always come from a factory. When they arrived, however, there seemed to be a problem. Franklin had an idea for his ice cream. At a glance, visitors could tell what his ice cream was all about, and learn from people like them. Soon, a few things became clear. The combination of new technology and new ways to work with customers helped the residents feel like a unique community. Today, everyone has a chance to make their own flavors, thanks to free tools like blogs, podcasts, and video sharing.
Online Advertising And Its Impact On Web Design In recent years, advertising has become a major revenue source for many websites. Not too long ago, online ads were often met with disapproval from visitors, and advertisers were unsure about their value or effectiveness. Today, most visitors have come to expect ads on commercial websites, and advertisers have recognized the potential of various online ad opportunities. Ads have long been a part of print publications, such as magazines and newspapers, and now they essentially have the same role in online periodicals and publications. Although advertising is a concern for website owners and those pushing products or services, it is also has an impact on Web designers, because they have to be able to design and develop websites that can produce ad revenue and still meet the needs of visitors. Ads on The Raw Story seem to be squeezed in wherever possible, to the detriment of the content. Starting with the Basics Why do advertisers pay for ads? What are advertisers paying for? Colors Flow 1. 2.
Meet Ivy Bean - the world's oldest Facebooker aged 102 By Claire Bates Updated: 10:38 GMT, 15 August 2008 Enlarge Ivy shows off her gold medal in Bradford's Over 75s' Olympics Ivy Bean is a great-grandmother with a difference. The former mill worker, who was born in Bradford in 1905, showed an interest in the website, after hearing care workers at her home talk about the phenomenon. Although Mrs Bean currently only has nine Facebook friends, she said she 'loves being online' and is hoping for many more. Her carers have set up a group called 'Oldest person on Facebook' and regularly post news, photos and videos about their most famous resident. The most recent video shows the sprightly centenarian competing in Bradford's Over-75 Olympics. Despite being 27 years older than the entry age she clinched gold in the frisbee throwing event yesterday. The world has changed radically during Ivy's lifetime. At that time telegrams were the fastest way of communicating and a national telephone network was still seven years away.
10 Most Common Misconceptions About User Experience Design Whitney Hess is an independent user experience designer, writer and consultant based in New York City. She authors the blog Pleasure and Pain. When I tell people that I am a user experience designer, I usually get a blank stare. The term “user experience” or UX has been getting a lot of play, but many businesses are confused about what it actually is and how crucial it is to their success. I asked some of the most influential and widely respected practitioners in UX what they consider to be the biggest misperceptions of what we do. User experience design is NOT... 1. ...user interface design It’s not uncommon to confuse “user experience” with “user interface” — after all it’s a big part of what users interact with while experiencing digital products and services. “Interface is a component of user experience, but there's much more,” says Peter Merholz, founding partner and president of Adaptive Path. 2. ...a step in the process It is the process. 3. ...about technology 6. ...expensive
Web 2.0: Making Friends / Web 3.0: Making Money Web 2.0 is really at its core about user interface. Interface technologies such as Flash and AJAX have allowed web pages to be more active and engaging and to really become application-like. By and large, we have used this power to make social applications. Unfortunately while these social applications are entertaining, they are, for the most part, not making us money, and they are not providing any great enhancement to our productivity. In fact many would argue they are robbing us of our productivity. But Web 3.0 is different. Many people will refer to the Web 3.0 as the Semantic Web. Ok, so how does open access to data and new organizations for data lead to making money? It’s simple. Direct value is value that you get from realizing that there is a relationship between two items that your human mind would not have made.
Newspaper websites need to improve their readability Most newspaper websites are doing a bad design job in making their stories readable. Too many are using: small fonts,long off-putting paragraphs,no subheadings,no in-content boxes or pictures, andno in-content links. To explain more, I’ve written a companion post on online readability (design, not writing – and this post was first published here). And here’s an example each of their news stories so you can see the issue: Daily Mail, Express, FT, Guardian, Independent, Mirror, Sun, Telegraph, Times. Main readability design mistakes This table summarises the main ways they are going wrong. Tiny fonts They are all using font sizes that are too small for comfortable reading on copy-heavy pages. But most of the sites use 12 or 13px fonts for body copy. No sub-headings Long paragraphs Nearly half use long paragraphs, serving up great slabs of unappealing copy. Bad readability These three are vying for last place when it comes to readability. Fairly poor readability Getting there Headings explained
BananaSlug - Long Tail Search Engine The 10 Most Common Mistakes Web Designers Make Aug 03 2009 There are plenty of mistakes web designers (especially new ones) make when designing websites. Everything from poor design to simple oversight happen every day. But with a little diligence, they can easily be avoided. Below are ten of the most common mistakes web designers make, along with examples of sites who do things right. 1. “White space” or “negative space”, space that is empty of elements other than your background design, is an incredibly important design element. In addition to white space, don’t try to put too much on a single page. 2. Unless the sites you’re designing are completely static, somehow showcasing new information and content is vital to good design. There are a few ways to approach this. 3. Links are one of the most important parts of a website. There are two things to keep in mind here. 4. Using the correct image format for the different images on your site is vital. GIF format is great for images that use a limited color palette. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
Google Wave Drips With Ambition. A New Communication Platform For A New Web. Yesterday, during the Google I/O keynote, Google’s VP of Engineering, Vic Gundotra, laid out a grand vision for the direction Google sees the web heading towards with the move to the HTML 5 standard. While we’re not there yet, all the major browser players besides Microsoft are aligned and ready for the next phase, which will include such things as the ability to run 3D games and movies in the browser without additional plug-ins. But Google wants to take it one step further with a brand new method of communication for this new era. It’s called Google Wave. Everyone uses email and instant messaging on the web now, but imagine if you could tie those two forms of communication together and add a load of functionality on top of it. Having seen a lengthy demonstration, as ridiculous as it may sound, I have to agree. Features During our demonstration, the Wave team kept reiterating that the product is still basically in its infancy. Maybe you want to add another friend to the wave. A New Web
10 Useful Usability Findings and Guidelines « Smashing Magazine Everyone would agree that usability is an important aspect of Web design. Whether you’re working on a portfolio website, online store or Web app, making your pages easy and enjoyable for your visitors to use is key. Many studies have been done over the years on various aspects of Web and interface design, and the findings are valuable in helping us improve our work. Here are 10 useful usability findings and guidelines that may help you improve the user experience on your websites. 1. A study by UX Matters1 found that the ideal position for labels in forms is above the fields. 2Tumblr3 features a simple and elegant sign-up form that adheres to UX Matter’s recommendation. Positioning labels on the left also poses another problem: do you left-align or right-align the labels? 2. People instinctively notice other people right away when they come into view. Eye-tracking heat map of a baby looking directly at us, from the UsableWorld study4. And now the baby is looking at the content. 3. 4. 5.
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