Elements to Avoid in Web Designing - by Colin Stables

As a web designer, you should design your websites to give your visitors the greatest ease of use, the best impression and most important of all a welcoming experience. It doesn’t matter if you had the greatest product in the whole world — if your website is poorly done you won’t be able to sell even one copy of it because visitors will be driven off your website by the lousy design.

When I’m talking about a “good design”, I’m not only talking about a good graphical design. A professional web design will be able to point out that there are many components which contribute to a good website design — accessibility design, interface or layout design, user experience design and of course the most straightforward, which is graphic design.

Hence, I have highlighted some features of the worst web designs I’ve come across. Hopefully, you will be able to compare that against your own site as a checklist and if anything on your site fits the criteria, you should know it’s high time to take serious action!

1) Background music

Unless you are running a site which promotes a band, a CD or anything related to music, I would really advise you to stay away from putting looping background music onto your site. It might sound pleasant to you at first, but imagine if you ran a big site with hundreds of pages and every time a visitor browses to another page on your site, the background music starts playing again. If I were your visitor, I’d just turn off my speakers or leave your site. Moreover, they just add to the visitor’s burden when viewing your site — users on dial up connections will have to wait longer just to view your site as it is meant to be viewed.

2) Extra large/small text size

As I said, there is more to web design than purely graphics — user accessibility is one big part of it too! You should design the text on your site to be legible and reasonably sized to enable your visitors to read it without straining their eyes. No matter how good the content of your website or your sales copy is, if it’s illegible you won’t be selling anything!

3) Popup windows

Popup windows are so blatantly used to display advertisements that in my mind, 90% of popup windows are not worth my attention so I just close them on instinct every time each one manages to pass through my popup blocker (yes, I do have one like many users out there!) and, well, pops up on my screen. Imagine if you had a very important message to convey and you put it in a popup window that gets killed most of the time it appears on a visitor’s screen. Your website loses its function immediately!

In concluding this article, let me remind you that as a webmaster your job is to make sure your website does what it’s meant to do effectively. Don’t let some minor mistakes stop your site from functioning optimally!

eBooksAtoZ.com owned and operated by Colin Stables.

Affiliate Article Marketing - I am not a writer! - Isn’t There An Easier Way?! - by April Mather

<p>April was a "Jane of all Trades, Master of None" for many years. She "fell into" learning how to work online after she was struck with Fibromyalgia and had to give up her sign shop. She dedicates her days to, Website Design, and Building, Graphic Design, Training Videos, Helping Others Online and Much More! You can visit her at: <a href="http://justaprylsworld.com">JustApryl’s World!</a></p>

April was a “Jane of all Trades, Master of None” for many years. She “fell into” learning how to work online after she was struck with Fibromyalgia and had to give up her sign shop. She dedicates her days to, Website Design, and Building, Graphic Design, Training Videos, Helping Others Online and Much More! You can visit her at: JustApryl’s World!

Graphic Design Artist Christopher Wajda Provides Illustration and Graphic Design for Bucks County PA - Details at chriswajdacom - by Christopher Wajda

Bucks County Graphic Design Artist Christopher Wajda’s NorthPoint Studios Provides Illustration, Graphic Design and Fine Art for Private Purchase and Industry. (PRWEB) February 20, 2005 — Christopher Wajda provides Bucks County’s most innovative, creative and affordable Illustration, Communications and Graphic Design. Wajda works in mixed media, traditional and digital artwork for magazines, newspapers, books, the recording industry, private firms and corporations looking to give publications and communications the custom professional look of personalized artwork - from concept to implementation - your project is in our hands and we treat your job as it was our own. Illustration of custom cartoon for company newsletters, safety flyers and similar projects are one of our specialties. We understand that the business world doesn’t often wait for the world of the arts, so you can be assured that your deadline becomes our deadline, and timeliness and expediency are two of our hallmarks. Give us the chance to redefine how you look at commercial and fine art. Christopher Wajda produces some of the most innovative and visually exciting illustration and design at competitive costs features quick turnaround on all our artwork. Chris works in a wide range of mediums ranging from traditional acrylic, watercolors and oil paints to the latest digital multimedia and 2-D programs to offer the widest range of styles available in the freelance art market. Christopher Wajda, born in 1972 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was raised in Bensalem, Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Attended Holy Ghost Preparatory School in Bensalem, Pennsylvania before attending art school in Newtown, Pa and later studying art and design in college in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Wajda began working in illustration in 1994 for the Trenton Times, New Jersey’s largest daily newspaper producing half and three quarter page full color illustrations. Wajda also produced humorous illustration for a wide array of business and organizations, from book illustration to safety and business cartoons. Gradually, developing websites and industrial design grew from the exposure of those first illustrations leading to the opening ofNorthPoint Studios in 2001. Northpoint Studios, Graphic Design and Illustration Studio was opened by Wajda as a vehicle to creating exposure and obtaining new clientele. Wajda has won many awards and competitions for his graphic design, including designing the official seal for Bensalem Township, Bucks County, Pennsylvania in a city wide juried exhibition. During that same time, Wajda’s career path shifted from a primary focus on the industrial and graphic design arts to fine arts, where he started pursuing a path more geared to the exploration of color, form and the integration of design expressed in a variety of painting mediums. Wajda spent 4 years travelling extensively through Europe and the United States studying different artistic techniques and studying the works of the European and modern American masters. Contact Christopher Wajda at 215-208-0888 for additional information.

Graphic Design And Your Business - by Glenn Conroy

<p><p>
You may not have realised it, but we are surrounded by numerous graphic designs every day. Think about when you sat down for breakfast this morning, the box which your cereal came out of had branding on it, the banana you sliced up had a sticker with a logo on and then there’s the newspaper you read, which would have had numerous ad’s for businesses wanting you to buy their product/service. Every business has a product or service to sell, and advertising & brand awareness are key factors in getting your brand out to the world.<p><p>
Graphic design focuses on the presentation of visual communication and works for many different industries and audiences, by using a whole range of mediums to convey your message. For instance magazine ads, product packaging, brochures and websites are all great for reaching a range of audiences.<p><p>
Contrary to belief, graphic design is more than just images, sometimes it’s the text which catches your eye. The placement, size and length of text is all part of Typography. Typography enables the designer to make your text appealing and eye catching, rather than just being a blob of text on a page.<p><p>
Whatever your message is, hiring a graphic design team that takes a personal interest in your business will ensure that you get a message created to grab the attention of your audience. Not only that, but they will make the design work too - there’s no point in having a design that looks great but doesn’t hold the attention of it’s audience.<p><p>
By using a graphic design professional you will be able to explore many more ideas than what you may have already thought of. Make your brand, ad, website, media and more stand out from the crowd and work for you. It is a competitive world out there - do you want to be left behind?

Glenn Conroy is the Creative Director at Jag Creative. Glenn is an award winning designer and art director who has produced numerous highly successful branding and communication projects for his clients.http://www.jagcreative.co.nz/

Graphic Art Studio Marks Twenty Years - by Joel Wilkinson

20 year aniversary in graphic art and illustration field in the Southeastern U.S. region. Greenville, SC (PRWEB) June 8, 2005 –Joel Wilkinson Studio announces its 20 year anniversary and the expansion of art services for the design industry. The studio, which opened in 1985, is introducing a wider range of art solutions. Working with the design and art direction trade, assignments include art for business identity and branding, character design, advertising campaigns, editorial illustration, and art for interior design. Joel Wilkinson Studio, located in downtown Greenville, is a professional graphic art agency focusing on the needs of national, regional and local companies for creative marketing, and editorial illustration. For information call Joel Wilkinson at (864) 235-4483 or visit www.joelwilkinson.com Editor/Writer Reference Direct links to webpages featuring more information about Joel Wilkinson Studio: Artwork examples: Portfolio: http://www.joelwilkinson.com/dems.html News: http://www.joelwilkinson.com/news.htm Clients: http://www.joelwilkinson.com/clients.html Examples of work at client websites: http://www.hiacode.com (click “coding services” “review services” “career opportunities” and “the HIA difference” to see art for the client). http://avenuesatoakland.com (see tree in company logo). Art images are available in digital format.

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