TEmelie - web design blog

Web design trends for 2008

TEmelie — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 15:56:38 +0000

Like in fashion, we could talk about web design trends for this year, talk about what is eye-catching, what is beautiful for the eye of the beholder.
- The “Retro Style” is definitely a web trend this year and i had so much clients asking for this kind of style for his website design. This classic style, smart used and created will always will delight your visitors. Visit this website and you’ll get my point ( http://www.ernesthemingwaycollection.com ). It is a perfect example that represent this style. Use old paper graphics & suitable fonts and start playing .
- Drawing/Calligraphy/Cartooning: Cartooning Style - is for sure a way to make easily a strong brand for your website and a shocking appearance. So if you want your visitors to remember your website i can tell you it is a good idea to have your own website mascot/character
- Swirls & Flourishes graphics : all websites have it, that obvious but why ? Why flowers & swirls and drips ? Because people were bored by old fashioned websites having just basic graphics and text. They wanted something new, something to attract and seduce them. The human creativity is unlimited so that is only a small step.
- Paper clips & Hand-Written Notes : I can say Hand-Written Notes and Paper clips are a little bit old because i remember in 2005-2006 i was looking for this type of photos to use in my designs and it was trendy to have such design. But it is trendy now. Designers use this style very much and i like it.
- Splatter Ink & Handwritten Fonts & drips : Emo style rite ? This isn’t my favourite but i saw beautiful websites with this type of designs. A lot of people had embraced this trend and it is awesome.
These are, in my opinion, the trends for this year. Use the ideas and don’t forget always to come up with something new

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How to choose a freelancer to work with on your projects

TEmelie — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 07:52:22 +0000

First of all you should take this information very valuable. Why ? That’s simple. I work as a freelancer for about 4 years now and i met a lot of people from all the countries and i have some experience.
Let’s enumerate most important things you should consider before choosing a programmer / designer.
- Portfolio ( not always most important )
- Skills
- Reviews ( if you are connected in a freelance website )
- Hourly rate , or rates per task.
When you first contact a freelancer ask his name & nickname & website / portfolio and google them. You might find very interesting info about him ( complaints maybe from clients ) and we both now you don’t want to waste your time rite ? Most of people don’t do this and i think it is very important.
Second ask for a portfolio but keep in mind that there are out there a lot of good programmers without a portfolio. I know some of them Though a good designer i think will always need a strong portfolio to impress his potential clients.
Few tips when you work with a designer :
- be very polite
- look for prompt response, tight communications
- give him examples of designs you like and explain your ideas as much as you can from the first time
- encourage him even when the first concept isn’t what you are looking for ; don’t say never “I don’t like it, it sucks!” because he will loose interest.
- leave him to be creative ( very important for your project ) ; there are some people asking for a design like xxxx.com with few changes and this is unacceptable. He will know you are an inexperienced person.
- learn few things about your project, google the terms so you’ll know to guide the provider. This is really important unless you want to pay for a project twice.
The worst things you can do :
- pay upfront all the money agreed for the project; the provider’s motivation will be for sure 0 unless he is a very credibile;
- release payment during the project ( if it is held in a escrow account ) ; most providers ask for this , beware !
- start the project without having the smallest idea about programming & design.
- don’t pay freelancer’s work on time as agreed. He could make a bad reputation to your name with google’s help.
- use copyrighted work from a freelancer even if you didn’t paid for his work ( please use Alt+F4 combination if you did this )
These are just few ideas i could come up with.
If you have more ideas, you’re welcome to comment here !

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Make huge money from blogs

TEmelie — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 18:15:04 +0000

I’ve read a post on a well known forum where a guy ask for some money making ideas for “HIS 10 BLOGS”. He make it sound like a thousand of blogs

So … i’m now thinking how to make money from your own 10 blogs ? Neah … i don’t think so
What is the point then ?
Let me tell you … yesterday i saw a guy posting some projects and i wanted to work with him on some and then changed my mind ( this is my lazy week ) but i wanted to check his history on the website. With a single click i was astonished : This guy has over 80 projects like this one posted, paid and rated ” 50 Wordpress Blogs Installed w/Content and Headers Project ” i made a simple calculation and i say wow this guy has like 4,000 of blogs. He spended like 100$ medium per a project so … 8,000$ .
But this is not the only thing …. he has also another like 80 projects ” 50 Articles Needed Various Topics Keyword Based ” and pays 100$ each project so we have another 8,000$ spent, so basically a 16,000$ investment only in blogs.
Ok ok … so now really what’s the idea of this post ?

The idea is this : to succeed you need to have some good money to invest & dedicate your time in your business OR to spend hell of the time so you could spend less money. The big players love to spend time & money to make more and more, so i’m pretty sure that laziness is not their strong part like most of the ppl here trying to find the light … the secret to find the magic fairy world
I’m very courious how you’ll continue after having 4,000 blogs with content and with 16,000$ spent.
Comments are welcomed.

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Make money from web design

TEmelie — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 12:02:00 +0000

Most people will say it a domain very saturated ( it is ) and you will never succeed in this business. I advice people that there is one more place always. How do you start ?

1.First of all you need a web presence so you think on a strong name for your business and a domain name. I advice you present as an individual because when dealing with a company it is obvious the price will go higher. Also find some cheap hosting package for your domain. I suggest hostgator plan because there you can host unlimited domains. If you don’t have enough money for the domain and hosting do some cheap work on forums and freelance website and invest the money. Meanwhile try to do some nice work so you could add to your portfolio. I suggest you also join contest websites and submit your ideas. If you don’t win, don’t worry it is an experience gained and you could use all the designs in your portfolio.

2.Second you need skills my friend, and experience. Join web design communities and forums and see what’s trendy learn some tips and tricks. Join torrent websites like thepiratebay or mininova and search for webdesign tutorials. My biggest disadvantage – I don’t know too much xhtml/css coding so I’m unable to export my designs so I must hire a coder. I suggest you try learning coding your own designs, it is a big plus, you will finish your projects faster and easier.

3.Make strong connections – join the communities over the internet and start making some friends ( php , mysql, flash etc ). Maybe someone will ask for a complete website and you could need their help. Allways the complete websites will be paied more. How much could you earn from a page designed ? I think max. 100$, 200$ BUT if they give you full website you could reach 500$ to 1,000$. This is a very important aspect and you should consider it every time.

4.Learn how to deal with your clients. Speak fluent English as much as you can, be polite always and don’t ask money in advance. Try using escrow service instead. I will tell you more in future posts.

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I make ten of thousand of dollars, why I should share the secret with you ?

TEmelie — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 19:00:59 +0000

Indeed a long break because it seems my latest blog entry was made on 07/04/2008 but you know what? I’m back … yeey . I will try to post here also some good stuff you might be interested in also. I also start to get back to my projects to make some cash of course. This week I was mostly online on forums, blogs and other interesting websites reading about goals, ways to earn good money, affiliate marketing stuff, clickbank & cj , etc etc. One guy took my breath away with his target for one month ( 400k US dollars ) and other with 150k US dollars checks straight to his bank account and I’m finding myself a tiny little bug next to these guys. BUT I can’t shut up and i will tell you my opinion on this.

Our planet’s population hit 6.5 to 7 billion and let’s say there are out there few hundred successful internet marketers in the whole world making ten of thousand of dollars per month … maybe per week. Few of them are well-known and share their experience with us and earn extra money from it ( they’re not the top players in the industry ), most of them are unknown who wish to remain anonymous. Not anyone can earn money like them that’s for sure;

So what’s the secret, how to become a milionare from internet ? You better play the lottery and I’m sure you will have greater chance then try the internet. First of all you must be a part of it, to live through internet to understand all the changes and predict what could happened in months, years; you must have also good knowledge of programming languages mostly used be very intelligent and you must have that brainstorm idea which is the most important ( sex(dot)com owner isn’t in this list ). We all have great ideas but this isn’t enough, you need also some money to invest don’t forget that. Most of the well-known internet marketers started to make some money 10k+ per month after years of hard work having the qualities I mentioned before and they still work from 9 to 9.

Ok … maybe I’m not supposed to be the next internet milionare but I want to make a decent living from it. That, my friend isn’t impossible and I might give some tips to start. I came across this website today www.homeworking.com, they don’t sell anything but they might be very usefull to you. Like them I also recommend you to join www.scriptlance.com , www.elance.com , www.getafreelancer.com ( from this one I make my decent living ) or to sign up with www.Hotjobs.com , www.jobserve.com , www.monster.com . Take one at the time and concentrate on it and try to understand the system. This is very important. You can take first time small jobs ( writing and rewriting articles, forum&blog posting, etc ) but I strongly recommend you to check all areas and look what suits you the best. This will be a GREAT start and after this you could make an online resume with your experience and earn more and more clients. If you succeeded … congratulation and be ready for the next step, taking some big projects. Anyone without any internet experience could do SEO work in 1 week if he is well documented and this work is paied very good. If you are an excellent writer and have some SEO knowledge then you can make more than 1k per month guarantee. You still want to know more about what you can do, then you can join this website www.lynda.com and see all the subjects you might be interested in. If you can’t afford to subscribe there find some free valuable information on torrent sites like www.mininova.com or www.thepiratebay.org. If you reach this step I think you kinda learn how to fly … you can decide what is best for you. If you fully exploit the market you can make an easy 2-3k per month working from your computer let’s say 6-7 hrs per day. I work like 2 hrs a day and I make my 1k very easy. I don’t have too much time because I’m student.

So, in conclusion stop searching the paradise and the secret of being rich because you will be very disappointed. After years of experience you will see your potential and most importand, if working on your computer suits you. There are plenty of other jobs out there.

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Web colors-useful things to know

TEmelie — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 21:11:02 +0000

If you’re using CSS layouts undoubtately you’ve noticed a funny thing happening when you define colors. Instead of the six chatacter codes that you use normally (#3cc99ff) you see just three characters (#c9f). This is called color shorthand and takes advantage of the fact that the browser-safe Web palette uses triplets that are always displayed as doublets. What this means is that the three pairs of characters from base-16 are doubled, so in order for you to write color in a shorthand fashion you remove the characters that are duplicated. For example white transforms from #ffffff into #fff, black from #000000 ends up as #000 and so on.
This characteristic is extremely useful when trying to create a color triad. All you have to do is to simply rotate the characters that make up the color codes. Let’s take for instance orange, purple and sea-green. They are written as #fc0, #c0f and #0fc. See what I mean? In order for you to discover new color triads just pick a primary color and then rotate the characters in such a way that they are in completely different positions in every one of the three bits of color code. It’s as simple as that.

The question that has risen lately regarding the importance of using a browser safe palette is completely justified. Keep in mind one thing though: the web safe color palette was created years back when most monitors only supported 256 colors. What this translates into is that if you use a color that’s not browser safe it could end up looking very ugly on the monitor it’s displayed on.
If you don’t know who is viewing your site, you won’t know they will look for the people reading them so eliminate the risks and use browser safe colors.

The only thing you need to remember is that browser safe or not, ultimately it’s your choice.

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Accurate web navigation

TEmelie — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 21:03:09 +0000

The importance of good navigation
Try to imagine that your Web page is like a city were people come to visit different locations. Like in real life accurate navigation is the key to getting people to where they want to go. If the browsers can’t navigate easily through your site, they will most likely leave in a hurry. But before you start putting g up “road signs”, there are a couple of interesting things you should check out first.

The first thing you should sort put is the architecture of your site, also known as taxonomy. In order to do a good job you should have a clear picture in your head about the way your site should be structured like.
Here are a couple of structural elements find on corporate or personal Web sites:
For corporate or business pages:
- Products – it’s important that people can get a good idea about what you are all

- About – contains specific information about your company
- Investor relations - contains in information existent or future investors may find
interesting;
- Help and support – provides help for your customers

For personal pages:
- About me – an introduction about yourself that you think might interest
people;
- Favorite links – links that you like or consider interesting
- Friends and family – this one I think it’s self-explanatory

After you’ve decided how your site will be structured like you can move on to the next step which is organizing it. A good way to achieve great results at this particular point is by thinking like your customers. Try putting yourself in their shoes: imagine how they would like to navigate through your page and what information they would expect to find in different locations. Flow charts and storyboards can help you create a great map through which you encourage visitors to use the site in a particular way.

OK! Now it’s time to get busy. Your navigation design is the most important aspect of your Web page. What’s the point of having a great page filled with interesting information if nobody can navigate through it? In order for you to avoid that here are a couple of things worth knowing:
Access - In order to keep it simple and friendly don’t use Flash, Java or JavaScript as your only navigation method.
Meaning – Keep things simple and serious. Inside jokes aren’t the way to go. If
someone visits your Web page for the first time they should know immediately where a specific link will take so keep the links simple and explicit.
Understanding – if you want to use pictures for your navigation, make sure that there is some text associated to them.
Presence – it’s no use having great navigation if it’s not present on every single page of your Web site. The only changes you should make in the way you navigate are those that are used to indicate the page’s position in relation with hierarchy of the site.

Finally, after you’ve designed your navigation start using it. If you have a change of heart in the middle of the construction, don’t be stupid and start modifying everything. Finish the job and then wait for a week or two. After this if you still want to make the changes go ahead but make sure that they fit the overall taxonomy of the site and your original idea.

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Aspects that make a great a web page

TEmelie — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 20:55:29 +0000

The Web page itself
The title is the first thing anyone read after opening your page therefore it should well thought so that it expresses in the best way what your page is all about. Also it should be descriptive because this it will appear in someone’s list of bookmarks or at the top of the page.
No use having a great title if the content is rubbish. The main reason people visit Web sites is information so if your page doesn’t present them with useful up-to-date news they won’t bother to visit it again. Make the content interesting for more than you and your friends.
So far so good but if you go over the top and try jam to much stuff on your page it will become to long forcing viewers to scroll down a lot which as you well know, is annoying as hell. Keep in mind the page length. Try to keep it into reasonable limits.

Images and pictures

Images are the heart and soul of a Web page. But in order for people to be able to watch them, try and keep the image size smaller than 12Kb. If you must go bigger use thumbnails. In other words present your viewers with a smaller version of the picture that will act as link for the real-size picture that’s placed on a different page. One word of advice regarding the thumbnails: resize them using a paint program and not the browser.
One common problem related to images are the image links. Mae sure that they are clearly marked as links and also image maps are not a bad idea.
The quality of the images you use should be dictated by their purpose on the page. If they have a specific use, such as emphasizing a certain concept described in the content, then the quality should be high, otherwise don’t worry too much about it.
One more thing: make sure that your image tags contain all the necessary HTML.

Links
They are a big help but also a big annoyance as because most of the times people don’t know where they are going next. Instead of using the same old “click here” go with text links that offer some sort of information about the location that is being linked. Also try describing your links because if a page is good enough to be linked it probably deserves an explanation too.
The overall quality of your links is very important. Use validators to help with checking if your links work or not.

General issues

The best way to know what your readers want from your page is by asking them directly and see what they respond. Inserting a feedback form is a great way to keep in touch with the people that view your page. If you try to hide your identity you will lose credibility and chances are that the spammers will find you anyway.
The date of the last update is equally important because it helps readers to determine if they can find any new information on the site since their last visit without them having to scan the homepage. This small detail will save them time and earn you respect.
We’ve been talking about all the things you should do in order to make your page better but all of this is useless unless you use correct HTML. The standard tags aren’t mandatory but before you use browser specific tags make the adjustments needed because of the differences found on different platforms.
Last but not least correct grammar and spelling is a must. Correct any mistakes you make in this department because small things like a typos can destroy the credibility your page.

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How much time do you spend on your computer ?

TEmelie — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 06:27:10 +0000

All the time we talk about how to make 50$ per day … when we find out the secret we want to find the 100$ secret and this could continue with no end. But anyone out there think how much time requires to make the money ? I keep reading the forums and seems people don’t care how much time you must work from the computer to make that cash. My doctor said to me once that it isn’t recommended to stay more then 2 hrs in front of the computer without a break ( 20-30 minutes ). I posted this article because i find myself in a dificult period and i realised i spend alot of my time on the PC ( 10 hrs + ). The bad part is that i end-up sleeping during the day and start working during nights ( happend this week ) and i’m not very happy with this situation.
I’m so courious how much time spends a money seeker using his PC. I bet over 15 hrs sometimes and maybe more. Is all this effort really worth it? Will you end up spending the money on doctors after you find out the 200$ per day secret ?
Take this as a friendly warning and think on it. I personally make let’s say 2,000$ per month easy working in photoshop ( creating banners , web designs, etc ) BUT i have also some programmers working for me and this helps alot. This takes me 4-5 hrs per day. I started to spend more time on the computer since i decided to concentrate on some personal projects and now i realise that it was a mistake.
Most affected by this fact are the young users because they aren’t aware of the consequence. Yesterday i saw a post saying ” I hire indians for labour hard work “. I don’t comment on this post , you think on it. Don’t be in such a rush to make cash, think twice, see if it fits you well and then start.
You will ask me … ” how the hell a guy made this week 10,000$ or 100,000$ on internet ? “. Well you see there are some very smart people out there (10-15%) and they are very skilled in taking advantage of every single detail. They are profs! BUT i’m 85% sure that you are not one of them
Let’s wrap this up and end up with an conclusion : how much time do you spend on your computer and how much money you make … does it worth ?
I will be more than happy to see your comments here.

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Color harmony

TEmelie — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 05:15:35 +0000

Before you start combining colors and mixing them togheter you should look up a few things about the color theory. Once you get this out your way the only limit is your imagination. However don’t get carried away as there are a couple important aspects you should bare in mind. Here are some tips on how to get you started.
First of all use the color wheel. The color wheel is simple yet brilliant concept which sits color one next to the other in order of hue and saturation. Use it! Naturally, some colors look great together whilst others form an eye-scratching combination. In order to avoid these mix-ups I’m going to introduce you to a number of concepts.

Use colors that are located next to each other in the color wheel better known as analogous colors. They can be used to create relaxing color schemes which are relaxing and pleasing to the eye. By manipulating the hues and the saturation you can achieve incredible results using only the same two or three colors. Try starting with combination such as green, yellow-green, yellow or red, red-orange and orange.

As we all know every single thing or concept has an opposite. The same is true for color. There are called complementary colors and are situated on different end of the color wheel diameter. If you want to catch someone’s eye this is the way to go. Creating great contrast, these combinations are brighter and more vivid. You can start by using red and green or blue and orange and then take it from there.

If you still found you find yourself faced with a conundrum then turn to nature. As is the case with most things, Mother Nature holds the patent. The natural colors that surround us are usually harmonious and pleasing, even though they don’t always respect the color theory. For more information look up Judy Litt’s library of color combinations for the Web.

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