Check this designer

I just wanted to tell you about a web designer - Staci who is Oceanside resident and the owner of Quirky Bird. You might have known her because she was on the Sun Diego Union Tribune last year. I thought it's cool to push up your small business by emphasizing something unique and different skills from the others. In her case: the first advantage is definitely her cute illustration; the second one is her customer service based on her experience as a web baby goods shop owner. It seems like her customers are women, mother, selling products for babies or mothers - people who are in same situation as Staci is. It's like they understand and support each other through their small businesses. I think the best point about being a web designer is we have a chance to find a niche somehow. The content on the Internet is huge variety covering all over the world. So I think looking for the niche for each of us is same as important as leaning skills to succeed in web design business.

New style and old style

I don't know if someone read my blog besides Karl, but I do. At least I check for the links to see something interesting or new to me. I think these 2 sites are very interesting to see how we can create same idea in new style and old style. At first, see Diesel.com as a model of new technology. It uses Flash content to tell us their products' line up. When I saw this web site in someone's presentation in a Flash class, I thought the idea is really "Flash" - I mean it meant to be delivered only by Flash. BUT I found very cute and antique site which show same idea in "old" HTML skills. Soulwax.com uses 16 flames in one interface to deliver information about a band "Soulwax". It's cute, isn't it? I especially like to just expand and fold each flame again and again. The designer inspired by the band which uses old vintage sound effect machines, then decided to design the website with only old technique, even less CSS, with antique Mac. I like that idea; even though the technique is old, we can create something new and unique.

Blog Topic #10: What's a Favicon?

With my personal interesting, I'll exprience how to create a favicon. A Favicon is a small custom icon that appears next to a URLs in the address bar of a web browser. They also show up in our bookmark, on the tabs in browsers, and as the icon for Internet shortcuts on your desktop. The file size is 16 pixels by 16 pixels and the file format is Windows Icon (.ico) that we upload to the main directory of our website. Except IE, many browsers can use a GIF (including animated ones) or PNG (including full transparency) instead. To create .ico file in Photoshop, we have to download plugin from Telegraphics. But I didn't download because I found an online favicon generator (such a wonderful world!!) If we make a favicon in Photoshop, create it in 64 by 64 pixels and then resize it to 16 by 16 pixels to save the file as .ico file. In a html file which we want to add a favicon, code (link rel="Shortcut Icon" href="/favicon.ico") between head tags and upload .html file and .ico file together in a same folder. That's it!!

HERE is my first favicon!!

A favicon is very convinient in tabbed web browsers and also in bookmarks because of its visibility. It is so fast to find the one from hundreds of bookmarks with the favicon.

Blog Topic #12: Project Research

For the final project, I'm creating a website for online surf shop for Japanese customers. The competitors' website are designed in Japanese, so I'm sorry if you don't understand content.

I researched an online surf store, NAKISURF.COM. The communication objectives are informing their products and making audience to purchase them. It is very obvious with a link button to mail an order and phone number is on the top left of web site in large text. Information is structured in four categories: products description, user's guide (how to shop or FAQ), company profile, and general surf information. Mainly, a vertical menu bar for the first two category is on the left, another menu bar for the other two categories is on the top which goes to sideways. It is very clever to separate menu bars because order guide and products description are directly related to the communication objectives, and company info and general surf info are less important. Especially I realized again with the importance of step by step user's guide: how to decide the size, how to order, how to pay, return and so on, because of insecurity of online shopping.

In terms of web technology, it doesn't have any new techniques such as interactive Flash content , CGI forms, or streaming video, but it utilizes some common tools to convey their information, such as blogs, BSS, and MySpace. I think it is OK to stay in HTML and keeping simple as a professional web store, but in another view, there is a chance to differentiate my website with interactive contents. At least, they should introduce CGI form or PHP to make sure customers don't abandon the shopping in case they don't know what information should they give in a mail.

One thing I especially like about NAKISURF is that contents on the main area change every time I click on the logo (the top left corner) and am able to see all different headlines at once. each headline and photo links to the content main page. I think that is very convenient and attract my attention and I would design this with Flash.

Blog Topic #8: Get into the process

Since I'm attempting to become a web designer to bridge Japanese and American markets, I have researched bilingual web design firms a lot. btrax
, San Francisco based multilingual web production agency, has one of the most clear descriptions about developmental process. They separate the process in three part: pre-production, production, and post-production. The pre-production starts with client survey, as same as we learned in the class, to identify objectives or target audiences, then market and competitors analysis, and building strategic plan. I really think this process decide succeeds of web designers or design companies on each project. Experiencing fails is typical learning pattern of human being, but it is better to learn before we fail. I think clarify all elements and requirements at the beginning of projects, in another word giving a clear vision, is the easiest, fastest and the best way even though dealing with clients on this process is not so easy.

On the other hand, AQ provides unique service - usability test. They collect about 10 potential web users and let them explore free or give them some tasks on a web site. AQ video tapes and observes their activity and then analyzes what is the problem of the web site in terms of the usability. They don't mention in what process do they apply this test, but it must be so effective to utilize the result to plan a new web design.