Ask A Pro at the 2012 WMC Fest

This year’s WMC Fest will feature an “Ask A Pro” table where students, young designers and freelancers can have their design industry questions answered. The table will feature a number of local creative leaders that have years of experience and insights to share with you. So, bring your portfolios, bring your questions and most importantly – bring your passion!

What: Ask A Pro: Portfolio Review and Industry Insights

Where: Saigon Plaza, 5400 Detroit Ave., Cleveland, Ohio 44102

When: Saturday and Sunday June 9th & 10th

Time: Noon – 2pm. *Only 2 hours each day!*

Subjects covered: Portfolio Reviews, Design Tips, Illustration Instruction, Tips for Getting Hired, Legal/Accounting questions, Freelancer Business Questions, Layout tips, Art Direction,

The Pros

William A. Beachy, President of Go Media Inc.

William is a lifelong illustrator, professionally trained graphic designer and serial entrepreneur. William earned a Bachelor’s of Science in Industrial Design from the Ohio State University. Upon graduation he started Graphic Odysseys, an illustration studio. After two years, he took a job with Cleveland Coin, where he worked as lead designer, webmaster and assistant to the marketing director. In 2000 William re-launched his company with a focus on design services. In 2002 Graphic Odysseys merged with Next Level Multimedia to become Go Media. Over the last 10 years, as president, William has grown Go Media to 13 employees and purchased a warehouse office in Cleveland’s historic Ohio City neighborhood. Their web properties include a successful design blog, a project management system, a design mock-up application and a store of digital products which boasts over 75,000 customers. Go Media’s design clients include American Greetings, Adobe, Progressive, Jim Beam and Ubisoft.

Bill’s areas of expertise: Illustration, Branding, Adobe Illustrator, Print Design, UI/UX Design, Ergonomics, Web Design, Business Strategy, Business Management, Entrepreneurship, New Business Development, Brand Strategy, Social Media Marketing.

Connie Ozan,

Connie is the founder & creative director of Twist Creative Inc.

Todd Saperstein

Todd is the Graphic Design Department Chair, Digital Media Department Chair Virginia Marti College of Art and Design.

[He] is a graduate of the Cleveland Institute of Art with a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree in Illustration. He recently completed his Master of Arts Degree at Full Sail University in the Education Media Design and Technology program, which focused on new media and technology for use in education and business communication. He specialized in virtual learning environments and social networks, both personal and professional.

Charity D’amato

A graduate of Syracuse University with a BA in Communication Design and Art Education, Charity is the founder of Chartreuse and works alongside each and every client to ensure the best experience and design outcome. “I really adore the fact that I get to come to work everyday and be creative.” If she had to pick her favorite typeface is would be Mrs. Eaves and the more glitter in a project the better. Charity is a Cleveland Bridge Builders graduate as well as the 2010 Inside Business Athena Young Professional Award Winner.

Weapons of Mass Creation Fest 3 – Ask A Pro is a post from: GoMediaZine

Go Media is a creative agency based in Cleveland, Ohio. Besides the GoMediaZine, we also work for clients and sell stock artwork and design files on the Arsenal.

Weapons of Mass Creation Fest: J-25

Ladies and gentlemen, Weapons of Mass Creation Fest 3 is less than a month away! This means that the frequency of Fest-related content published here will slowly but surely increase in the next couple weeks. We’ll be introducing the speakers, designers and bands that will be part of this exciting adventure.

Music, music, and more music!

Today, we want to share with you a solid preview of the bands you’ll be able to hear this year. Like last year, Jeff contacted the bands that will be playing to put together a sampler album. It’s available to download for free on Bandcamp! How cool is that? There are 23 tracks of awesome music on this release, ready to punch your bad mood in face and to get you pumped through your next all-nighter on that personal project of yours.

But if you don’t want to download the music, you can also stream it straight from Bandcamp (or here). And if you’re still not happy, we also asked the good peeps at Designers.MX to host a smaller version of the sampler.

We hope you’ll enjoy this fine sounding compilation, and hope to see you all around the stages at WMC Fest!

The music of Weapons of Mass Creation Fest 3 is a post from: GoMediaZine

Go Media is a creative agency based in Cleveland, Ohio. Besides the GoMediaZine, we also work for clients and sell stock artwork and design files on the Arsenal.

We recently had a chance to talk with one of our clients, Textile Republic, about their business and their experience with web design. We thought you might like to read their responses…

Tell us about the history of Textile Republic and how it was started?

The concept came about from Kim’s merchandise development experience. She kept running into a lack of unique and bold fabrics. Most lines had become stale and more corporate in style. Brian recommended a platform for inviting textile designers to join a community to connect the textile designers to the merchandise. The new printing technology took about two years to be developed. It now allows TR to create products on demand, and the client is able to customize the product with a unique pattern and make it their own.

At what point did you decide that good design could help TR?

Since we are a consumer facing business, and the business revolves around design, we needed a website that communicated our commitment to design. We also needed experts to help make the user process very friendly and easy to use. ‘Good design is everything’ – Kim Osborne Milstein.

How did you select your design firm?

We specifically researched design firms located in Cleveland. We randomly came across a website that we really liked and wondered who designed it – that’s how we found Go Media.

What has your experience been working with designers?

You either have it or you don’t. Designers who stay up with trends, understand what’s happening in the marketplace, those are the designers who impress us. A bad design process can be like banging your head against the wall. Good designers can bring new ideas to the table. Go Media is very good at getting up to speed and knowing what we want even when we’re not sure what we want. Understanding the concept, delivering a solution that fits our vision, that’s what makes the process a great one.

How has good design aided you in your business?

We’ve received a lot of great feedback about the website. If a customer has hesitation about purchasing from a start-up like ours, when they come onto our site they can tell immediately that this is a professional company and they like what TR is about. The site doesn’t deter potential customers. It’s the first impression online and we have to have a solid impact.

How did the design or development process shift your goals for TR?

The process didn’t shift our goals, but rather it helped focus our goals and vision.

What are the future plans for TR?

TR is always looking for emerging talent to build on the existing base of talented designers we partner with. We have some great products in the pipeline that we will be adding in the near future. Our goal is to keep a focus on the artists and give credit where credit is due. We’re exploring the idea of rolling out a retail location as well.

Textile Republic interview is a post from: GoMediaZine

Go Media is a creative agency based in Cleveland, Ohio. Besides the GoMediaZine, we also work for clients and sell stock artwork and design files on the Arsenal.

A little bit of background

What’s Old and New?

Old & New is a collaborative design project based on Biblical passages. The project was created and is curated by Jim LePage and Troy Deshano.

— From the Old and New about page

That’s the quickest way to present Old and New. If we read more in details, here’s what we found:

About

Old & New provides a platform for contemporary graphic artists to exhibit works themed on Biblical stories and passages. It also aims to introduce a new online audience to Biblical art, attempting to replace popular, yet sometimes low-quality, contemporary Biblical artwork with the kind of accessible and honorable work that has historically been associated with the Bible.

The website will be a curated collection of single designs by a variety of international illustrators, artists and designers. The collections will be released in an indefinite series of rounds. The goal of these rounds will be to bring new light to well known Biblical passages as well as introducing less familiar (or comfortable) content.

In the Beginning…

Back in early 2010, Jim LePage began a project called Word, where he created at least one design for every book of the Bible. During the project he connected with Troy Deshano, a designer in Michigan who had a similar interest in the Bible and design. An online bromance followed.

When the two met face to face for the first time at  the Cleveland-based grassroots design conference WMC Fest, they quickly realized that they shared an idea for a collaborative design project based on the Bible. After a several months of emails, Old & New was born in late 2011.

The Old and New Project – Anne Ulku – God Creates Man for Woman

Why are we talking about it here?

Old and New is a particular project for us here. Not only does it feature some cool peeps that we know well (we talked about Jim’s Word series on this very blog), it’s also born thanks to Weapons of Mass Creation Fest, the design fest put together by Jeff and the Go Media team. Which is exactly what WMC Fest is all about.

The other cool thing is that they’re not making $$$ from the project, as the proceeds from the sales of the first round of prints go to blood:water mission.

Jim and Troy were pretty nice and took some time to answer in a rather lengthy fashion to our questions, giving us a bunch of insight about the project. Enjoy the interview!

The Old and New project – Lisa Romero – Judah & Tamar

The interview

GoMediaZine: Jim, Troy, could you introduce yourself to the Zine readers as they might not know you?

Jim: I’m an artist/designer currently in St. Paul, MN, but soon to be in Bellingham, WA. The people on the internets who recognize my name probably know me from my Word Bible design project (which I talk more about below).

Troy: After enduring a variety of difficult circumstances through my twenties (cancer, autism, layoffs), I started a blog called Strong Odors, a magazine-style site with original content, including original editorial illustration—something which didn’t really exist at that time—with the hope that sharing brutally honest stories from my own life (and psyche) might offer hope to anyone able to identify in some way. Suffering after all, is one of life’s greatest binding agents.

After a couple years trying to promote myself as an illustrator I found more people familiar with Strong Odors than “Troy DeShano,” so I scrapped any advertising & half the content and the site became more of a portfolio, creative outlet and brand.

The Old and New project – Cassie McDaniel – Jephthah’s Daughter

Can you give me some background on the Old & New project itself, what sparked it and how it works?

Jim: In January 2010 I began a personal design project called Word. During the 2 year project I created designs for each book of the Bible. At the time, I was really getting into some of the collaborative design projects that were happening, specifically Evan Stremke’s Momentus project and Dan Cassaro’s State Mottos Project. As I got into the final 6 months of Word, I decided that once the project was over, I wanted to start a collaborative design project based on passages in the Bible.

I knew Troy via Twitter and we’d emailed a few times, but I finally met him face to face at WMC Fest 2011. We quickly discovered that we shared a similar vision and after a couple months of emailing back and forth about it, Old & New was born.

As far as how it works, basically we connected with 22 awesome artists who were willing to contribute, Troy picked out all the passages and did original write ups for them. We had artists choose their top 5 and then we made the assignments. We post a new design every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, with a few other posts thrown in as well. We’re now nearing the end of our first round of 24 designs.

Troy: I actually have an undergrad degree in Bible/Theology, but hadn’t had much professional use for it (imagine that) in many years. My faith is pretty apparent in my blogging, but Strong Odors isn’t a “christian” blog. So I’m always looking for opportunities to exercise the theological part of my mind. Over the past several years I’ve read through the Jesus Storybook Bible a few times with my kids and absolutely love Jago’s fantastic illustrations. At one point a light bulb went off, and I got a vision to create a classic book of illustrated Bible stories—only written for adults rather than kids.

After meeting Jim at WMC Fest and hearing his idea for a collaborative project, I realized if I tried doing this book myself it  would never happen. So after hemming and hawing and trying (secretly) to keep this idea “mine,” I finally recognized how much better the whole thing would be if Jim just did it anyway. So I told him to take it away, and he graciously offered to still include me to whichever extent I was willing to participate.

So that was the start of what’s turned out to be a fantastic partnership. I really enjoy working with Jim and our strengths complement each other so well it makes the project totally fun.

When Jim suggested that I do the writing for the project is when I really got excited about it. Rewriting these stories concisely enough for web readers has been an enormously fun challenge. Selecting just 24 passages across the entire Bible turned out to be an incredibly difficult process. I had at least three dozen options before I was halfway through Genesis! My goal was to choose passages that communicated the larger narrative of the bible somehow, while still including those weird, unfamiliar, uncomfortable tales that are fundamental to this project (but often ignored in sunday school).

In fact our commitment to Honest over Propriety is one of the core values that we took the time to write down and have really given shape to the project as a whole, including our decision to donate print proceeds to charity.

The Old and New project – Dan Christofferson – Elijah and the Prophets of Baal

Did you give any constraints to the roster of designers?

Troy: We both agreed that having a variety of voices from across all walks of faith was important to this project and to include some lesser known artists with those more popular. We also made a conscious effort to make sure that women designers were well represented.

With the guys we usually got a pretty quick “yes,” but many of the women we asked were too busy. We had to literally work twice as hard to get as many women involved in the project as men.

I mention in the introduction to Michael Cina’s interview how much thought we put into art constraints. I felt pretty strongly that we should limit the color palette the way Evan and Dan did with their projects, but eventually we both realized that trying to keep everything “similar” with a project of this (potential) magnitude would be a huge pain and entirely claustrophobic in the long run.

I’m glad we left it open because it’s really been awesome to see the contributors employ their own styles and artistic interpretations in a way impossible if only a few color options were available.

Jim: Like Troy mentioned, we wanted to get folks with a variety of faith perspectives. That was a really huge thing for me. The last thing I wanted was to have was a project where all the submissions were from church-going artists and designers. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure that still would have been great. It’s just that, and maybe this is just me, there seems to be a common mindset that the Bible is only for churchy or religious people or, even worse, that those types of people somehow “own” the Bible. I didn’t want to perpetuate that mindset because it’s complete bullshit.

Anyone can dig the Bible. There are a ton of amazing stories and characters that the most hardcore atheist or agnostic can enjoy and appreciate without needing to pray a sinner’s prayer. Plus, artists and designers outside the religious/church system are going to be able to see these passages in a fresh, honest and unique way. And that is a perspective that folks within the religious/church system (like me) need, whether we realize it or not.

Sorry for the sermon. It’s something I’m passionate about :)

The Old and New project – Andrew Lyons – Gadite Warriors

Any pieces/contributor you’d like to highlight?

Troy: I’ve loved every single one! Seriously I was hyperventilating with joy the night of our deadline as all the submissions were delivered. I was personally super stoked when Dan Christofferson agreed to participate, and his illustration for Elijah vs. the Prophets of Baal totally exceeded my expectations!

Jim: Yeah, I’ve really loved them all too. Personally, I love the experience of being surprised by art. By that I mean that the artist handles the subject in a way which I never would have thought to myself OR in a way that I would never have expected based on what I know of them and their work. In that sense, the submissions by Scott Allen Hill, Anne Ulku and Jeff Gill really stick out to me from the ones that have been posted so far. But, like I said, all of them have been amazing.

The Old and New project – Lydia Nichols – Nehemiah Confronts God

Did this curation work nurture you as a designer? If yes, how?

Troy: One of the great lessons I took from WMC Fest last summer is the power of collaboration, and that is definitely being realized throughout this project. I’m convinced that if either of us had attempted it on his own Old & New never would have happened. We needed each other to get off the ground and we needed dozens of willing contributors to really build something worthy of its nature.

Jim: Yeah, initially I was pretty resistant to working with Troy on this. Nothing to do with him, but I knew that bringing anyone else in may complicate things and make the process longer. That is exactly what Troy did, but in a way that added a ton more depth to the project. There are so many things he’s added that I would never have been able to do and we ended up having very complementary skill sets. Plus, it’s just been fun to get to know Troy better. He’s an incredibly cool guy.

Troy: This has been a huge nurturing process for me, as I’m pretty self-absorbed and like to do my own things. Much of my frustration in my design work is around doing it all myself, so it’s been exciting to see the difference it makes when you surround yourself with other individuals each bringing something special to the project. I really need to do more of that!

Jim: I don’t know that I’d say the curation part has nurtured me as a designer. The growth area for me in all this is learning how to lead and curate a project that involves a lot of people and deadlines. I’ll be spending a few hours creating my design for the first round, but I’ve spent countless more hours scheduling, communicating, planning, strategizing, etc. As weird as it sounds, all of that work has been really fun. I like the process of creating a well-planned setting where art like this can happen and be seen.

The Old and New project – Michael Cina – John the Baptist Beheaded

What’s coming up next? Like, art wise and for the series itself? A store à la 50 and 50?

Jim: We’ve actually got a store up now. Every design is available as a print on Society6 on the same day it’s posted to our site. One of our core values on the project is “Reaching Out” and we want to use the project as a way to help others so proceeds from first round print sales will be donated to Blood:Water Mission to provide safe drinking water for the village of Lwala, Kenya.

There’s a lot of boring and bland Biblical art out there and I think that’s a shame. No matter what you think about the Bible, you’ve got to admit, it’s weird, violent, beautiful, offensive… anything but boring or bland. Visually, there is so much to draw from. Love, war, ancient symbolism, plus there’s the whole supernatural aspect with things like angels and demons. As a visual artist, what more could you want for inspiration? Long-term, my hope is that we can do multiple rounds of Old & New, where we involve a bunch of great artists who create a bunch of awesome Biblical design and raise a bunch of money for good causes.

Troy: We’ve got high hopes for the future of the project. One idea is to release designs indefinitely in a series of themed rounds—like a round of miracles, one of women’s stories, heroes’ mistakes, visions, etc. Excited about the endless possibilities of this!

Personally I am looking for an illustration agent right now so that I can really concentrate on more appropriate client work over the next year. I’m also putting a lot of focus into my artwork—I do limited edition giclee prints in handmade frames from recycled materials, and this summer I’ll be doing a series of paintings using the same methods as these frames. I’m planning a trip to Chicago and Grand Rapids to find some galleries to be a good home for my illustration prints and paintings.

Any other things you want to mention that I didn’t ask about?

Jim: Neither of us have ever curated a project like this before. Early on and all throughout the project, I’ve connected with people who had led collaborative design projects before and asked them for advice. I know people are busy so I didn’t really expect to hear back, but I ended up getting some great advice and encouragement from Evan Stremke (Momentus), Alex Greindling (Raygun52) and Eric Smith (Live Now). Evan and Eric even ended up as first round contributors (and Alex is on our list to get for a future round). I guess the lessons there are 1) it never hurts to ask and 2) people are usually awesome.

Troy: Another cool aspect to the project is the blog. We’re able to share interviews and processes from our contributors, which is super rad. It also has interesting behind-the-story information like period maps and even some greek/hebrew lessons. In addition to that we’re soliciting guest posts from established authors and experts in biblical fields.

A goodbye note?

Jim: I just want to recognize all the first round artists who have donated their time and their work. This project would not exist without them. Being invited to participate in very first round of a “collaborative Bible design project” is probably not the sexiest sounding thing in the world, so a big thanks to artists who took a chance on us and the project.

Another big thanks to folks who have been spreading the word about Old & New. If you like the project we appreciate any type of buzz or sharing we can get, like this Go Media interview (thanks Simon and Jeff!). In the end, we hope it leads to more awesome Biblical art and more money being raised for good causes.

You can keep up with us on Twitter, Facebook and by subscribing to the RSS feed.

Troy: Please buy prints! I visited Kenya last year and have seen the both the devastation of HIV/AIDS and the life that better access to water can bring. Rad prints for your walls = clean water for Africa. I can’t think of a better win-win than that!

Links recap

• The project’s website: oldandnewproject.com
• The project’s about page
• The project’s blog
• The project’s installments 
• The project contributors

The old and new project is a post from: GoMediaZine

Go Media is a creative agency based in Cleveland, Ohio. Besides the GoMediaZine, we also work for clients and sell stock artwork and design files on the Arsenal.

April 2012? Already?

Yep, it’s already April 2012. And the end of the month with that. You probably noticed that we didn’t get a Flickr pool showcase in March. Which leads me to ask you, the readers, a few questions about the showcases.

• Should we keep the showcases?
  When I see the always positive response we get, I’m tempted to answer yes even before asking. But I’d rather check, you know.
• Should we transform their format/frequency?
  Basically, instead of posting a rather long post every month, should we post a smaller selection every two weeks? Kind of like a visual payroll bonus?

I want these showcases to bring something to you, not just be yet another collection of images. And now, without any further due…

The showcase

Go Media Flickr pool showcase… and it’s already April 2012! is a post from: GoMediaZine

Go Media is a creative agency based in Cleveland, Ohio. Besides the GoMediaZine, we also work for clients and sell stock artwork and design files on the Arsenal.

A quick thanks to Josh Bunts who suggested this post on Go Media’s Facebook page. Technically, he asked for advice on “…document set up and color pallets.” I thought I should expand the post to speak generally about all things Illustrator pre-work.

1. When setting up your document specs, keep the end in mind

When creating a new Illustrator document, the very first thing you’ll be confronted by is the New Document (profile) window that asks you a bunch of questions. The important thing here is that you know what you’re designing for. Are you designing a web page or a poster? Is your design going to be viewed mostly online or in printed form? Once you know the primary way that your design will be used, here are my recommendations:

Name

Duh.

New Document Profile

Adobe has been kind enough to create document spec cheat sheets. Instead of making all the following decisions on your own, you can simply select a common-use profile. But none of these seem ideal to me, so I suggest you set this to “custom.”

Number of Art Boards

If you will need multiple art boards of the same size, go ahead and select how many you’ll need. A common example of this would be a multi-page brochure, or multi-page website design. If you’re planning on laying out anything over 12 pages you might seriously consider switching over to InDesign which is better suited for large documents. If you are setting up a document that will require multiple art boards of different sizes, I wouldn’t worry too much about this here either. You’ll need to set up those art boards once you’re in the document.

Spacing

If you have multiple art boards Adobe wants to know how much space to put between them. Personally, I use lots of space around my art boards to put design elements I’m working with. So, I like at least 300pts (if not more.)

Columns

This is NOT column guides on your art boards, this is simply how Adobe arranges the art boards on your work area. This adjusts automatically based on the number of art boards. I typically leave this alone.

Size

Obviously, this is the size of the art board. Here’s what you need to know. If you’re designing for print and require a bleed, you can either add the bleed dimensions directly to the art board or you can add a bleed dimension, and Illustrator will include the art in the bleed area when it exports. However, if you “Save For Web,” then it will not include that bleed artwork. As with the New Document Profile, Adobe has kindly provided you with a list of common art board sizes.

Width and Height

Obviously, if you’re creating a custom art board size, this is where you put it in.

Units

Before I type in my custom art board size, I like to establish what units I’ll be working in. It’s just much easier for me to think of print dimensions in terms of inches and web dimensions in terms of pixels.

Orientation

The orientation is established by the width and height you enter in. But if you decide to flip it, this is an easy way to swap those dimensions.

Bleed

This is where you’ll enter in how much bleed you’ll need. For most printers this will be .125” (inches) on all four sides. Obviously, if you’re designing for the web you won’t need a bleed.

There is a little double-arrow to open the “Advanced” area, which I recommend.

Color Mode

This is probably one of the most important settings you’ll need to establish for your document. For print you’ll want CMYK. For web you’ll want RGB. If you’re doing something like branding where the design (a logo) will be used on both print and web, I would start with RGB. Of course, if you’re building someone a brand you’re going to need to establish RGB, CMYK and Pantone spot-colors for their company, but that’s another lesson.

Raster Effects

This is the resolution at which Illustrator will render its effects – things like drop shadows. Although technically you shouldn’t really need anything over 72dpi for the web, I always set this to 300dpi. I am just never sure when I might want to use part of a design for print or decide to blow-up a part of the design.

Preview Mode

Most of the time you’ll want to be in the default Illustrator view, but if you’re designing for the web and want to have a more realistic view of how your design will look once rasterized, the Pixel Preview Mode can be useful. There is also an overprint preview mode which, quite frankly, I never use and have a very difficult time imagining a scenario where you might need it, so I’ll skip trying to explain that in this article.

Align New Objects to Pixel Grid

If you’re designing for the web checking this off will force your vectors to align to the pixel grid. This helps keep your vectors pixel-perfect when they rasterize. Though you’ll also notice your objects snapping into locations that are not necessarily where you’re putting them.

2. Set up and save your preferred Workspace

When you’re working in Illustrator there are tons of tool panels (known as Windows) all over your screen. You probably know that you can open, close and move your tool Windows around, but did you know you can also save the way you arrange them? This is critical to my work flow. I know which windows I use most frequently, so I’ve systematically arranged them in just the right order. When you have your work space set up just how you like it click Window/Workspace/Save Workspace.

Then name it something like “Beachy_Print_Workspace.” You may find, as I did, that you’ll want to set up slightly different workspaces depending on the type of project you’re working on. Here is my default workspace set-up.

One item to take note of in my set-up here is that I’ve set up my own color swatch palette and called it Beachy. This is very easy to do. To set up your own custom color swatch palette just edit the normal swatches window until you have all the colors you like then open the drop-down menu and click Save Swatch Library as ASE…

The next time you create a new Illustrator document you will need to open your custom swatch palette by clicking Window/Swatch Libraries/User Defined.

You may also notice my Layers Window, which brings me to my next essential point:

3. Set up and use Layers!

Layers are one of the most important tools for managing your illustrator documents. It took me many years to grow an appreciation for Layers. But just like a computer, the wheel and fire – once you learn how to use them, you won’t imagine living without them. Here is a typical layer stack that I will create while working on a project. Sometimes I’ll get even more specific by setting up layers with names like “Header Art,” “Navigation” or “Footer.” Basically, any design element that I might want to design as a distinct unit can be put on its own layer. Then, as I work, I’m constantly locking and unlocking the layers. This allows me to easily manipulate the elements on the layer I’m working on without disturbing the elements on the other layers. You should really get into the habit of building well organized layers that have clear titles. I promise over your lifetime you will save yourself a lot of aggravation by making this a habit now.

4. Create a template.

You’ll notice that the top layer of my document is labeled “Template.” I always start by designing a template and locking the layer. I actually created tons of templates in advance and now I just open the appropriate template before I start each project. My templates for print projects look something like this: Solid black line for the exterior full-bleed area, then .125” inside of that I make a solid red line for the trimmed art area and finally, .25” inside of that I make a dashed black line for the “live area.”

When I’m working on web designs I typically start with a 960 grid template. You can download one here: 960.gs I normally expand the art board from 1020px wide to 1920px. I do this because I design all my web pages for a monitor that supports 1920px width. Sure, most people will never see the entire width of my designs. But if someone happens to have a monster monitor, I want their viewing experience to be as beautiful as possible. Of course, I keep all the live content within the 960 grid.

5. Link your photos

This little piece of advice doesn’t take place during the set-up, but will occur each time you place an image into your Illustrator file. Any time you place an image into Illustrator, you have two options. You can either embed the image or you can link it. Here is the Place window that will pop up when you go to add an image:

If you don’t check off this “Link” box, then Illustrator assumes you want to embed your image. When you embed an image it means that the photo’s data becomes part of the Illustrator file. When you link your images Illustrator does not embed the photo data. Instead, it just refers back to the photo file that is saved on your hard drive. Here are the reasons I believe linking is the right way to go versus embedding. First, it will keep your illustrator file sizes down. Second, when a photo is linked you can edit the photo outside of Illustrator and it will automatically update the image in Illustrator. Lastly, but most importantly, embedded images are known to corrupt Illustrator files. I’ve lost many Illustrator files because it had difficulty managing my embedded images. The only down side to linked images is that if you move your images on your hard drive, you’ll need to re-link them when you open your Illustrator file. But re-linking files, in my opinion, is a small burden when you consider the advantages.

6. When saving, uncheck “Create PDF Compatible File”

One of the great advantages of Illustrator over raster based software like Photoshop is the ability to keep your file sizes very small.  But for some reason Illustrator, by default, creates a PDF compatible file when you save it. This essentially bloats your file size to something similar to a raster file. While you may want to use this option when saving the final file that you give your client or send to a printer, you don’t need it for day-to-day saving. So long as you’re not done and don’t plan on trying to open the file in some alternative software, uncheck the Create PDF Compatible File option when saving.

So, that’s it – short and sweet. I hope these tips will help you when working in Adobe Illustrator. It’s certainly my favorite program and the more you use it, the more you’ll love it. I promise!

6 Essentials to Setting Up Your Illustrator Documents is a post from: GoMediaZine

Go Media is a creative agency based in Cleveland, Ohio. Besides the GoMediaZine, we also work for clients and sell stock artwork and design files on the Arsenal.

Hello out there!

We here at Go Media are searching for interns both for summer and fall of 2012. The position is for 40 hours per week and you must receive school credit in order to be eligible.  We are looking for designers experienced in branding, print and web design. Additionally, we are also looking for front end developer interns as well. Our internships are unpaid and require that the student will receive school credit, but you will gain real world design experience and will work on cool projects to beef up your work experience. If you are interested in working in a fun environment with awesome people then apply today!

Please send the following to jobs@gomedia.us:

- Cover Letter

- Resume

- Link to your online portfolio

Interns Wanted is a post from: GoMediaZine

Go Media is a creative agency based in Cleveland, Ohio. Besides the GoMediaZine, we also work for clients and sell stock artwork and design files on the Arsenal.

We have been working like mad men/women over the past month and we have made some amazing progress towards our goals for the year. WMC Fest 2012 is just around the corner so keep a lookout for the new site which will be launching in no time at all. The Go Media Arsenal team is busy debuting new products and working on ideas for future releases.

On a sad note, the amazing Adam Wagner will be leaving the Go Media family for an incredible opportunity in San Francisco. Adam will be sorely missed and things will not be the same without him. Arsenal followers, have no fear, because the superwoman, Liz Hunt is now at the helm and she has been an inspiring new leader!

To celebrate Adam’s tenure with Go Media, we had a bowling party at the Corner Alley Bowling Alley in downtown Cleveland. Check out the pictures below to see what it was like:

Below is more of “what we have been up to” here at Go Media:

Jeff Finley

1. Wrapping up the WMC Fest 2012 website
2. Creating sponsorship packages for WMC Fest 2012
3. Started working on the WMC Fest mobile app
4. Did an interview with IGotWeight.com
5. Sent out invites to our WMC Fest Benefit show April 14^th
6. Designed the shirt for Columbus Creative design conference 2012
7. Made lots of headway on MockupEverything app

Weapons of Mass Creation Fest 2011 from Weapons of Mass Creation on Vimeo.

Bill Beachy

1. Worked on redesigning the Go Media proposal template
2. Continuing to write and work on my book
3. Completed staff reviews
4. Dreamed up a marketing plan for a clothing store
5. Worked on a facebook campaign for a client
6. Finalizing my resume for a Yale course I will be taking this summer
7. Working on the legal guide that will be going in the Freelance Survival Kit (set to be released in April)
8. Interviewed front-end developers for an open position we have at Go Media
9. Wrote blog post on my video tutorial AI 103

AI 103 Video Tutorial Overview from Go Media on Vimeo.

Liz Hunt

1. Helping Jeff prep the new Weapons of Mass Creation website (which is coming soon). Get pumped, because it’s going to be another great event this year.
2. While Adam Wagner bowed out, I bowed in to my new role as Digital Product Manager for the Arsenal. I’ve got some tremendous shoes to fill, so thanks for your patience and for sticking around :)
3. Gearing up for the release of MockupEverything.com, A lightweight app to make photorealistic mockups on real objects. Hold on to your hats — and shirts, and books, and album covers — because this is pretty neat.
4. Released 3 new Arsenal products, AI 103 Video Tutorial, Vintage Letterpress Ink Texture Pack and Vintage Poster Borders Texture Pack

Vintage Border effects in Photoshop using Layer Masks from Go Media on Vimeo.

Dave Romsey

1. Working on the WMC Fest 2012 website
2. Installed our new phone systems
3. Worked on plug-ins for client projects as well as CMS

Chris Comella

1. Worked on logo design for a client
2. Created a hoodie design for a client’s staff
3. Shot more videos for the On The Map (OTM) Series

On The Map – trailer from Go Media on Vimeo.

Adam Wagner

1. Cleaned out desk (This makes us at Go Media sad)
2. Continued to work on mockup templates
3. Cleared out my inboxes
4. Converted Proof Lab help videos
5. Wrote article for the GoMediaZine

Proof Lab – Setting up your Account from Go Media on Vimeo.

Adam Law

1. Created identity and t-shirts for an athletic company
2. Promotional materials for a housing development company
3. Designed a poster for WMC Fest 2012
4. Worked on a GoMediaZine post

Elaine Stephenson (our intern)

1. I helped with a t-shirt photo shoot for a client, edited the photos and created templates from them for an online app.
2. Helped with client projects such as business cards and outdoor banners.
3. Continuing to create product templates for the new MockupEverything.com.
4. I’m working on the redesign of my portfolio site using responsive web design principles, with the help of Liz Hunt.
5. Helped create graphics to advertise new products on the Arsenal.

Marissa Mele

1. Worked on video submission of Creative Mornings, along with the amazing videographer, Liz Hunt
2. Updated the Go Media and Arsenal Facebook pages as well as the Go Media Twitter page
3. Assisted in the launch of 3 new Arsenal products, AI 103 Video Tutorial, Vintage Letterpress Ink Texture Pack and Vintage Poster Borders Texture Pack
4. Updated to-do’s and timelines for Arsenal product releases
5. Sent out a mass mailing of Go Guides to past and potential clients
6. Worked on finalizing the Freelance Survival Kit for release in April
7. Migrated all Arsenal products to the Amazon CDN to help with our international downloaders
8. Took pictures of a spread that Go Media was featured in called the “Book of Creation”

Heather Mariano

1. I was able to supply some photo tips to an apparel template shoot that we were working on early in March. We played around with some lighting and worked together to finalize the best images for the project
2. I’ve been working on some proposals for our print design and web services
3. I have also been creating and managing a project timeline for another exciting project with Findaway World
4. Worked on the monthly report template with Bill Beachy
5. On a more personal note, I snuck away to Italy for 10 days this month. My husband and I wandered all over Rome, Siena and Florence with a small trip to a winery in Chianti and a day in London on the way home

Wilson Revehl

1. Putting the final touches on Mockup Everything
2. Testing the Flash application and integrating the payment gateway for upgrading and downgrading account types. It should be launching very soon!

Kim Finley

1. Reconciled the bank account
2. Ran Payroll
3. Ordered checks for the WMC Fest account
4. Proofreading blog posts
5. Arsenal customer service
6. Lunch meeting with Jeff and Bill
7. Scheduled a water meter inspection with the division of water

What’s Go Media Been Up To? is a post from: GoMediaZine

Go Media is a creative agency based in Cleveland, Ohio. Besides the GoMediaZine, we also work for clients and sell stock artwork and design files on the Arsenal.

After spending the latter half of my friday at Go Media helping set up for WMC, and seeing where everything was to take place, I was beyond excited. Later that Friday night the other interns and I went to the Happy Dog for the WMC Fest Mixer. Though the fest had not yet started, the creative co-mingling had taken full swing. While listening to the bands start up and enjoying a drink, I gazed over to a face I recognized from my research on the speakers. I had quickly become a huge fan of his style, and ability to skillfully execute incredible illustrations, and complex elegant designs. Beyond the crew at Go Media, I had yet to network face to face with any other professionals in my field. After taking the leap, I was immediately glad I did. Dan proved to be an incredibly humble, personable, and badass dude. I got to talk to him a while (at least until I decided to let him eat his hot dog) about what he’d be talking about and the creative process in general. Naturally after our introductions, and pre-WMC creative small talk, I was stoked to see Dan speak.

Here’s What Happened:

Dan dived into his talk right away speaking on how where he grew up, and lives influences his work so much. Also stating that Salt Lake City is a crazy place to live and grow up. How most of the far-fetched stories you hear about the area are actually pretty real.

“Most of you all probably know Salt Lake City from shows like Big Love, or Sister Wives…which is all pretty accurate.”

The first work Dan presented us was a series of Tarot Cards themed around SLC folk lore to promote AIGA’s next convention there. Each Tarot Card was meticulously researched and used Dan’s own stylized symbology to tell the story in a centralized piece. As he went through each of them explaining the insane SLC tales behind them, I realized the importance of being a good story teller. This was a core trait in Dan that he’d go on to discuss in his talk. Story telling, coupled with being able to talk about yourself has a creative or brand.

With that Dan started the main focus of his talk which he titled Flyer The Death Guild. Dan related an anecdote about being at a Big Cartel (where he works) meet up and overhearing a conversation in which someone was asking how they can promote their Big Cartel store. That question, and how to hustle your personal brand in general comes up a lot. Another person in the same area responded to them with the advice that they should “flyer the Death Guild”. In which Dan responded “Absolutely…you do that”. Admittedly at the time Dan did not understand that this girl was talking about a goth night club in San Francisco. The Death Guild’s lobby is always littered with flyers, and stickers promoting various DIY brands, so the connection to the advice became apparent. Its a great launch point for anyone to start their own brand or service.

“Once you decide to build a brand for yourself it has to come from an inner passion. The brands that work come from something that you would be doing if you didn’t have to make money. The stores that I see that make it [at] Big Cartel, whether they are selling or promoting; these kids live eat, and breathe, and drink, and sleep their brand. You have to develop this sense that you wear it as a second skin. You are constantly littering pieces of your brand out there, you are flyering every Death Guild you come to.”

This advice struck an immense chord with me, and ever since I’ve been trying to implement it into my life at at least 10% of the level Dan was talking about. It’s a hard thing to do, but I really do believe if you achieve this second skin, it can lead to success. This advice may seem targeted specifically to brands but in truth is easily adaptable to anyone who is running a creative service. Because once your brand is apart of you to such a large extent, it will come up in conversations with people who can push your career to the next level.

Dan then moved on to talking about his ideas on never sleeping. This has less to do with how many hours of sleep you get each night, and more to do with training your mind to always be alert. Alert in the sense that you are ready to receive inspiration from anything possible around you, and that you can store and catalog that inspiration inside your mind.

“Training your mind to hear stories, see visuals, and start to build this organized catalog of images and ideas in your head, that you can start putting together in unique ways. I had a professor when I was younger that just pushed us on that. That said ‘Soak up everything you can. You don’t want to be stuck in a creative rut and be referring to somebody else’s work. Or copy other people’s styles. You want to be better at learning stories from people, and remembering dreams, and studying history, and pulling your inspiration from real world experiences.’”

Dan gave an anecdote about one of his own experiences cataloging inspiration. While at an orchestra concert, Dan observed a child compulsively eating his own hair. The actions of the kid were so shocking and interesting to Dan that he had no choice but to go crazy researching it when he returned home. After discovering a condition known as Pica from his research Dan had obtained enough inspiration for months of work. A great example of how little instances in life can influence you.

The next aspect of advice Dan discussed was the idea of littering the world with your brand. The first way of accomplishing this is in the physical sense. Whether its stickers, or street art, or business cards, its always important to have something accessible to talk about. Dan referenced an artist named Travis Miller as a great example of legally and illegally covering wherever he went with his art. “He made a really good name for himself by just always putting himself out there.” Littering the world with your brand can only go so far in the real world however—its also very important to replicate the same actions online. It’s very easy these days to approach a blog, brand, or company with the work you are doing and try to get noticed. Dan had a great opportunity when he was starting out with his own t-shirt line. Dan at the time had been creating t-shirts with crests based on the stories of scientists and their discoveries. After creating these shirts and putting them online Dan began to email blogs every day with a link, and about his brand. However Dan never heard back from anyone, which is a lot of times the case when people who are busy. However because Dan provided some content for them to use, they eventually got around to his emails. Finally a blog posted about his store and for the next 48 hours Dan sold out of every shirt he had. Going to show persistence pays off.

Speaking up is one of the most important ways to be successful. “You don’t have to be that annoying kid that’s always in people’s face. But you have to be able to talk about your brand enough that when a conversation comes up it feels organic and you can talk about yourself and excite people about your brand.” This how Dan go involved at Big Cartel with his friend who founded it. Dan would have the courage to go around to various art shows and talk to people about whether or not they have their work selling online. And if they didn’t he would inform them about Big Cartel. After Dan said this I immediately thought back to Friday night when I had taken an opportunity to speak with him and how much I felt like it paid of that I did.

Listen to the Talk

As I watched every talk, I kept Garage Band open on my MacBook and recorded everything I could. The quality of the mp3 below may not be the best, but you can get an idea of what it was like from my perspective in the front row. Bootleg version!

Weapons Declassified: Dan Christofferson is a post from: GoMediaZine

Go Media is a creative agency based in Cleveland, Ohio. Besides the GoMediaZine, we also work for clients and sell stock artwork and design files on the Arsenal.

Greetings & Salutations

My name is Wilson Revehl, Co-founder, CTO, and Vice-President of Go Media. When William Beachy and I founded the firm in 2003, merging our respective freelance businesses, I would not have imagined we’d become a publisher. And lord knows I haven’t done much to advance that cause. Jeff Finley, our first principle partner, deserves most of the credit for advancing our readership. The last time I wrote a Zine article was in 2007, about Flash, which has since become irrelevant.

I built my first website in 1996 on Yahoo’s GeoCities wysiwyg. I’ve been immersed in the world of syntax, curly braces and for loops ever since. Today, I can read and write in all the major web programming languages, but still prefer PHP & Javascript. My skill-sets are perpetually in high demand. That’s great, except maybe I’ve been using it as an excuse to put article writing on the back burner. I’m hoping to change all of that. I want to contribute more knowledge to the design community moving forward.

With that said, this piece isn’t my prodigal son homecoming to the Zine. I didn’t carefully consider the topic in any painstaking manner. It simply came up during a recent project when I wanted to point out some things about homepages to the design team. A Google search on this topic produced less-than-satisfactory results. I was scheduled to produce something for the Zine anyway, so there ya have it – practically wrote itself! Usability for the modern web seems like common sense. On the other hand, I could write a brick of a book on the topic. Now that most of what we designers do faces the internet in some fashion and many of our readers haven’t been designing for the web as long as this old dog, it’s only fair we start with the basics.

Usability fundamentals of modern website design

Months after we launched a brand-new site design for our client, they returned. They wanted a new homepage. They were a market-savvy bunch who had tracked visitor click-through and retention. The idea was to alter the layout to rev up visitor engagement. I wholeheartedly endorsed the endeavor.

An organization who has the means and is willing to test differing user experiences will find that it offers constructive insight into their marketplace. However, most small businesses don’t have the budget to refresh their website design or layout whenever they want. That is why it’s crucial to design a thoughtful website user experience the first time.

Here, we’ll cover some usability basics for modern websites. The goal is to show you pragmatic dos & don’ts to ensure you’re taking advantage of best practices and conventions.

The Navigation System

No, we’re not talking about your GPS. But you might glean some perspective from the consumer products all around you. Long before the internet (or GPS) was mainstream, industrial designers had been honing and advancing user interfaces for manual operation. Whether it was the car stereo or the VCR, they recognized that comprehensive controls were pivotal in making their products viable. Things are starting to come full circle (who knew?!) with the advent of touchscreen and the desire to develop & design responsive websites for displays of various device types. The new norm will soon be conforming your site for display on car stereos! Until then, let’s focus on what you need to consider today to create a compelling website navigation system.

Use conventional placement

Why? Humans are creatures of habit. There is a reason you see top-of-the-screen navigation on the majority of websites. It is functional because people read from the top down. It is effective because it communicates a lot across a wide piece of real estate without hogging it up. Logically, you can’t go wrong with a menu at the screen’s top because people are looking for it up there by default.

No design works unless it embodies ideas that are held common by the people for whom the object is intended.

- Adrian Forty

Top Navigation

The National Public Radio site does a superb job in demonstrating the top placement of the main menu in a clean, high contrast enclosure with cozy margins to add weight.

Starbucks pulls off a tasty top menu without the high contrast enclosure like that of npr. The lack of contrast has no negative impact on the usability but rather draws you into the slideshow below.

Conservation International, one of the largest environmental NGOs, has a great example of two-tier (dropdown) navigation. This is the ideal way to expand the reach of a top menu while keeping the interaction requirements down. Sites abundant in content can get visitors to their destination faster without much eye movement.

Skype’s top menu and subsequent overlay is oh so simple. And yet, they’re giving you direct access right out of the gate to their multifaceted offerings. Skype has usability fundamentals down to a science. You’ll see them mentioned again in this article.

Left Navigation

All written languages (on Earth anyway) are read from the top down. The majority are also read left to right. The second most conventional navigation is a vertically stacked column aligned to the left. I don’t speak or read any Asian languages, but I would imagine this approach is the same but aligned right.

The Marussia F1 Racing site does a great job driving traffic to their navigation system racing down the left of the screen. Too much?

Go Media went all-in with a fixed position left navigation on the 2010 site. Although our new one (in the works) might deviate from this, it is still a very accessible approach.

Panodora’s new UX is a cool example of using left navigation when it really counts. Something like a playlist would not have worked in a dropdown nav from the top. Their vertically scrollable list stays easy and unobtrusive no matter the length of items.

Newegg carries an absolutely massive inventory of electronics. They manage to gracefully route customers from left navigation onto a clever multi-column overlay that will get visitors quickly into the right category. This style of expanded navigation is quickly becoming a user friendly convention for complex taxonomies.

Footer Navigation

Use it! No really, really use it!

Why?

Because it is the piece of real estate everyone who makes it to the bottom of the page will see. Most sites do not affix primary navigation to make it available all the time. If you’re ready to explore another part of a site after reading down through it, the shortest distance to that next click could be a friendly, even robust, footer. Often, you can make what would otherwise be secondary or tertiary sections available here. A thoughtful footer strategy can be more potent than third-tier menus or sitemaps.

The White House has a straight forward 6 column footer with an additional base line of ancillary links.

Rackspace has continued to deliver distinct, comprehensive website user experiences for what is typically the very complicated industry of server colocation. The way they lasso their offerings into clever, succinct categories allows them to be listed neatly in the footer.

Commonalities of a good navigation system

You’ll notice a few characteristics emerge when you step back and evaluate the previous examples.

1. Clear & concise menus – Reduce your navigation hierarchy into a small amount of choices or categories. Present sub-categories in a way that feels logical. If it doesn’t make the cut as an important section or sub-section, maybe it can find a home in the footer or fringe menu.
2. Base your color contrast on priorities. The font or background decisions you make will impact where the viewer’s eye travels.
3. Allow room to breathe. Line-heights, padded enclosures and the margins between different elements help make navigation stand out as interactive.
4. Establish styles that show state changes. These are effects like changing text or enclosure colors when a mouse hovers over or an active state to act as a visual reminder of what site section they’re in.

The Content

Focus – Keep it simple

My daughter is 5 months-old, and already, she possesses an intuition into user interfaces. I say this not because I’m merely a boastful father of a genius baby, but to illustrate that it can become instinctual at a very young age. Whether it is a bright, noisy button on one of her (too many) battery-powered toys or an interactive story on her granny’s Nook, she knows when she pushes a button, she gets a reaction.

Upright travelers of the information super highway are a tad more evolved than a baby, but anyone who has worked in our industry for more than a moment knows it ain’t by much. Kidding aside, the internet is a barrage of media & messages all vying for attention. If you’re going to command enough to capture that ever elusive click-through, you need to give your audience a reprieve from the clutter and go as far as making it an instinctual interaction.

Put what is important “above the fold”

In the newspaper industry, editors will place the most important, eye-grabbing content up high on the page – above the fold. This is an effort to grab eyeballs and lure in readers.

The same basic principal applies in website design. I don’t want to get into the more technical above the fold/below the fold subject in this article, but basically the most common display size (dimensions) of your audience on desktops and laptops is currently around 1440px wide by 900px high. This means you have 900px available in the view port before the vertical scrollbar kicks in. The bottom of the immediately visible area is your ‘fold’. Anything below the fold is out of sight, so the viewer will need to engage the scrollbar to see more. Try to keep your most important content and actionable items within that 1440×900 border to gain maximum exposure. If you’re not sure how to design for common browser dimensions, google ‘css grid systems‘ and you’ll find many tools to help you in the process.

That’s been one of my mantras – focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.

-Steve Jobs

Apple is renowned the world over for the innovative industrial design of their products. If you’re reading this, you’ve probably had at least one customer who’s referred to the Apple website when describing a goal. Apple does an impeccable job of filtering things down to the most basic relevance and hiding as much technology as possible behind a spacious, contemporary facade. In the Steve Jobs biography, he’s said to have had an obsession for wanting Apple to ‘focus like a laser‘ on its goals and not get distracted with other markets. You’ll see below their website release of the new iPad, where Apple is visually swaying its visitors to focus like a laser on that one single product.

Adobe sells a wider variety of software products than any other enterprise vendor. This might not be a business subscribing to the aforementioned ‘focus like a laser’ (possibly the crux of what made Mr. Jobs dislike Adobe Flash) but Adobe does a solid job of condensing such a broad range of topics into a top navigation system and above-the-fold slideshow as their centerpiece.

Help your audience focus on your focal points

You may recall the search engine battle for supremacy of the last decade. Everyone knows who prevailed. If you think it was because one had a more advanced algorithm than the other, or it was brand disaffection, you’re fooling yourself. It was simply because it was just that damn simple. Over the years I watched countless layman internet users sign into their Yahoo or Hotmail email, keep one of the two news aggregators as their homepage and still jump right over to Google to do their searching. Was it because they preferred the results better? Nope. Google was such a nice break from the content clutter, it became the De facto search utility where people would go to clear their minds and just search.

Imagine if the information super highway were an actual highway. And all the homepages are billboards asking you to pull off now and explore them. Picture there are thousands of billboards on that one road in every direction everywhere you look all contending for your concentration. And let’s not assume everyone is stuck in rush hour. Traffic moves pretty well along on the internet.

How are you going to be seen in a sea of signage?

How are you going to get your point across succinctly enough to keep the attention of each visitor?

No one knows exactly how many websites there are. Some place it upward of 1 billion. And this number is increasing exponentially. This is terrific news for our industry but has side effects. For the topic at hand, we’re going to see more and more distracted, impatient users. Whether your website’s goal is to sell something or provide useful information, if you don’t give the visitor exactly what they’re looking for in the shortest amount of time possible, they’re leaving just as fast. Like I said before, make it instinctual. Don’t make them think.

I think design covers so much more than the aesthetic. Design is fundamentally more. Design is usability. It is Information Architecture. It is Accessibility. This is all design.

- Mark Boulton

The real estate sector leverages the internet quite well. As it should. It is a perfect fit with the complexities of info, rapid pace of resale and the very visual nature of displaying a listing. Zillow delivers right out of the gate with a homepage that places their two visitor priorities in a perfect triangular focus map. Top down. Left to right.

AVAAZ gives citizens a voice with the tremendous help of a well conceived homepage. Your eyes are drawn from their forceful logo into the slideshow and immediately across to the call-to-action.

Rhymesayers keeps things smooooov with a clear cut, high-contrast headline juxtaposed to a heavy slideshow. The mp3 player draws your eye because it is the only splash of color up top and calls you to action with large familiar controls.

Once again, Skype shows us they understand the archetype. This slideshow is clever in that the call-to-action (CTA) pulls you easily into the location you expect to see its content and then provides that next CTA only a short diagonal distance from the direction your eyes were already headed in. Well played Skype, well played.

Vimeo’s primary ‘Sign up’ CTA is very traditional but they throw a few more in the mix such as the massive ad banner and a reinforced ‘Join’ in the top navigation. We can assume the valuable real estate given to the ad space was to meet a business priority and that they’re reaching the objective of attracting clicks with such a large banner where it is.

This week’s award for ‘focusing like a laser’ goes to Dropbox. I had to illustrate a cause & effect image below so you can see just how concise their homepage is. They give you two options, watch a video and download. The video starts in place without compromising the ever present download button. Can’t get much more focused than this.

Another start-up you’ll see impeccable design focus from is SeatGeek. Ticketmaster must be groaning in their grave being yet-again reminded that there is still room for innovation in event ticket sales. When you can acquire seats faster online than in line at the box office, you’re looking at industry disruptive technology. And that technology here is usability.

Do we really need another online retailer of electronics? Decide thinks we do and shows us that despite market saturation, you can quickly differentiate yourself with a brilliant UX and high-tech interactivity. Look how they take you from search, to result, to a matching CTA with a graceful color palette & layout that accentuates what is most important.

Usability Best Of

This is far from a definitive list of impeccable homepages, there are entire websites & awards devoted to that. I rather wanted to showcase a handful of sites that demonstrate the best of website user experience based on the topics discussed in this article.

Design is a plan for arranging elements in such a way as best to accomplish a particular purpose.

-Charles Eames

As obnoxious as auto sales can sometimes be, Ford steers visitors clear of any usability bumps in the road. They start with an unobtrusive logo and ancillary menu that sits well atop a full screen background. The medium contrast top navigation is frictionless drawing you right into a brilliant photo composition that showcases three different car calls-to-action without a seam between them. They place an additional row of focal points just above the fold. There is a lot to interact with here without feeling like there is.

AudioVroom is an up and coming website to build your own personal radio stations. You’d think this has been done many times before but AudioVroom makes usability so effortless, they’re already working their way up the veritable charts.

The Obama Administration shows us that tasteful design doesn’t need to end at the edge of the private sector. The Whitehouse‘s site employs all the classic and modern usability best-practices.

We should expect nothing less than intelligence from the paragons of spreading original thought. TED Talks brings attention to their wealth of video lectures with straight forward controls and an immediately accessible video gallery. The navigation is busier than I would prefer, but the light background palette helps them get away with it.

Yeah, it’s a shameless plug for my favorite city in America, but Positively Cleveland pulls off an exceptional case in point of form following function.

A grid system should keep you on track but sometimes designs get trapped in those boundaries and designers have a hard time breaking through to make things original. SHFT pulls off a creative use of background imagery to give personality to the brand. The top menu and header text elements seem to float above the various depths taking nothing away from the focal points.

South By Southwest - We love SXSW… the event. But event invitations almost always follow a set of rudimentary basics: Who, what, when, where, why and sometimes how. Here, Austin’s flagship mixed media conference, a widely-acclaimed and expensive affair, appears to have made some missteps on usability. As nice as it looks, the homepage design does little to sell new potential attendees on the event. Any swelling enthusiasm will quickly wane for uninformed visitors, who are forced to click an inordinate amount of times to figure out what this is, who will be there and why they should join in the fun.

Excite’s seemingly antiquated site is anything but exciting. Seriously – did they toss in the towel circa 1995? It looks like it belongs in a time capsule. If their main goal is to have you click on ads and leave their site – congratulations. That’s about all they have succeeded in doing. They do have a high-contrast color scheme. That could work well. However in this case, the accent color is wasted on borders and legends, which only serves to further distract anyone from engaging with the search and content.

The thing that makes CVS successful is convenience. Their website, however, is anything but. Maybe it’s just me, the red “buttons” don’t really feel like click-able buttons. Not only that, the heavy blue calls-to-action that flank the site content are redundant – both for prescription services. Even if pharmacy is a large part of what brings people to the site, that topic can easily be consolidated to free space for other priorities.

Fark‘s design is almost as laughably bad as the outrageous news stories that are its bread-and-butter. It is worth noting, however, that the site has actually improved over the last few years. But it still has quite a ways to go. The first available menu is unimportant to the goal of keeping eyeballs on the page. The next thing that draws your attention are the story excerpts. This would be good, except that the element that has the most weight is the source – not the cleverly-written headlines. What’s more, the poor branding destroys whatever emotional connection the reader could have made with the site’s greater mission.

ICPlaces.com is an online entertainment site for local & regional producers. But you wouldn’t quite know that by looking at it. There is no main menu system. There is nothing on the front page to tell you what the site is or where to start your search. And a video begins blaring before you ever really get your bearings. No one is amused.

Dilbeck is one of the most recognized real estate companies in Los Angeles. But I’m not sold on the website design. Almost every aspect above the fold is a roadblock to property searching – which is the whole reason people visit.

Conclusion

Most designers inherently know what conventional usability looks like. Admittedly, if you cross examine some of my do’s and don’ts, you’ll notice I applaud the use of an element in one place only to later berate it in another. There are countless subtleties in color selection, interactive states, margins and layouts that can make or break the aesthetic. There are nuances behind when and why you should use a certain navigation orientation or where you place a call-to-action. We always recommend designers take a step back before diving into mockups and work through the information architecture and wireframes so you and your client gain an expansive view of the content and layout potential. Predetermining taxonomies, business priorities, design boundaries, and user experience goals can be an arduous process. But planning ahead will ultimately lead to a better user experience resulting in more immersion, visitor retention, conversions, brand recognition and so much more. As a website designer, you possess a great power. Even if it is by way of the meager mouse, you have the power to influence the decisions of others. Those clicks can lead to measurable success for everyone involved. So use your power wisely.

How to design the best website user experience is a post from: GoMediaZine

Go Media is a creative agency based in Cleveland, Ohio. Besides the GoMediaZine, we also work for clients and sell stock artwork and design files on the Arsenal.