13 Tips to Designing Websites for Teens In marketing to teenagers, playing safe is one of the easiest ways to fail. Being boring is the other. Long gone are the days when teens flocking to the mall were less than welcome by sales staff worried they would keep paying customers away. With an estimated $200 billion in buying power, and almost half of that spent online, teens are a demographic no longer to be ignored. And in designing websites that cater to teens, it never hurts to review what works and what doesn’t in capturing their interest and dollars. Bright is beautiful If there’s one thing teens absolutely abhor, it’s boredom. Lights, camera, action Slideshows, videos, images. Less text, more interest Since most teens have relatively short attention spans, too much text will send them packing. Keep them engaged Teens like websites that keep them engaged and make them feel a part of a community, so online contests, polls, and quizzes can be a good drawing card. Watch your tone Going mobile Make shopping easy Choice is good Socialize
Geek Builds Real-Life Functioning Wall-E Robot Mike Senna, a computer programmer from Orange County, California, has spent the last two and a half years building a real-life Wall-E robot, from scratch. It moves around, rolls and talks, but he doesn’t collect trash. In 2009, shortly after the movie Wall-E was launched, we featured some photos of cool Wall-E computer case mod, but that feat simply pales in comparison to Mike Senna’s awesome achievement. The robot aficionado spend between 3,200 and 3,800 man hours building his very own version of the adorable Pixar trash-collecting hero. His computer programming skills definitely came in handy, but seeing as there were no Wall-E parts available anywhere on this planet, he had to construct the whole thing from scratch. This isn’t Mike Senna’s first robot, either. via /Film Reddit Stumble
How to find clients outside your network Here's a guest post from a new guest posting freelancer, Gina Blitsten, who is a writer for Smartpress Booklet Printing One of the initial challenges for new freelancers is drumming up business for our fledgling enterprise. As a freelancer myself, I know that my first writing gigs were for friends, family and close acquaintances. That’s only natural for several reasons: We announce our business first to those we know, in hopes they will help us spread the word Personal recommendations are very natural to give and receive We begin to grow our network from the inside out When I began my writing career, I wrote copy for my husband’s technical services website and for my hair stylist’s website. Initially, working with my immediate circle provided a tidy bit of work, accumulating writing experience, new skills and business know-how under my belt. Eventually, I examined my business and discovered that my portfolio bore a striking resemblance to my contact list. Related Posts: No Related Posts
Playful UX Design: Building A Better Game Advertisement I sincerely believe that the user experience community should add game design to its toolbox of competencies. If we’re truly committed to creating satisfying user experiences, then there’s no reason why games, which can satisfy people so richly, should be excluded. Operating successfully in the games domain means learning a new set of competencies, and I don’t want to oversimplify the challenges of designing high-quality game experiences. 1. Trading off the quality of the player experience in favor of some real-world objective is always self-defeating. Schwab MoneyWise’s It’s Your Life game has a noble mission: to convince people to save more money for retirement and other long-term objectives. At each step in Schwab’s It’s Your Life game, the choice that will lead to a winning outcome is pretty obvious. The problem is that the designers were much more interested in hammering home their message than creating an actual game experience. 2. 3. 4. 5. Who are your players? 6. 7.
Turning a House into a Home {creating beauty on a budget}: Crafty with Corks As you have probably seen from my wife's posts, she is very creative with wine corks (you can see some past projects here and here). We have saved them up over the years and she has come up with many interesting things to do with them. I decided I wanted to give it a shot to see if I could also be as crafty with corks. I recently saw you could purchase a kit to make trivets out of wine corks. This seemed a little ridiculous to me, especially when I saw the price of said kit. I figured I may as well give it a shot and trying making a cork trivet using only the supplies we had on hand...making it essentially free. To start, I played around with the placing of the corks until I found a design that I thought looked nice. I then glued a couple corks at a time to each other and clamped the corks while the glue dried. *WARNING* Only use a small amount of Gorilla Glue! Have you ever used Gorilla Glue? The glue worked quite well with the corks, however, and they were extremely secure.
Design Principles Designing For Android: Tips And Techniques Advertisement Android is an attractive platform for developers, but not all designers share our enthusiasm. Making an app look and feel great across hundreds of devices with different combinations of screen size, pixel density and aspect ratio is no mean feat. There are hundreds of Android devices with different screen sizes and resolutions. At Novoda, we build Android software for brands, start-ups and device manufacturers. This article provides a set of practical tips and design considerations for creating Android apps. Pixels Visual design is hugely important in the perceived quality of an app. Scale Nicely Android is a platform of many screen densities. Optimize graphics for different screen densities. It’s not always practical to hand optimize graphic assets for each density. Be State Friendly Touch states provide important confirmation of clicks and selections. Size is important too. Use Fonts Android has two fonts: Droid Sans and Roboto. Use 9-patch Drawables Handle Design Legacy
Caine's Arcade | A cardboard arcade made by a 9-year old boy. The Hardest Part The hardest part is not the code. The hardest part is not the writing. The hardest part is not even the work, itself. Time and time again, I come back to this truth. Am I really good enough to take this on? Too many “ifs” – and then, naturally, the justifications for tabling the project or endeavor begin to crop up. Of course I don’t have time to start this project. What’s sad is that we all know that “next year” is psuedo-speak for “one day,” and “one day” is pseudo-speak for “probably never.” There’s a reason why writers will be the first to tell you that, easily, the most difficult aspect of writing a book is…starting. Why? It’s impossible for a negative comment to be posted on an article that isn’t published. So why do we do this to ourselves? Maybe if we’re honest, we all know the reason why we, from time to time, sit on our hands: putting yourself out there is really, truly scary. The Solution No self-help book is capable of rewriting your emotions. Solution?
JavaScript Events And Responding To The User Blog | screw work let's play I'm a great believer in the power of blogging for almost any project or business as I explain in Secret 6: How to play the fame game in Screw Work, Let's Play. Blogging allows you to play out your idea in public and engage your audience, followers, or potential customers in the process. It's ideal for 'thought leaders' who have something interesting to say about their field and of course it's superb for writers. And I believe every website should include a blog even if it's only an occasionally updated "News and articles" page. But blogging takes time - quite a lot of it to do well. Tumblelogs A tumblelog is a simpler form of blog consisting of a long flowing list of images, videos and short text extracts (such as quotes). I maintain an irregularly updated tumblelog DesignPorn containing images of my favourite contemporary architecture and interior design. Check out Tumblr or Soup.io. Posterous See how Governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, uses it here. Audio blogs and video blogs
Advice for design students A get a lot of emails from students asking for help. I can’t reply to everyone unfortunately, but I spend a fair bit of time publishing blog posts that answer common questions. With 700+ pages on this site, here’s a selection of content I think’s most helpful. Advice for design students On getting hired On self-employment On learning On commercial printing I also pieced together a resources page on the Work for Money, Design for Love website. Photo by Steve Kay, thank you Related posts 49 stunning examples of letterpress printing When it comes to printing, whether business cards, posters, greeting cards or invitations, you will invariably be presented with a multitude of mind-boggling options. You can opt for digital, die cut, thermography, lithography — the possibilities are endless! But what about letterpress printing? For those that don’t already know, letterpress printing is a process of ‘relief’ printing text and image using a ‘type-high bed’ press and movable type, where a reversed and raised surface is inked and then pressed into paper to obtain a positive right-reading image. Following a revival that took place in the 1990’s, led by many design schools introducing the teaching of letterpress, the previously specialist and expensive form of printing has become widely used once again. Wedding invitations were at the forefront of this printing revolution, but today it is not uncommon to see business cards, posters and greeting cards also come in the first-class thick paper stock with letterpress depressions.
Creativity for Life