How can I learn to create beautiful infographics (with connectio This American Infographic Today I listened to Episode 2. It’s funny how current this whole program sounds, everything seeming perfectly natural as “the recession” and it’s effects were mentioned. While listening to the segment on the hacker/phreaker/phishers I wondered about what kind of internet crimes are committed nowadays, so I found some data on that. I also found poet Michael Warr’s description of his schedule as a Jehovah’s Witness very interesting. It was harder to create an infographic for this one than the first one. While doing the research I found this interesting summary of cybercrime cases (at justice.gov). NewsTools Apps | Spectra| msnbc.com Spectra Spectra merges the news spectrum and the color spectrum into an expansive news viewing experience. With comprehensive live news coverage, striking design, complete customization, dynamic browsing, human body interaction and many other unique features, Spectra brings A Fuller Spectrum of News to life in our most immersive extension yet. Select msnbc.com topics fromthe news channel palette. Use your webcamfor human interaction. Apps & Games Podcasts Podcast Gallery Dispatch Feeds RSS Channel Directory Radder Latest headlines Tenn. plane crash devastates Kansas ranching family The hero pilot of the light plane that crashed in Nashville, Tenn., was a prominent Kansas rancher on his way to the nation's largest cattle industry trade show, authorities said Tuesday. 4 killed in Tenn. crash; pilot avoided building Olympic construction leaves Sochi residents in the cold 2013 a record year for exonerations of prisoners Avalanche-choked road into Alaska town to reopen Multimedia Nightly News Video Topics Autos
Content Analysis Heuristics Most website designers are aware that an important part of understanding the background of any website redesign project is performing a content inventory as well as a content analysis. After all, authorities Lou Rosenfeld and Peter Morville include this famous Venn diagram in their classic Information Architecture for the World Wide Web: Clearly, we are supposed to understand the current website content before we begin the process of redefining and reorganizing the website. So we all dutifully go through the website and prepare a content inventory spreadsheet capturing page titles, details of page content, and so on. Each content inventory contains a different set of columns and fields; each has a purpose specific to the needs of the particular site being analyzed. Sarah Rice has developed another example(xls) that’s available as part of the IAInstitute’s tools project. Content Analysis Heuristics Each of these heuristics will be discussed in detail in turn. Collocation Differentiation Currency
40 Online Generators for Web Designers Should Bookmark Online Generators for Web Designers can be a great way to save time in your web design projects. High-quality generators can create graphics or code or even layouts in a matter of seconds or minutes, things that might take an hour or more if done by hand. Online generator are those tools that help us to create those popular “XHTML valid” CSS banners, micro buttons or css website templates in seconds. Advertisement 1. XML /SWF charts are used to create attractive graphs and charts from XML data, Create a source either manually or generate dynamically then pass it to the XML chart’s flash file. 2. The web form generator from Web Form Factory automatically generates he necessary backend code to tie your form to a database. 3. Typetester is used to compare three different type of fonts on screen making your designing job easier , Just specify the specifications and compare them 4. 256 Pixels 5. 80 x 15 brilliant Button Maker 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. pForm pForm is a free HTML form builder.
Marketers Use of Social Media for Business 2012: Infographic Every year, Michael Stelzner and the diligent folks at Social Media Examiner prepare a social media marketing industry report that shows how marketers are using social media to promote their businesses. If you’re doing social media for yourself or for clients, this 42-page report is one that you absolutely need to download and study. You will want to examine all the research and charts and discover some of the ‘not-so-obvious’ findings that are contained in the report. I created an infographic to give you a little glimpse of the actual report. The 2012 Social Media Marketing Industry Report from Social Media Examiner Embed this code to your blog: Over to you: Are you surprised by these key findings? **P.S.
20 Email Design Best Practices and Resources for Beginners Even for experience designers, building email newsletters isn't easy. You receive a lovely looking design, and you crack on with the development. Unfortunately, it just doesn't work as it should in every email clients. Styles don't display, images aren't visible, etc. This is where these twenty best practices come in handy. 1: Keep the Design Simple Emails are not like complex website designs; they should be nicely designed, but somewhat basic. The cleaner the design, the easier it will be to code, and the less chance of any abnormalities happening between various browsers and email clients. 2: Use Tables Email clients live in the past, so all emails must be built using tables for layout. Not Accepted Accepted 3: Have Web Browsers at the Ready Make sure you have as many web browsers as possible available to you. At the very least, use these: Internet Explorer 6Internet Explorer 7Internet Explorer 8Mozilla Firefox 3Apple Safari 3Google Chrome 4: Sign Up for all the Major Email Clients No Alt Tags
Good Contract for Web Designers When you are getting started as a web designer, finding a good contract can be a real obstacle. Now, I am not a lawyer, but here is a contract for web designers that I used to use when I did consulting and web design projects for less than $10,000. It’s a great contract for those small brochure-type websites in the $0-$5,000 range (we used a different contract for engagements over $10,000). 1) it describes the process 2) it puts onus/responsibility on YOUR CLIENT – VERY IMPORTANT 3) it is short 4) it is easy to understand 5) it breaks down gracefully Over 6+ years I found this was all I needed for small web design projects. Feel free to use this contract if you like. Additional Costs: * Copyediting: $***/hour * Additional graphics and HTML: $***/hour * Programming: $***/hour * Significant updates to site and/or database: $***/hour (minimum $*** fee) * Search engine optimization consulting: $***/hour YOUR CLIENT is responsible for the provision of all site content in a timely manner.
How do You Use Twitter? [INFOGRAPHIC] Twitter was never meant to be a social network. In fact it was created as a message service at a private podcast company just over 5 years ago. Today with over 200 million users and serving up over 1.6 billion enquiries a day, Twitter has evolved into a real time social network that spreads news, messages, links and multimedia with energy saving 140 character bursts. It is also maybe the most efficient social network in the top five and that is part of its unique charm. It is simple and doesn’t overcomplicate things….. that is why texting and SMS is still popular even with teenagers in a world of tempting rich multimedia. Twitter is still working out its business model with its only apparent revenue being “sponsored tweets” which are expensive and only make sense for a major brand to implement as part of its marketing plans. Twitter is also maybe the most misunderstood social media platform with people often asking “why would you want to use it?” More Reading: Image by Irish Typepad
Article Of The Future: Scientific Research Meets The Web Scientific journal Cell has undergone a design change to add a dynamic element to their research articles. Taking a page from web page information architecture, Cell has adopted a new layout that makes navigation easier, and forgoes the staid look of traditional research papers. Ars Technica reports: What Cell came up with was a format it has christened “Article of the Future.” Ars Technica: “Cell launches “Article of the Future” format”
The State of Web Design Trends: 2011 Annual Edition 2010 has been an incredibly verdant year for web designers. Mobile has hit the mainstream; Web typography has reached new levels of sophistication; New coding techniques have vastly improved our ability to get creative with design (without compromising stability). All in all, it's been a year that's moved fast, even by the standards of the web, so let's dig in to our first annual post covering the state of web design as 2010 turns to 2011. The Death of the Fold The traditional "fold" (the imaginary line on a screen that designates what content is visible before a viewer needs to scroll) became vague, unimportant, and nearly irrelevant in 2010. Why? We'll be discussing this topic in a lot more detail this month, so subscribe (it's free) to stay tuned :) Mobile Sites Sites have been being designed for mobile scenarios since the inception of mobile devices... but 2010 has seen a huge push towards entire sub-sites that are designed specifically to be viewed on small, handheld screens.