Our friends at junta42.com do more than match us up with prospective clients. In their recent webinar, they taught us a new parlor game with a useful business message. To play, go to iStock, one of many online sources for royalty-free stock images, and type “bacon” into the search bar. Guess how many images you’ll [...]
Category Archives: Design
Make Every Page a Welcome Mat
August 14, 2008Anyone creating Web sites should have long ago abandoned the idea that a home page is the only way visitors enter a site. In this age of search engines, any page can give a visitor the all-important first impression and also do the work of selling, educating or entertaining. Many sites, if they monitor traffic [...]
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Who’s Nibbling at Your Web Site?
August 9, 2008Most Web sites brag about products, services, or programs. Better sites offer proof in the form of success stories or case studies. They may also toss in analytical white papers. These real-world resources give site visitors a reason for feeling confident in whatever is being sold. But, as Jakob Nielsen points out in “Writing Style [...]
Also posted in Audience research and strategic planning Leave a comment
How to Design an Award-Winning Book Cover
July 25, 2008Designing effective book covers, to the frustration of publishers everywhere, is more an art than a science. Fortunately, a few loose guidelines apply. Betsy Kulamer, Vice President of Washington Book Publishers, reports that WBP used the following criteria for selecting the winners of the WBP 2008 Book Design and Effectiveness Awards. To see images of [...]
Posted in Design 2 Comments
Web Site Visitors Want It NOW
May 29, 2008It’s not your imagination. The world is moving faster and people are less patient. I switched from dial-up Internet access to a broadband connection only four years ago, and I’ve already forgotten what it was like to wait for Web pages to load. Now, when pages don’t load instantly, I’m irritated and tempted to move [...]
Also posted in Framing content in print and on the Web, Industry trends 1 Comment
Why They Call It Web Surfing
May 11, 2008Web content managers: Do you wonder whether it makes sense to manicure your splash pages? Choose every word with care? Well, the jury is in. It makes enormous sense. Web design consultants have long advocated brevity. Many words make for glazed-over eyes and short visits. But now a scientifically reliable study “Not Quite the Average: [...]
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Take Me Out of the Ordinary
May 1, 2008Good illustrations sometimes work because they depict not the exact subject being discussed but a related concept that readers are likely to find more familiar. For example, Dan Kohan of Sensical Design writes in his newsletter about a book cover he recently designed for CASE, the Council for Advancement and Support of Education. The topic: [...]
Online Solutions to Photo Overload
April 27, 2008As photo editors know, one secret to quality is quantity. Tell the photographer to take a lot of pictures so you improve the odds of getting exactly the shot you want. Professional photographers have long used FTP sites to upload dozens of images for editors to look at. Photo enthusiasts usually sent their editors e-mails [...]
Also posted in Technologies for publications and Web content Leave a comment
Things to Know Before You Create a Wiki
April 20, 2008If you want to store and organize a large quantity of information for multiple users, like the components of a draft policy guide, a great low-cost way is to set up a wiki. You’ve already used one if you’ve ever accessed Wikipedia. People will tell you that you can download free open source software and [...]
Also posted in Technologies for publications and Web content 2 Comments
More About Telling a Story with Data
April 12, 2008Karen Sheff, MS, a data manager and biostatistician with the Indian Health Service, gave a talk at a recent IHS conference. Her specific topic was measuring diabetes and obesity, but the principles apply whenever you use data to tell a story. The first post about her talk appeared yesterday. Here are some tips for effective [...]
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