We are pleased to announce that the website we built for musician Mina Chang (minachang.com) has been nominated for Site of the Year at CSS Creme. The site was built entirely in WordPress and was a last-second project, so that makes us extra happy that it’s getting the great responses from the design community.

Oh, and, of course, be sure to support us and cast your vote!

1. Hire a professional web site designer who knows what they are doing and has proven themselves in the field.
2. Make sure the web developer you choose uses web standards compliant code.
3. Listen to suggestions made by your web designer and, when possible, implement them.
4. Trust your web designer.
5. If your site is not popular right away, invest more time and money in advertisement, not redesign.
6. Don’t give up on offline advertising.
7. Become informed.

For details about each one, visit the IQMZ blog!

I can look out my window and find inspiration in the rain, the trees, the grass. I can go to the mall and watch people; looking at their clothes, their movements, the way they present themselves. I can watch a movie, play a game, surf the web, go for a bike ride. Normal everyday activities should be able to bring inspiration – and they do.

What inspires you?

We’ve been listed on several design galleries (such as thebestdesigns.com and cssheaven.com) and even favorited on many, featured on some, and chosen as an “editor’s pick” on w3csites.com (a site that only accepts your design if all of your files validate completely). We were even featured in an article about lighting effects on Smashing Magazine, which was pretty exciting in and of itself.

But none have brought me the sheer joy that this review brought me. It is expertly written and just to see that people really do “get” the design and why it is the way it is, well, that just makes all of the hard work worth it.

The Camp Creative Group are a design agency who live by the moto “Fall in love with your design” and it is their very own website that I have fallen in love with.

To read the review in it’s entirety, visit wecritiquedesigns.com.

1. Disabling Right-Click

Many people are afraid to publish content online, and rightfully so. There are plenty of visitors who will come to your website and steal content. However, disabling the right-click on a mouse, while it may seem like a quick solution, creates usability issues and ultimately does not solve the problem at hand.

If someone wants your content, they will get it. If a website has disabled the right click of a mouse, the user still has many ways they can get that content. If they would like to take an image, they may simply take a screenshot of the page. If they are on a Mac, taking an image is as simple as drag-and-drop. If they really like your textual content that much, they will just retype it by hand.

There are many other things you are preventing when you disable right-clicking on a mouse, and most of them will irritate web site visitors. Many people will right-click a link to open it in a new window or tab, or right click to click on “back” to go back to the previous page. If the usability of your site frustrates your visitors, they won’t be likely to return.

2. Using Images from Google Images Without Finding Out Their Copyright

This goes for using images that come up in any search results. Even in Flickr. Make sure you check the Creative Commons license to ensure that the author allows the image to be used in the way you intend to use it.

If you’ve found an image on Google, always make sure you know what your rights are to the image. In most cases, someone else has licensed that image for their use alone, so taking an image off of their site is infringing upon a license of use and violating copyright. A website does not need to list copyright information for its content to be copyrighted!

Here’s a great article about finding and using photos from Flickr.

3. Copying Someone Else’s Design

This is a great way to cause your business to fail. Someone will find out about it, and you’ll either be asked to change it or may receive a Takedown notice. Of course, there are also some who may just take you straight to court. In many cases, though, designers and other companies will not be too happy that you used their design, and they will probably let others know about it. Expect your name to be dragged through the dirt, and forget about anything you may have established.

If you really like a design, ask your designer to take inspiration from it and use a similar aesthetic. But never, ever ask them to copy it. If you have found out that your designer has copied a design without your knowledge, you should immediately fire them and take action to change your design as soon as possible.

4. Navigation That Doesn’t Make Sense

If your navigation doesn’t make sense or is difficult to decipher, your visitor will leave. People come to your website to get information, and get it fast. If the way your site is designed is slowing them down or making them unable to do that, they will find a competitor’s site that doesn’t. Users are becoming more and more adept at finding their way around the internet, and they don’t have the patience to figure out why and how your site works differently than others.

Make sure your navigation is obvious, and take the time to organize it so that it makes sense and everything is easy to find in an appropriate hierarchy. Your web designer will be able to help you with this (and in many cases, should help you with this) if you have troubles. If you provide the pages that you need to have on your website and describe each page, your web designer should be able to help create a flow chart demonstrating a navigation that makes sense.

Related Articles

• Six Mistakes to Avoid on Your Website
• Signs of A Good Designer
• 10 Reasons to Be Skeptical of Your Web Designer

While there are many more things than this that can be an indication of a bad designer, I’ve tried to stick with things that are easy to recognize by clients, and not so much things that could be considered subjective. Dealing with design and what is good and bad can be very personal, and also relative to specific projects. So we’ll just be discussing objective skills and practices.

1. No Questionnaire or Q&A Process

I’ve spoken about how important this is briefly in other articles, but it really is one of the most important parts of the design process. There are vital questions that a designer must ask before they can begin to create anything that would be remotely successful. Even questions as simple as finding out your target audience and actions you want your visitors to take upon reaching your site. They should also be concerned with your brand and retaining the image you’ve already established. Check out our questionnaire walkthrough for an example of the questions that we ask.

If the designer you are considering does not have a questions and answers period, they are apparently not concerned with giving you relevant and successful results.

2. Awards Before Solutions

A good web designer’s sole purpose is to deliver solutions to their clients: Solving a problem like more sales, better business, or more phone calls. However, many designer’s sites advertise the awards they have won for their designs instead of talking about the solutions they provide to their clients.

While awards and being published are great prestige and a great way to tell if someone is good at making pretty things, pretty doesn’t always mean effective, and unfortunately, in a lot of cases it’s quite the opposite. A lot of designers whose main concern is to design something to win an award do not take the client’s or project’s needs into consideration.

At Camp Creative Group, we do each project completely for our clients and their specific needs. If, after the project is finished, we think it will be award-worthy or should be published, then we submit it. In fact, many of the projects we have submitted have been chosen to be published solely because they were excellent examples of designing for a target audience.

3. Everything in Their Portfolio Looks the Same

I don’t really feel like I’ve ever seen an exception to this rule (however, I am open to suggestions). As a client, you should look for a designer who is diverse in their design. This will mean that they will be better able to design something specific and relevant to your project.

Even if you are looking for a designer for something specific… Say you’re a construction company and you want to work with someone who works only with other construction companies. While the benefits to working with someone who understands your company inside and out are great, be wary if all the designs in their portfolio look the same. You don’t want your site to look like other companies in your genre – you want your site to stand out and be effective. Chances are, if they haven’t swayed yet, they won’t with your project.

4. Uses Templates

Sometimes it’s difficult to tell if someone uses templates, so this one is a little bit difficult to notice for the untrained eye (although it could be a good reason for #3 above). However, if the design just doesn’t look quite right for the content, or if colors look a little awkward, there is probably a good chance they have used a template design. I’ve even seen “designers” who use a template for their own website.

Some companies will be open about the fact that they use a template, they may even let you pick one out. Some, underhandedly, may not tell you at all and just use one instead of designing a site.

To have a truly successful site for your business, you will want to hire someone to design something to meet your company’s needs. Templates will never be able to solve problems because they were designed to solve someone else’s problems. Besides that, do you really want a website that hundreds and thousands of other unsuccessful companies have?

5. Bad Markup

Right click on the site you are on and select “View Source.” If there are lots of table “<td></td><tr></tr>” and font “<font>” tags, their coding is most likely outdated.

There are several reasons to use better markup. One being accessibility, another is that it greatly benefits SEO (however, it does not necessarily mean you will need that alone).

One of the best reasons is that when you separate your content from your design, it makes it so much easier to make changes to the design in the future. Which means that when you want to redesign later (the average website design lasts about 3 years) it will be most cost effective.

6. Your Browser’s Back Button Doesn’t Work While On Their Site

This means they’ve either disabled your back button, opened a new window, or built their website entirely in Flash (without taking necessary actions to make it work correctly). All of these things are done without consideration for usability. The back button exists for a purpose. Users need to be able to use it. If they have no consideration for users of their own website, they most likely won’t have any consideration for your website’s users.

7. You Can’t Figure Out Their Navigation

Or, it takes you a while to figure out their navigation. Navigation should be obvious. Period. There is no point to having it at all if it’s not. Users will leave your site if they can’t figure out how to get to the information that they need. There is no excuse for a designer’s website to be any different. They are trying to sell their service to you, which means you’re their target audience. If they can’t design something for their own target audience, how can you expect them to design something for yours?

8. No Biography, No Picture

The web can be a very impersonal place, but it is becoming very personal. With social media dominating, people want interactions. They want to know more about the company they will be working with and the key team members in that company. They want to see a smiling, friendly face. Most people want to decide who to work with based on the biography and picture they provide. When doing business on the web this is extremely important because normally there is not going to be any other way to invoke trust.

If someone doesn’t provide a biography or picture, I often wonder “what are they hiding.” I also wonder this when someone provides outdated “elementary school pictures” without providing at the very least a rollover change to a current picture. Instantly, I feel like I am unsure if I can trust them.

9. Banner Ads For Other Companies

While this isn’t always the case, most of the times I have stumbled upon a “web design” company’s website that has banner ads throughout it for other companies (or, worse yet, google ads), they have been hacks. Whether it is for something relevant, such as hosting, or something irrelevant. The main purpose of their site should be to sell their services. Ads on their site just show they are trying to get every little penny they can get – which shows a great deal of concern about making money and not delivering solutions.

Of course, if they have a specific hosting company that they recommend, it doesn’t mean they can’t have their affiliate banner where appropriate. However, most of the time this isn’t the case and the banners will be for several companies, and scattered throughout. The worst culprits are the ones that put put a huge horizontal banner ad right beside their own logo.

10. Splash Page

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. The only place where a splash page is appropriate is on a website where you need to confirm your user’s age before they enter, or when they need to select a language. Even having an introductory video or animation is okay, but put it on the home page of your site with supporting content. If your designer doesn’t follow this rule, they are using completely outdated practices and it should be a big flag that they might not be able to give you the best advice and deliver results that will work for you.

Related Articles

• Signs of A Good Designer
• Six Mistakes to Avoid on Your Website
• Four More Mistakes to Avoid on Your Website

The IQMZ.com identity needed to be something intriguing, something different, something that would really set his company apart from other Social Media enthusiasts.

We took our trusty gridded sketchbook and set to work. Sketching idea after idea, searching for the perfect shape, the perfect line.

We came up with quite a few ideas that we were very happy with, and brought them into the computer. Of course, once in the computer, sometimes they don’t work exactly as planned. We ended up with three very solid logo concepts, though, and presented them to Owen and his partner.

They decided on our favorite:

Brooke Hanson

Laura Jansen – Single Girls

Marc Webb

Regina Spektor – Fidelity

Adria Petty

Regina Spektor – Laughing With

Regina Spektor – Us

Michael Coleman

The Matches – Salty Eyes

Jeff Stein

Tom Petty – Don’t Come Around Here No More

It’s Not Over Yet!

Not only will we have other segments to this series such as Stop Motion Animation, and also Animated music videos, but we have also decided to split each one into 2  (or more!) parts so that they aren’t too long and a little easier to digest. If you don’t see an inspirational video on here that you really like, feel free to suggest it for a future post!

Q1. How do you want visitors to describe your business? List as many descriptive words as you can think of.

This question is focused on your customer’s view of your business, how you wish to be perceived. The more descriptive words that you can list here, the better. Since many descriptive words can be slightly subjective in nature, listing more will help the designer to get a better feel for what exactly you mean.

Q2. Describe your target audience. How old are they and what do they do for a living?

You’ll want to provide any information that you know about your target audience. This even includes how adept they are at using a computer. It may include very specific things such as the type of pets they own. This is all relative to your business, but it is a very important question and will have great impact on your design.

Q3. Who is your main competition and what do you do better and/or different than them? Feel free to comment on the design of your competitor’s campaigns.

List your key competitors and their websites. If you do something different or better than them, let us know so that we can focus on that difference. This will be something that really sets you apart from your competition. Think about why customers should choose you over your competitor(s). If relevant, you may comment on their design and things that you feel work or don’t work for it.

Q4. (A) How would you like someone to react when they first see the design? (B) What is the most important thing you want people to do when they see your design?

Part A of this question is all about their feelings when they see your design. You may want to create something surprising, or alarming, or on the other hand you may want something calming.

Part B deals with action. Do you want the person viewing your design to call you? Email? Visit your website? Fill out a contact form? Purchase an item? This should be whatever you think is the most important thing a user should do as soon as they see your design so that we can create a successful call to action.

Q5. What do you think is the most important aspect of your project? What should people notice first?

This is more of what the design should actually focus on. Is there a specific product you are trying to push? Is there a discount you want to offer? Perhaps you are offering a free download on your website, or maybe you want to focus on your blog.

Q6. Do you have official branding guidelines that must be adhered to?

If you have a brand developed and can provide us with guidelines to follow so that your website adheres to what is already established, please provide that information here. Some companies actually have a pamphlet describing brand guidelines that they can provide to designers to ensure that their brand’s integrity remains intact. Clients may provide this in addition to the questionnaire.

Q7. List a few designs that you like and what you like about them. If applicable, list features that you do not like about them as well.

We suggest that those filling out the questionnaire go to a few design galleries to see nice designs and list the ones that they like here. This gives us an idea of design styles and personal tastes of our client, which helps us to create a design that will be something they can live with as well. I find it especially useful to know things that clients don’t like about a specific design so that I can shy away from those practices. It also helps if you can provide reasons as to why you think a certain design style might be applicable to your project.

Q8. Personal Taste: What is your favorite automobile? Favorite musician (or music genre)? How would you describe your personal style and how would you like that reflected in this design?

While appealing to the target audience and getting them to react appropriately is the number one goal of any design, I still think it is very important for every business to incorporate the personal style of its principals into its design. This gives a unique and personal touch, and also enables the design to be loved and last longer internally.

After all, if you aren’t happy with your company’s design, you won’t be able to get behind your product or service 100%, and that will cause failure just as much as failing to communicate to your audience will.

Branding and design is just like fashion. Potential customers will judge your company and credibility based upon how the design looks, just like people judge you based on how you dress. Design is a very important part of any business plan, and if you don’t take it seriously and use an expert, your business and/or personal brand will suffer.

Unfortunately, with design being such an over-saturated profession these days, there are many people who call themselves “professionals” who do not adhere to best-practices and many who don’t know the first thing about design principles and trends. As a result, there are so many people who end up throwing money away with these “professionals” and end up needing a design intervention, just like those on What Not to Wear need a fashion intervention.

While the process Stacy and Clinton puts the fashion criminals through is stressful, it is always worth it. It’s very similar to the process of going through a redesign for a website or brand.

Recognizing There is a Problem and Addressing It

This is normally the most difficult phase. Most people do not even realize that there is a problem with their design. Even the people around them – friends and family – may not let them know because they are being nice. But they also might not know, themselves. It is difficult to remain objective with your own or someone else’s brand that may be more personal to you.

There are also many different attitudes about appearance which parallel with Brand. Some may think, “Why do I need to spend more on the design, the idea should sell itself.” Just like they may think that their own personality should be enough to allow people to form an opinion of them. While a good product idea is a great starting point, it is imperative that you have a good design to sell it, or no one will pay any attention to it.

During this phase on the show, Stacy and Clinton sit down with the culprit and show them a video tape of what they are wearing to make them see what they look like. While this may not always be realistic, it may help to sit down with an expert and discuss problems that you are having, customer reactions, etc. Gathering data is a very good step toward finding out what needs to be addressed. There are many great tools you can implement on troublesome websites to find out who is using your site and how, even the things they are most interested in and what they look at first.

Discussing the “Rules”

Stacy and Clinton are always sure to arm the culprit with rules for when they go out shopping. Just as there are rules that should be followed in fashion, there are rules that should be followed in design and web development.

• Find someone who is an established professional. While you may find an amateur who can design well, they may not have the experience to understand specifics for your brand’s target audience. While your brand may look good, it might not be appropriate for those it is meant to appeal to. An amateur also may not practice good standards.
• Relinquish control to the professional. They know what they are doing, and remember that they are not creating a design that appeals to you, but to your target audience. If there is something that you don’t think will work, instead of offering a solution, tell them the problem and let the professional come up with the solution.
• Keep an open mind. The reason one redesigns is because something is not effective. Remain objective and helpful, and listen to suggestions from the expert.

The Physical Change

On the show, individuals are given $5000 to go out and spend on a new wardrobe for themselves, as long as they agree to turn over their current wardrobe. They then go shopping, and on the second day are joined by Stacy and Clinton for help. This process allows them to tailor their new wardrobe to the individual’s personality and create a new individual “style.”

While you won’t be designing your brand, personally, the designer you choose should be able to tailor the design to the individual product and create an individual “brand”. There are very important questions that need to be asked and answered during the design process on every project, such as product goals, target audience and company background. Without the answers to these questions, a designer cannot possibly create an appropriate design, but with them the designer will be able to create a brand that is consistent and successful.

The Realization of a New, Better Style and the Benefits

Last, at the end of the process, the individuals who participate in What Not to Wear come to a realization. They realize that they are still themselves, only better. They have a new look that represents them and they are more approachable, more credible, more beautiful.

After redesigning a brand or design for the better and fixing the problems that are holding that particular product or service back, one comes to the realization of how important a good design is, and the benefits become obvious. Beauty and style play very important parts in appeal, and therefore also play very important parts in success. With a great design, you’ll have great success.