A Blog.

If you’re not sure you have all the rights to your website images, stock photo companies have vastly improved their capability to let you know if you don’t. They’ll let you know you are in violation in the form of a letter…and a potentially hefty bill for several years of back usage.

To protect their legitimate interests, many stock photo houses now use sophisticated image recognition software that allows them to identify un-purchased photos, or images with expired licenses. No matter how obscure the photo is on your site, and even if it has been altered, the software can spot it. And the site owner will be billed.

The site owner is responsible even if a third party company provided the photo such as photos included in one of those bargain-basement priced website templates. The “I didn’t know” defense is no defense at all.

So if you’re not sure, check it out now, especially those photos that have been up for years, racking up potential fines. Be in the know. If you find you do have an unlicensed image on your site, you have two options.

1. Contact the stock photo company and negotiate payment for past and future usage, or
2. Immediately remove the image(s) everywhere it appears in your website – even archived e–newsletters, blogs and other website pages. Once the image recognition software has trolled your site, it may be too late to remove them to avoid fees.

What’s our advice going forward?

• Avoid using rights managed photos whenever possible, unless you find “just the one” and are willing to pay and keep on file proof of payment, are willing to monitor license expirations so they stay current, and willing to assume the risk factor. You can’t assume the stock image company will notify you of expiration, and lack of notification by them is not a defense against unlicensed usage.
• Take the safe route with royalty free stock images that never expire. You could save yourself a lot of headache….and thousands of dollars.

A good website design company with integrity stays on top of design trends to create websites that are modern not just in visual appeal, but also in functionality and programming. This is all done to extend a website’s shelf life in order to maximize a client’s investment.

Of course, every business and their project is different and will need a custom solution, so the highlighted trends below are general ideas to keep in mind.

What’s In for 2011 and going forward:

• Image sliders (or any kind of rotating image on the home page) – For the client that wants to deliver multiple messages or showcase several products within limited home page real estate, this solution works wonders. Technically, it’s relatively affordable, fast and easy to implement.
• Clean and Simple – The trend is even more “clean and simple” in design than has been seen in the past.
• Hard edges and corners – Simple squares and rectangles to shape blocks of copy or images are trend forward in 2011, although, clean, rounded corners are still modern.
• Lots of white space – “Less is more” provides more breathing room to add focal points to the page.
• Typography – Put more design into headlines and sub headlines to draw in the eye to your leading message(s).
• Big typography – Bigger headlines, bigger font is trend-forward design, brought on by hand-held devices with smaller viewing screens.
• Google Fonts – This invention is a dream-come-true for the website creative team that wants both great design and good search engine optimization. In the past the “good,” more stylized fonts could only be developed as graphics, therefore not readable by search engines. With Google fonts, you get both nice font styles and search engine readability.
• Large pictures or images – Create visual focus and show the eye where you want it to go within the first couple of seconds of viewing.
• Blog-formatted news sections – These are in more now than ever. Even if your prospects don’t read your website articles, search engines do and those keyword-relevant articles do count in SEO.
• “Deep” design – Over 65% of computer users now do their viewing on monitor screens 1024 x 767 or larger. So give these larger-screen-viewing people something of value to look at the bottom of their screen and maximize your available home page real estate.
• Texture – Add shadows and background images to create texture for the sense of sight to “see” and the sense of touch to “feel.”
• Light colors or colors with bright or bold contrast – Light colors, including pastels, white, and two-tone, dominate modern web design.
• Bigger “rollover” dynamic navigation – The navigation buttons gets bigger and more detailed with large drop-down menus that offer up page overviews, descriptions and thumbnail photos.
• Social media integration – Website-featured Facebook and Twitter linked buttons are becoming so popular in business to consumer web design, that the question becomes not if they should be included, but if there is a valid reason not to include them.
• CSS3 and HTML5 technologies – these two technologies become the new basic standards to aim for in business web design.
• Content management Solutions – CMS, particularly WordPress, find their way full-blown into large, high-end design, custom websites. With its June 2010 release, WordPress isn’t for just blogging anymore.
• Large footers – Integrated into the site design, footers at the bottom of a web page add more function and navigation ease, and are no longer limited to a handful of words.

What’s out or on its way out:

• Busy designs
• Grunge
• The “box” look
• Flash
• “Heavy”
• 3D
• Gradient effects
• Dated code or technology solutions
• Flash

Get ready now for a newly enhanced emergency preparedness website for residents and businesses, which will be launched April 21, coinciding with Washington State’s Disaster Preparedness Month. The website theme is centered around “3 Days, 3 Ways,” the name of King County’s ongoing emergency preparedness campaign: “Prepare for at least 3 days, 3 different ways so you’re ready when disaster strikes.” See the website at http://www.3Days3Ways.org.

Ad Ventures Design and Marketing, an interactive design and marketing agency, provided the branding, design and development for the website. “We considered why people put off getting ready, then appealed to their underlying objections, the goal being to create inspiration to stop the procrastination,” said Creative Director, Karen Skeens.

“The word ‘disaster’ is a scary topic; one that people don’t want to think about or deal with,” Karen continued. “But the website removes some of the fear factor by providing simple steps that you can get your hands around. Website ‘fun’ elements such as a poll, build-a-kit calculator, adult and custom disaster online games and a downloadable disaster-themed coloring book will engage, involve and educate more people – kids too.”

Ad Ventures was commissioned in September 2010 by the King County Office of Emergency Management to redesign the “3 days, 3 ways” website and worked closely with Mary Hobday, Emergency Management Specialist / City of Federal Way, and the King County Community Preparedness Steering Committee. The committee is represented by several King County cities, Public Health – Seattle & King County, Puget Sound Energy, the American Red Cross and other partner agencies.

A Homeland Security grant provided funding for the public awareness website campaign.

Download a PDF of this press release >

Screenshots of the website:

We’re redesigning our website – same branding and messaging with a new 2011 trend forward design! Here’s a peek at the home page. You can also check out our new look and feel at our Facebook page.

Screen shot of our new home page.

I get an average of 75 – 100 emails per day at work. I research and read up on industry technical info and trends online every week. I started a hard copy book two years and haven’t finished it. (And it’s really good, can’t wait to see how it ends…) I can often be heard saying “I don’t have time to do Facebook.”

So I left the “Facebooking” to the younger demo in our office…until…

…an old fashioned-sleepover party with my old high school classmates happened upon me one weekend not too long ago. There they were, 50-year olds, not teenagers, with cell phones and laptops in hand, checking up on Facebook and sharing pictures with each other. And this went on from evening until morning when they all left. I couldn’t believe it! I thought I was the one who was “addicted” to my computer and the internet. They were taking cell pictures of the group and posting them on Facebook within minutes. When I got home, two weeks later and only out of curiosity, did I go to Facebook to see the slumber party photos.

Ahhhh…but Facebook makes you sign up to do that.

Well, before I knew it, I spent about 4 hours on Facebook that same day, and another 3 the next day uploading my own pictures and friending a bunch of old high school classmates and peers. How exciting it was to be put in touch with people I hadn’t heard from in years! All’s it takes is quick punch of the “friend me” button. No chatting, no emailing…until you want to. It’s Facebook protocol. You can friend someone without ever typing a word.

Facebook is easy. It’s a quick “coffee break” if that’s all you want to make of it. It can be time consuming if that’s how you want to spend your time. I love my new Facebook access and it definitely now has a place in each of my days.

Google’s font library has grown rapidly since it started with just a handful of fonts. The library encompasses over 80 fonts from every genre – handwritten to serif, script to monospaced. These fonts are available to use for free on any website, commercial or private. They work across all modern browsers and nearly every version of Internet Explorer still in use. Simply embed the provided code, the font is downloaded from the Google servers and displayed to the client just like any other text.

Let’s take a look at some of the best fonts Google has to offer:

Sans-Serif

Josefin Sans
Also comes in a serif version, this font is great for creating an elegant look with its light line-weights and simple geometric shapes.

Cabin
On the converse, Cabin is a strong, weighty font best suited for headlines.

Serif

Merriweather
A great all-purpose sans-serif font for when you need variation on Times or Georgia but still need readability.

Crimson Text
Although it comes with a large file size (almost 100k), Crimson Text is one of the best fonts due to its usability in every day projects.

Handwritten

Dancing Script
One of the newest fonts, this simple cursive font is a great handwritten option for any website.

Covered By Your Grace
Another great handwritten font, Covered By Your Grace is great to add a little fun to your web project.

With CSS3 support coming to all browsers, the newest web service to hit the internet is font embedding. Sites like TypeKit, FontSpring, WebINK, and even Google allow you to embed custom fonts into your website with just a few lines of code.

The History of Web Fonts

The ability to add custom fonts to websites was added to the CSS2 spec in 1998, however it was not implement and consequently dropped in CSS2.1. One browser did choose to implement its own version of web fonts using the .EOT file format: Internet Explorer. Since version 4, IE has supported custom web fonts. In CSS3, the embeddable font spec was renewed, supporting either .TTF or .OTF font files. After concerns about licensing, the .WOFF format was also added, and any browser supporting CSS3 supports these standards, including IE9.

Embedding Fonts

Because of the two different supported standards, embedding fonts is tricky. It involves checking if the font exists on a user’s machine, and if it is not found, downloading the appropriate font file to the user’s machine. This is a complicated and hard to test process due to all the variables involved, including browser support, font files and naming, and font variations. However, font embedding services allow you to bypass the hassle and embed fonts without the headache.

Using Google’s service as an example (because it’s free), the first step is finding a font to use for your project. For sake of example, we will use Raleway.

The second step is to include the CSS or javascript file which will download the file to the user’s machine. In Google’s case, it is a simple stylesheet link.

<link href='http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Raleway:100' rel='stylesheet' type='text/css'>

Google also allows you to combine multiple font styles and weights into a single request, but for ease we will use just one.

The third step is to decide where you want to implement the font. For example, if you want to use Raleway as a heading, you might write the following in your stylesheet:

h1 { font-family: 'Raleway', verdana, arial, serif; }

That’s it! Font embedding services are a great way to enhance your web development and design in a quick, easy, and usually free way.

Considerations

There are some important considerations here. First, you should find a similar font (if possible) to use as a back up in case your first font has chosen. In this case I have chosen Verdana because it is a tall font, as is Raleway. Remember to test your site without the embeddable font to make sure it displays correctly without your custom font. Also, make sure to check the file size for each font, as any user without the font will be required to download the font before they can see it, which can increase load time or sometimes flash the font when it downloads. Lastly, limit your use of different font styles to a couple of choices, because each one adds to file size when downloaded from Google.

So you like their portfolio?
Here are some questions you should ask when interviewing a design firm or freelancer to avoid contracting a skillset that isn’t exactly what it appears to be.

1. What part of the work did you do?
2. How many people worked on it and what were their roles?
3. Do you still work with them?
4. Tell me something about this portfolio piece that you are especially proud of.
5. When and where did you do this work? (i.e., at school, at a company, or in your home office?)

That’s about all the questioning it should take to rule out portfolio forgers.

Here are some fun portfolio interpretations based on TRUE STORIES.
These “comments” and/or “actions” come from people we’ve known or have interviewed in the past.

• “I fixed one typo in this 50 page website, but now I’m putting it into my portfolio as “my work” since I really did work on it, just not the concept, design, or development…”
• “I interned for a design firm 8 years ago, and still feature their self-promotion material as my work even though none of it was my work. Hey, I live two states away now!”
• “I like to feature my award in my online portfolio. Of course, I’m not going to mention that it was a shared award with 10 other talented people who worked on the same award-winning project, in varying roles at an ad agency.”
• “I did the whole thing. Yes, I created it, but I have no details about the concept, the strategy, the target audience or the branding to back it up.”
• “I quoted 14 hours to get the finishing flash work done, but only made it halfway through. That’s OK, while the client didn’t get what was promised, I sure got a cool (unfinished) piece for my online portfolio.”

If you happen across any similar comments like this, step away and run as fast as you can!

Next: Positives to look for when interviewing a graphic design / web development firm.

Bing, Bing, Bing. Gotta love you because you are my laptop’s default browser.

And I loved you even more when I saw that our company website recently arose to position #1 in the Bing local listings for a very competitive industry keyword phrase.

But delight turned to “horrors!” when I clicked on the listing’s website and discovered that it linked to an old domain – one that Ad Ventures had retired at least 8 years ago!

Coincidentally – and this is a HUGE coincidence: Our Bing pin number to confirm our Bing updates just happened to arrive in the mail that same day. It is a big coincidence, because we submitted our requests for a local listing update several months ago….

After entering the pin, the long-awaited updates took only 3 days to appear. And there’s our correct website URL, still in that premium #1 position.

I’m rallying for you Bing to keep doing good things, not just for searchers but for businesses too.

Three big screens showcase the new “3Way3Day” King County Disaster Preparedness website during a roll-out presentation, demonstrated by Karen Skeens, Creative Director of Ad Ventures. The audience included emergency disaster preparedness committee members from American Red Cross, Puget Sound Energy, Washington State Emergency Management, City of Seattle and several other King County cities. The website campaign is scheduled for official launch April 1, 2011 which coincides with Washington’s Disaster Preparedness Month.