For those of us who lack artistic skill, image fonts can be tremendously helpful. In place of letterforms, these fonts contain images and symbols.
In honor of our president-elect, I thought I’d share this link: ObamaBats, a collection of 24 high-quality dingbats featuring Barack Obama and various design elements.
It’s completely free for download, upload, distribution, use and modification. Cool!
Just a quick thought today, and a link to a book that has shaped the way I approach the web: Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability
The thought: creative web design is a wonderful thing, but if the digital eye candy makes your site confusing to use, people won’t bother. And that will hurt your business.
Keep your site simple. Use language that people understand, especially when it comes to navigation links. An example: you’re looking for a search button. If it’s labeled “search,” it won’t take you long to find it. But if it’s labeled something like “hide and seek,” you have to take the time to figure out what that means.
Arrange your information in a logical way. It might seem boring to put your logo and company name at the top left of the page, but that’s where your readers expect to find it.
If you innovate, have a good reason. Yes, you can stagger your text, arrange it in a circle, or whatever … but know that it’s more likely to frustrate your potential customers than it is to attract them.
You can’t go wrong with clarity and simplicity.
Several clients have asked me if there’s a foolproof way to prevent others from copying photos and other graphics from their websites.
Unfortunately, the answer is no—even if you have a system in place that prevents right-clicking graphics AND you’re encrypting your source code so it can’t be viewed for image links to copy. The extra security might slow down potential thieves, but stealing your graphics is still as easy as doing a screen capture and cropping the resulting file.
If a legally purchased photo is stolen from your site, you are not liable. The thief is. If you’re trying to protect graphics of your own creation, the best way is to add a watermark. Picmarkr lets you upload graphics and watermark them with text or an image for free.
Usability Post has an interesting article about color selection as it pertains to developing a brand identity.
Here are a few examples of brands which are tied to specific colors, along with words often associated with those colors. Cymbolism is a tool for putting emotions, words and colors together. After voting on a series of words and colors myself, I used the lookup tool to see how pink stacks up. (Technically, it’s FUSCHIA. Close enough, for my purposes.)
Top 10 Words
In my About page, I identify my femininity as setting me apart in the tech world. Female, fun and beauty resonate as words I want to associate with my business. Pink/fuschia also scored with many other words I would like to claim for Pink Mandala: blissful… imagination… creative… peaceful.
What colors have you selected for your brand? What are your colors communicating?
