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This month we interviewed Dom Flask, freelancer, creator of DesignIsHistory.com and DangerDom.com, and all round lovely guy. Here’s what he had to say about designing in different mediums, dealing with difficult clients and the limitations of social media for freelancers.

Could you provide a bit of information about yourself and designishistory.com?

Certainly! I started emphatically studying design in 2004, but have had an interest in computers since a very early age. I can still remember studying a book on a very early version of DOS (I’m not sure which version exactly, maybe 4 or 5 or something around there) and spending hours just changing file and directory names from the command line. That turned into some classes on Photoshop and Pagemaker during High School and eventually a passion to study graphic design. I have not been in the professional industry for that long. I have done some level of design freelancing since 2006 and had several jobs that included some level of design since 2001, but I didn’t get a job where my official title had the word design in it until the summer of 2007.

Since then I have had several unique working experiences in a variety of different positions that run the gamut from international ad agencies to local design boutiques. At the same time I have been actively pursuing a masters degree in fine arts with an emphasis in graphic design at Fort Hays State University. The program of study is somewhat open-ended and they allow their students to be explorative during much of their education. However, they strongly encourage creating some sort of an interactive teaching tool for introductory design students. I took that advice and coupled it with a desire to have some sort of structure to educate myself about design history and began creating www.designishistory.com.

While actual production of the site didn’t begin until May of 2010, I have been refining the concept of the site and researching material since the summer of 2009. Since its format provides only brief overviews of a lot of subjects it is definitely more directly targeted at the education of the younger generation of designers. However, I hope that it will be of some use as a reference tool for the seasoned veterans out there and that everyone who views the site will either find something new or be reminded of something that they may have forgotten while they are perusing the timeline.

What are your plans for the future development of Design Is History – in what direction do you see the site heading?

Early on in my research for the project I had to whittle down the amount of topics to cover so I could have something tangible to grasp too that seemed possible for one person to create. Realizing the vast amount of information that was out there, I designed and built the site so that it could expand easily as I learned more. I have already increased the amount of content on the site and given it a bit of a facelift since its inception, putting updated information at the forefront so that it is easy to follow the evolution of the site. There has been a good amount of participation from users already and I have received many suggestions about additions to the site, all of which I have tried to accommodate in one way or another. While I do not want it to grow overwhelmingly large, In the near future I can certainly see doubling the amount of content the site has on it.

Design Is History covers design from pre-1450 to the present – which period do you find the most inspirational?

That’s a tough question to answer. There are, of course, some designers whose work I am partial too; Rick Valicenti, Massimo Vignelli, Herb Lubalin and Louise Fili, just to name a few of the modern ones, but really I enjoy every aspect of graphic design and its history. Where I really get my kicks is in observing (and participating in) the communication between human beings. And that’s what graphic design has always been about. From the birth of typesetting to digital open-type font features every integral moment of design history is inspirational in its own right.

What are the main differences between designing for print and designing for the web?

There are many technical aspects that separate print from web design, but I try to approach any project simply as a design problem. You just have to ask yourself what the goals of the project are and who is involved. Who has something to say and who might listen? Once those parameters are defined you can explore the best possible way to facilitate that communication. The logistics of the end result are really a minute detail, and they should be, when setting out to solve a problem. If you ask yourself the “why” first, the “how”" and “what” will follow.

As a freelancer, what are your top tips for dealing with demanding or unrealistic clients?

I have been pretty lucky with most of my clients. There have been a few that were somewhat, shall we say exhausting? But, overall I have found that if you are passionate about what you are doing and are, in general, a friendly person that your clients will both like and respect you enough to trust your opinion and judgement.

You dabble in a wide variety of formats – web design, video, posters, packaging and photography – to name a few! What’s your favourite medium and why?

During my first internship in the advertising world the director of the design department told me that when hiring a designer they looked for people who had grown horizontally as a designer rather than vertically. Now that doesn’t mean they were actively seeking short, fat people. He was simply describing someone who was well-rounded and could approach design problems from many different angles. This is something that I have always taken to heart and I have tried to explore as many facets, niches and mediums of design as I could find a reason too. Of course the one thing that traverses throughout almost all mediums of design is typography, and I always find joy in the use of type.

How important is typography to a design?

Very. One of my instructors early on in school once told me that if you KNOW typography, really understand it, you can design anything. I truly believe that. Typography has been one of the basic tools of communication for thousands of years and will always be an integral part of design, on any level or in any medium.

What advice would you give to freelancers just starting out?

Don’t be scared. Go balls-out and jump on every single opportunity that you can get your hands on. There will be time for sleeping when you’re dead. Every single experience that you have will give you something that you can add to your design toolbox. As you move forward into the next project and start digging around in that toolbox you’ll find that the more tools you have the better your chances of finding the right one for the job.

How useful do you think social media is for getting your name out there and increasing the number of visitors to your sites?

While it certainly has its uses, and if you don’t use it you’re at an immediate disadvantage, I find that most opportunities still come the old fashioned way. In the end, people are always more willing to work with someone that they’ve had the experience of working with before. While you can certainly find work via social networking, every real opportunity I’ve come across has been through someone that I have known or worked with in the past. To summarize, use it, use it a lot, but don’t expect social media to be the reason for your success.

Which web resources would you recommend for beginners and advanced designers?

There are so many, I actually included links to a few relevant to DesignIsHistory when I last updated it. Designers should be furiously curious, constantly collecting as much information as possible. And not just about design. Put down the copy of Print and pick up a copy of Scientific American. Don’t just read design oriented blogs but find sources of inspiration from other fields as well.

BibliOdyssey is a great example of a wealth of visual information that isn’t directly related to graphic design. However, there are certainly a few that are extremely valuable as design-oriented resources. Every online entity that has come from the doors of UnderConsideration (SpeakUp, Quipsologies, ForPrintOnly, BrandNew, etc) has grown the design community by leaps and bounds.

The SVA Masters program podcasts are an endless wealth of information, as are the archives of Design Matters and Read Between the Leading. As a designer who has taught himself enough HTML and CSS to get around, W3Schools is a necessity.

For typographic enlightenment there is none better than the network of sites surrounding ilovetypography, but you can’t forget FontFeed, Typotheque and Typophile either.

For motion graphics, Squeezeme.tv, Motionographer, GreyScaleGorilla and MoGraph.net get the job done.

For packaging design it’s TheDieline and for logos there’s LogoLounge.

The others that come to mind immediately are DesignChat, HumblePied, ThinkingForALiving, 24Ways, AisleOne, TheGridSystem, ThisIsDisplay, Threadless, DesignSponge, TUAW, ISO50, everything from Von Glitschka, JasonSantaMaria, and Grain Edit.

Name:Jenni Brown

About:One of the newest members of the team, Jenni is Heart Internet's SEO & Social Media Marketing Executive. Responsible for Heart Internet's Twitter and Facebook engagement, Jenni is a social network enthusiast and has been blogging for almost a decade.

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This month’s interview is with Jim Ramsden founder of UK web design gallery www.designfridge.co.uk. In the interview Jim talks about how he made his website stand out in such a competitive market, how he got traffic to the site and his plans for the future.

Could you give us some background informaiton about yourself and how designfridge.co.uk got started?
I’m 28 years old, with 6 years experience in the creative industry, spending half of that time as a photographer before switching my attention to the web. I’ve built up a broad set of skills over the years, and as the Creative Director at Red Bullet (a web design agency in Kent) I get the opportunity to use them on a daily basis. With an involvement throughout the entire design process and a responsibility for the quality of the company’s output, Design Fridge has been an intrinsic part of my professional development.

When I started DF in April 2008, all I had was a domain name and plenty of determination. Since it’s launch in Jan 2009 the site has gone from strength to strength. The recent redesign has been well received and this in turn has helped to increase traffic. However, I’m still aware of the where the site sits in the grand scheme of things, and realise that there’s still plenty of room for improvement.

There are already a lot of web design galleries and blogs out there, what would you say makes yours stand apart?
Yes there are quite a few. It seems like every designer has their own blog these days, but it’s hardly surprising when you consider how easy it is to install an open-source CMS and slap a free template on it.

To standout you have to be clear in your approach and committed to a certain direction.
When I started DF I wasn’t intending to compete with other galleries and blogs, it was completely driven by my own needs:

1) Learn more about web design/development.
2) Keep up to date with web trends.
3) Create my own way of collecting and sorting the sites that inspired me.

These are still the main reasons why I get up an hour earlier than I have to each day and update the site. It’s always been about self-development and I think this mindset is what makes DF stand out. I’m not trying to make a quick buck. My intentions have always been to make the site a dependable source of inspiration that other web designers find as useful as I do.

You have entered a very competitive and busy market, when you launched how did you go about getting people to your site and building your incoming links?
I was very conscious of making a good first impression; I wanted users to feel like the site was worth bookmarking, to encourage some repeat visits. So before I launched the site I made sure I had the basics right:

a) Clean Interface – I left out unnecessary elements that you often find cluttering up blogs and galleries; star-rating panels, gimmicky vector art characters, banner ads, Adsense, giant RSS feed buttons.

b) Good content – The quality, consistency, and volume of sites added to the gallery gave users a reason to keep coming back.

c) Simple to browse/search – categorising the sites by design style and tagging them based on their content, colour, and layout made it much easier to find the inspiration that’s needed.

As soon as the foundations were in place, I started to promote the site via popular social bookmarking sites. Stumble upon seemed to be the most effective, although the spikes in traffic put my budget hosting to the test (have since upgrade to a VPS).

The next step involved ‘poaching users’ from other galleries by submitting my site to appear on theirs. You may think that’s a bit sneaky, but it seemed like the best way to grab the attention of my target audience.

After my ‘underhand tactics’ I switched my attention to link building, using a couple of UK link exchanges to build approximately 100 back links. From then onwards traffic started to build quite naturally.

On reflection, I think one of the things that helped get the site off the ground with such minimal effort was its name. I’m not saying that ‘Design Fridge’ is the most original name but it’s quite easy to remember, and resulted in a high percentage of named searches.

Is there anything you would do differently if you could start again?
The last 18 months have been a steep learning curve, and looking back at what I‘ve learnt, I don’t think it could have been achieved any other way, so I’m glad I took the route I did.
In heinsight, the one thing that I wish I had done is to secure a .com domain – just to help with ranking (although who knows what Google’s algorithm really thinks?)

What proportion of the sites in the gallery are submitted compared to ones you have found yourself and what are your criteria when deciding to put a site on to the gallery?
Last year about 10-20% of the sites were from user submissions, this year that’s climbed to about 40% with 15-20 submissions a day. There’s enough user-generated content to let the site run itself, but without moderation the quality would drop. So in order to maintain the quantity and quality of inspiration that I see as sufficient, I need to top-up the UGC with my own findings.

When it comes to moderation there’s no official criteria, but I am quite picky. I look for sites that have been executed well in every aspect; the concept, the look and feel, copy and content, and the interface – it’s quality of finish and the ways its been built. The main thing is it can’t be something I saw six months ago. It has to be fresh, attempting to take web design forwards. That’s what the industry is all about

Why did you choose WordPress as your CMS and which plug-ins have you used?
18 months ago my development experience sat at zero. So when setting out I wanted to use a platform that was well supported. Functionality wasn’t an issue, as I knew I wanted to keep things simple, so WP seemed to fit the bill. The current theme is built from the ground up incorporating a lot of custom functions that I’ve managed to hunt out to solve specific requirements in the frontend. This means I only need a handful of plug-ins, these being:

• All in One SEO Pack – one stop shop for SEO essentials
• Google XML Sitemaps – automatically generates an XML sitemap to help search engines
• Search Everything – adds search functionality without modifying any template pages
• WP-PageNavi – no fuss pagination
• TDO Mini Forms – for submissions

What is your approach with twitter, do you use it to engage with readers or to pull in visitors (or both)?
So far I’ve only really used the Design Fridge twitter account as a way to notify users when content is added to the site. It only drives a small amount of traffic but considering how much effort it takes it’s quite effective. There’s been little 2-way conversation on the @designfridge account, mainly because I don’t have the time to monitor the conversation. However, since the redesign I’ve been more transparent about my association with DF and users tend to tweet me on my @ramsden account so it feels much more personal that way.

How do you see your site developing in 2010 and in to 2011?
Well for the rest of 2010 I’ll be concentrating on articles, writing some more posts and putting together some more regular features. I have a long list of topics that I want to write about, and once things calm down at RB I’ll be able to start ticking them off. A long-term goal has been to get the site into the Alexa Top 100,000 (its harder than it looks!) I’m nearly there and hope to achieve this by the end of the year.

I haven’t thought about 2011, but they’ll definitely be an update to the sites look and feel at some point, and maybe another ‘____fridge’ on the cards.

Are there any resources on the Internet you use that you would recommend for beginners and advanced designers?
Well sites that I hit a couple of times a day when I’m designing are Iconfinder.net, Lorem2.com, they are both so useful and I’m almost reliant upon them when I’m designing. Linking back to question five, anyone who’s thinking about hacking about with WordPress should check out CatsWhoCode.com as well as the WordPress Support Forums of course.

For beginners, I’d recommend checking out the more popular design blogs such Smashing Magazine and NetTuts first. They’ve got loads of great posts and you’ll even find plenty of useful stuff in the archives too. Chris Spooner writes some great tutorials on Line25 and they’re really easy to follow too.

For ‘advanced designers’ or anyone that’s heavily involved with design, I’d recommend applying to one of the new closed communities. Sites like Dribbble and Forrst, which I’ve joined recently, are a great place to learn, network, and keep upto date with the industry.

And last but not least, there’s Design Fridge – whether you are just starting out or you’re a well rehearsed in designing for the web, it’s definitely worth dropping by once a week.

Name:Matthew Telfer

About:Matthew is Heart Internet's Marketing Manager, and has held senior marketing positions in the web hosting industry for half a decade. With a passion for online marketing, Matthew is responsible for shaping strategy and developing the Heart Internet brand.

Posts by Matthew (182)

We recently had a chat with Ben Scott founder of the UKs leading web design forum www.webdesignerforum.co.uk about why he created the forum, how he went about getting people to the site and engaging with it, how he finds inspiration for his new design projects and more… He also provides some very useful information on how to kick-start a forum plus some handy tips on optimising forum content for search engines.

Could you provide a bit of information about yourself and webdesignerforum.co.uk? E.g. Your background in the industry, how long the site has been running, who uses your website…?
Sure, I’m 26 and I’ve been creating websites commercially for around 6 years now. I’d consider myself to be an “all-rounder” when it comes to the web with strong focus towards Web Design, SEO, marketing  plus I enjoy the challenges of  creating Affiliate based websites. The Web Designer Forum was launched on the 5th September 2006, so coming up to 4 years now, it provides users a constructive and friendly environment to discuss topics focussed around web design. The user base consists of a good mix of both male & females with the age range being predominantly late teens through to mid-thirties.

How did the idea for the forum come about and did you have any specific aims when you first launched?
The idea to create WDF materialised from a noticeable lack of UK based forums that focused solely around web design. There were a handful of Design/Webmaster Forums that had sub categories for Web Design but apart from that, it seemed there was a good market for a UK based forum to come onto the scene. To be honest I didn’t have any specific aims when it launched nor any that were on a grand scale, I simply  had a passion for creating websites plus an intrigue into what challenges I would face in running my own forum. Finding a domain name that is targeted towards the subject or product can be crucial, so couldn’t believe my luck with very first search for a relevant domain name (www.webdesignerforum.co.uk) was available, so without hesitation snatched that up straight away.

With the acquisition of such a highly relevant domain name, the gap in the market plus my own personal interest in the subject really left me without any doubt or disbelief that I have no good reason not to give it a good go. Researching commercial forum software I opted for Invision Power Board over vBulletin, I believe at the time this decision was based on better community features, control panel options/layout, plus the overall look appealed to me more (c’mon I’m a web designer, have to get the priorities right!). As mentioned above there wasn’t any set aims, I really just wanted to create a UK based forum that was perceived as a valued resource to web designers. People learn better in a constructive environment, so wanted to make sure the atmosphere was warm & friendly and encouraged user participation, I took the approach “If I was member on a forum, what would I want to get out of it”, so applying this concept to my own forum, it soon built up a reputation upholding the values to which it was initially set out to provide.

Currently the aims are to keep evolving the forum based on feedback from members plus and incorporate the snazzy new features each software iteration brings, we have recently launched a “Graphic Design” section as we got increasing demand to do so.

How did you go about getting people to the site and then engaging with it enough to sign up and leave comments?
That was the fun part and where the real challenge begins! As a budding web designer, with free time on my hands (Well more so that I have these days) I decided to put my skills to use, so I embarked on a mission to create some quality, free “member only” CSS/XHTML website templates and spread the word about these using Social networking websites and as well as other forums. The templates were VERY well received and made a huge contribution in kick-starting forum traffic and also letting people know of it’s existence. People joined to download them, I would engage any new member with a friendly message, firstly thanking them for joining, links to popular categories and also if they have time to introduce themselves to the forum. I did this because I was generally thankful for anyone who joined and took the time out of their day to participate and also make them aware that we do more than just offer free templates.

Next I created some nifty (At the time) CSS  tutorials on creating a horizontal rollover navigation using only one image and also a drop shadow background effect for websites. Again, I spread the word about these on social networking sites which  proved to be just as popular (if not, more so) than the templates, these two single tutorials equated to over 100,000 views! Once a modest user-base was created, I thought “OK, how can I reward members” so I created a “Member of the Month” award which rewarded the top contributing members with an Amazon gift voucher 1st: £10 2nd: £5 3rd: Special Badge, I wanted a strong focus on rewarding members who were helpful & respectful to others, this including greeting new members, replying constructively to topics, creating topics of help and interest etc etc. This method worked great in enhancing the warmth of the community and certainly encouraged more users to join and participate.

With the ever growing rate of members joining the community the next step was to create a newsletter highlighting various rewards we had on the forum and also the hottest topics, this further encouraged user participation and acted as a little reminder that we exist!

Your website is top of Google for a lot of your core keywords, what SEO activities did you undertake to help achieve this?
The domain name plays a big part for all those “Web Design” related queries “Web Design Forum” &  “Web Designer Forum” rank very well indeed as the SEO strategy was built around these keywords in the beginning. Individual topic and category pages have been optimised for the relevancy of the page, so if a user created a topic called “Which web design software?” – Then you would notice this title appears correctly formatted as the url e.g. /which-web-design-software/  plus at the start of the <title> and also within a <h1> tag on the page – so the whole page is fully optimised and relevant to the topic. I’m seeing more and more traffic coming to the forum each month because of this and a steady rise in long-tail keyword searches. In order to maximise the discoverability of all the forums content I implemented an XML  sitemap which contains a list of all the members, topics, posts & blogs and pings the top search engine’s when any new content is added.

Google loves fresh content and due to the nature of a popular forum you’re creating a constant supply which I’m sure plays a part in ranking WDF highly. As well as the above I’m sure there’s plenty of people who have linked to WDF over the years which has contributed towards the forum being recognised as a reputable resource and being ranked well within the SERPs. BIG thanks to all those who have done so! )

What are the challenges and rewards of running such an active and popular forum and what advice would you give to anyone looking to start their own forum?

1. You’ll need knowledge, passion and patience. If you’re looking at succeeding in starting a forum I think first and foremost it’s important to have a good knowledge about the subject and/or a passion for it.  For example, I’ve known of a few cases where someone has a great idea for a forum and they could make £x amount each month as they’ve seen similar websites do. These people only see the glory side in running a forum and naively undermine the attention a new forum requires to succeed. These type of people will find that topics will go unanswered due to lack of knowledge in that subject area, no exciting industry news posted (As they can’t identify what it is) , don’t know how to deal with that particular demographic (Each forums member-base is different) etc etc. So to reiterate this, you need to know about the subject and be willing to put in the hours to respond to questions and create some yourself. You can even sign-up yourself up a few aliases on the forum and talk with yourself….sounds wacky but it helps to generate content and give the perception of it being an active forum, which is integral when starting out.

2. Shout about it! As the misquoted saying from Field of Dreams goes…”If you build it, they will come”… couldn’t really be any further from the truth when it comes to forums, you’re gonna need a heck of a lot of time and dedication to get it off the ground!

Getting people to join and participate within a new forum is one of the hardest tasks, as:
1. You’re already up against forums with well established user bases & hundreds of thousands of posts…
2. You’re forum looks a baron wasteland in comparison
3. What can you offer  users that’s different from anyone else?

As far as forums go, there actually isn’t much else you can offer that hasn’t been done before. But, don’t give up hope yet, all is not lost…experience has shown that many members just prefer the comfort of smaller forums, where they feel their voice can be heard and can find content much easier than wading through a sea of topics and spammy posts. Your new, up-and-coming forum will be like a breath of fresh air as you’re able to provide a warm and welcoming haven that’s spam free where you can really personalise the experience and engage with members individually, this will encourage them to tell their friends on other forums and get them to join yours! Remember once you get hold of them, don’t let them go! Keep them engaged and happy. Much like I did with the templates, if you’re able to create something new and exciting for your forum, I couldn’t recommend this enough…. I’ve noticed many popular blogs these days simply provide lists of helpful resources e.g. “Top 20 SEO Tools” or “Free icon resources” etc etc – Why not do the same for your subject & create these as sticky posts within your forum and post the links to social bookmarking websites to raise awareness.

I found when starting WDF the following couple of points really helped the forum in generating a fantastic user-base.

1. Offer unique content: Be the first to offer content that no other forum/news provider can provide e.g. write lists, competitions, exclusive stories etc.
2. Engage with members: Greet them, send them a PM ask them how they are finding the forum, how can you improve things?
3. Competitions: Run competitions that would appeal to your forum demographic.
4. Reward top contributing members: For example “Member of the Month Awards” where the prize could be along the lines of a gift voucher, a banner or a special badge or status that sits alongside their username within the forum.
5. Send out a regular newsletter to your forum members this will show you’re an active forum and also encourage repeat visits back to your website.
6. Sign yourself up as multiple aliases on your forum and talk with yourself to generate content and increase activity. No one likes a dead forum.

If you can get a dedicated server, then I would recommend doing so as I found running a forum in a shred hosting environment would certainly experience performance issues. This is definitely recommended these days as Google has recently opened up saying it uses site speed to help determine search results.

How active are you within social media to promote your website and how do you see it developing?
Not as active as I should or would like be, that’s for sure! I haven’t really harnessed the potential of Twitter & Facebook that I know could be beneficial for the forum, if the days were 36 hours long I might be able to fit something in! I use Twitter to notify members of the monthly “Website of the Month” competition and also various topics of interest but much more could be done! I see social networking sites playing a massive part in how we discover new content (they already are),  there’s been a noticeable rise in niche specific, sites DesignBump is a recent example of this, it’s like Digg for Web Designers. There’s people always trying to release the “Next Big Thing” – but it seems Youtube, Digg, Twitter & Facebook have it in the bag for the moment, so would encourage people to use these services and other popular sites to maximise the reach of their content, until the next big thing happens! – Don’t forget to add social networking links on all your web pages that you feel should be talked about.

The forum does have a re-design planned and also to create a new logo (I think this has been on my to-do list for a year now!) – Hopefully 2010 will be the year for it! – I’d like to see more tutorials added and also some CSS wire frame templates that people can download and use/learn from. Would be nice to get some video tutorials made and also a WDF blog full of tutorials/tips/tricks and resources, perhaps even create an inspiration gallery!

Turning to web design in general, what hardware and web design/ illustration software do you use yourself and why?
I live in Essex and commute a lot so I needed a system that was  portable and powerful enough to work in both web & print design and handle running multiple applications, so the obvious choice for me was a MacBook Pro 2.5Ghz with 4Gig of Ram. I’ve also got running Parallels Desktop which gives me the ability to run windows applications within a Mac environment, this works out a treat for cross-testing your website in multiple browsers and having to occasionally open a Windows only program without having to restart your system.

I use Adobe CS5 Design Premium for both web design & illustration. I’m a HUGE fan of Adobe Fireworks which has been my #1 tool for creating pretty much all design elements for the web (Occasionally dabbling in Photoshop for advanced image editing). I find that Fireworks layers are much nicer to work with than Photoshop and the whole process just much more streamlined.  When it comes to coding, these days Dreamweaver isn’t so much a necessity, but I find the shortcuts and CSS code hinting very accurate and quite a time saver. Firebug for FireFox is an absolute must if you want to speed up the development of your websites, also some people don’t know that with a bit of javascript you can add FireBug to any browser so you can debug your IE issues in real time! Check out Firebug Lite

How do you find inspiration to start designing a new website from scratch?
I remember in the early days of web design I used to scour many of the popular CSS showcase gallery websites and bookmark all designs I felt inspired me in some way, whether it was colour scheme or perhaps logo styles and keep them in an “Inspiration” folder. I tend to flick through this before any new project to get some inspiration and hopefully apply some of the techniques.  This is not to be confused with a “I’ll rip that off later” folder, as I would pay more attention to the structure of a site, the fonts used, how much spacing between sections, CSS properties etc as opposed to the design itself. I still encourage people to look at these sites for inspiration and to help clear designers block when you’re having “One of those days”. – Just don’t steal designs!

Nowadays being actively involved with the web on a daily basis, I tend to naturally be exposed to many different websites each week, so I’m constantly being inspired and educated in techniques of modern web design. Because of this, when it comes to actually creating a website I find myself to have accumulated plenty of inspiration, so when I approach a blank canvas I can create varying styles quite naturally without having to rely on visiting other sites. This isn’t always the case when designing and project brief determines your creative freedom, if it’s a subject I know little about then it may well take longer as I need to research the industry & existing websites to gain a better understanding of the demographic and who i’m designing for. I still feel it’s good to go back and explore CSS galleries from time to time to keep up-to-date on some of the exciting creations that are being made by many of the highly talented designs out there.

For picking colour schemes I rely on a very nifty tool, http://kuler.adobe.com/. I normally start with a base colour this is normally to suit the demographic, corporate brand or picked from an image supplied from the client, I then use Kuler to create complimentary colours based on this. I do encourage people to try it out, it’s a very powerful and useful product!

Are there any resources on the internet you use that you would recommend for beginners and advanced designers?
Well, you may or may not have heard about a highly active UK based web design forum? No? – well here’s one that’s worth checking out: www.webdesignerforum.co.uk. I am a HUGE advocate of the CMS ExpressionEngine, a flexible, feature-rich content management system that’s highly flexible! It’s amazingly powerful and you’ll soon be saying WordPress who? http://expressionengine.com/. Firebug is essential for help in debugging & helping develop your website: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1843

A couple of blogs worth looking at are www.sitepoint.com and www.smashingmagazine.com. http://net.tutsplus.com/ & http://psd.tutsplus.com/ can both be useful if you are looking learn some cool effects.

Lastly (But not least) I’d like to thank every single member of the Web Design Forum and a EXTRA BIG thank you to the moderators that help keep the community spam free.

Name:Matthew Telfer

About:Matthew is Heart Internet's Marketing Manager, and has held senior marketing positions in the web hosting industry for half a decade. With a passion for online marketing, Matthew is responsible for shaping strategy and developing the Heart Internet brand.

Posts by Matthew (182)

We recently had a chat with Richard Carpenter creator of popular UK based web design tutorial site www.hv-designs.co.uk about how he got started, how he went about getting traffic to his website, how he makes money from the site and his sources of inspiration for new content and much more…

Can you give us some information about yourself and your website?
Hello my name is Richard Carpenter and I’m a freelance graphics designer / web developer from England. I’m 25 and have a strong passion for anything Photoshop. I’ve been using Photoshop for about 7 years and only 3 years ago i launched my first website (hv-designs.co.uk) aimed at helping others get into the industry of web development. You can follow me via twitter (twitter.com/hvdesigns) or view my portfolio (Richard-carpenter.co.uk).

How did you go about getting people to the site when you first got started and then have them engage with it enough to leave comments?
When launching hv-designs it was extremely hard to get the word out and get people to visit it, I had no source of income from the website so advertising was out of the question. I pretty much tried everything, until I came across tutorial submission websites.

Using these types of websites greatly increases your chances of getting targeted traffic without any cost too you. The main websites I used were “good-tutorials” (www.good-tutorials.com) and “pixel2life” (www.pixel2life.com).

What are the challenges and rewards of running such an active and popular website and what advice would you give to anyone approaching high traffic volumes?
I would say there are definitely loads of challenges to overcome and not all come with rewards. The main challenges for me are keeping the website up to date with new content so that the visitors keep coming back, general maintenance to the website and the overall dedication to keep writing.

Obviously the rewards are far greater than the challenges in the respect that there’s nothing more rewarding than helping other people and being appreciated for what you do.

You publish new articles every week, how do you find inspiration for them?
I get asked this question a lot!….. My inspiration comes from other designers, showcase galleries such as designbombs (www.designbombs.com) , creattica (www.creattica.com) and deviantart (www.deviantart.com). I also get inspiration from clients and general day to day activities.

How active are you within social media to promote your website and how do you see your involvement developing?
The only social media i use is Twitter (twitter.com/hvdesigns) and RSS Feeds. I’m currently thinking about adding in new social media such as facebook, forums etc… in the future.

I think having some kind of social interaction in any website is nowadays vital as it opens so many new doors.

You run your ad inventory through Buy Sell Ads, why did you choose them and how have your experiences been so far?
I chose Buy Sell Ads (buysellads.com/buy/detail/439/) because i think it brought advertising to a new kind of level. I tried Google ad sense and other ad providers but found myself not making much money or breaking certain rules like having links next images.

With Buy Sell Ads you have so much more control over your ads in the way of setting your own prices and banner ad sizes. I also think Buy Sell Ads has a much more easily understandable user interface.

I’d recommend Buy Sell Ads to anyone who is thinking about monetizing there website, i can safely say there the best around (and no I don’t work for them ha-ha).

You have set up an ecommerce section of your website, what software are you using and why did you decide upon that one?
I’m currently using ecommerce software called “Cube Cart”, I didn’t really try out any others as Cube Cart was offered for free with one of my old hosting providers. I found the Cube Cart skins easy to edit, understand and make.

I’d definitely be open to trying other ecommerce software though as long as they didn’t carry a hefty price tag.

Turning to web design in general, what hardware and web design/ illustration software do you use yourself and why?
Well hardware wise my rig is nothing special, I’m running a basic quad core with 4 gig of ram on windows 7, all built by myself. I’ve thought about turning to a Mac but i don’t think there is any need to.

As for software I use pretty much adobe Photoshop cs3 for everything and adobe Dreamweaver for anything I need coding. I’ve tried using other packages like paint shop pro and coral draw but found the adobe suite has so much more to offer in the way of tools, it seems to be light years ahead of the rest.

Are there any common mistakes you see people making when they first start designing websites?
The main mistakes i see people making are “typography”, don’t mix too many fonts. People sometimes don’t see how fonts affect the design of a website and the people viewing it. Font sizes and colours are also an issue, i often see people using rather small fonts and font colours which don’t stand out.

Another common mistake is spacing. Spacing should be consistent throughout the website, for people who struggle with applying the right amount of spacing then I’d suggest a grid system like grid 960.

Are there any resources on the internet you use that you would recommend for beginners and advanced designers?
I’d recommend CSS-Tricks (css-tricks.com) by Chris Coyier for all your CSS tricks and tips, Six Revisions (sixrevisions.com) by Jacob Gube for all your articles, inspiration and more tips and finally probably the best set of tutorial websites on the internet, the Tuts+ Network (tutsplus.com).

Name:Matthew Telfer

About:Matthew is Heart Internet's Marketing Manager, and has held senior marketing positions in the web hosting industry for half a decade. With a passion for online marketing, Matthew is responsible for shaping strategy and developing the Heart Internet brand.

Posts by Matthew (182)

We recently chatted with Ariane Sherine, creator of the ‘Atheist Bus Campaign’ about her use of social media to generate awareness of her campaign.

Bearing in mind the subject matter we’d like to emphasise this interview is 100% about social media and sharing information with our blog readers to help with their own efforts, in no way are we using this to express any personal views.

Could you provide us with a bit of information about yourself?
I’m a journalist and comedy writer, and I created the Atheist Bus Campaign, which placed atheist slogans on buses earlier this year.

The campaign came from a series of articles I wrote for The Guardian’s Comment is free website, where thousands of site users debate issues daily in response to articles. The response to the idea of donating to fund atheist advertising was overwhelmingly positive, and led to my launching the bus campaign, which achieved publicly visible UK representation for atheists for the first time. The campaign then spread around the world to 12 further countries, including America, Canada, Italy, Spain, Germany, The Netherlands, Finland, Sweden, Croatia, Switzerland, Australia and Brazil. After this, I created and edited the first atheist charity book, The Atheist’s Guide to Christmas, which features 42 contributions from atheists including Richard Dawkins, Derren Brown, David Baddiel, Charlie Brooker, Ben Goldacre and many more. All royalties from the book will go to the UK HIV charity Terrence Higgins Trust.

Your atheist bus advert campaign was a great example of using social media to mobilise support at a grass roots level. How much of that was planned and how much just happened?
It was about 50:50. There are a number of tools you can use to raise awareness of a campaign, and I think the most effective of these not only engage with users, but allow them to engage with each other. I used every social media site I thought would help, including Facebook and Twitter – the Atheist Bus Campaign Facebook group now has 25,500 members, and when the campaign launched it had under 5,000, so I was able to email them all and encourage them to donate. I also chose JustGiving as our donation site, as though it levies a higher commission than some sites, it allows donors to leave comments, and this element added greatly to the campaign – the Atheist Bus Campaign JustGiving site fast became the first pay-as-you-go messageboard, with people leaving donations in order to write a comment! And the campaign would never have happened if it hadn’t been for the articles on Comment is free – I can’t imagine another national newspaper allowing a journalist to start an atheist campaign on its website, and am very grateful to The Guardian for this.

As for the other 50%, the theme of the campaign added greatly to its success, because it gave atheists a public voice for the first time, so we were all very willing to donate as there was great solidarity there. We had a common purpose, and that unique element isn’t something you can replicate or engineer. You could use all the social media available to you, but if the idea behind your campaign isn’t necessary, you don’t feel strongly enough about it to communicate the need for it, or you don’t have a target market who are passionate about it, then no amount of awareness will achieve the result you’re after. I was very surprised by the tremendous response – the launch article achieved the most comments of any piece in the history of The Guardian website, while JustGiving blogged about the unprecedented rate of donations, and we smashed the £5,500 donation target by 2750%, raising £153,000. I don’t think you can ever plan for that.

It feels like you have combined using traditional media (TV, radio, newspapers etc) to generate awareness, and social media to develop a community and promote discussion, would you see this as a fair assessment?
That’s mostly true, though the majority of the awareness I created was online, via the articles – I wrote the press releases and the British Humanist Association sent them out, but you can never predict exactly what the national press are going to pick up on and what they won’t, so we were very lucky that they jumped on the story. Richard Dawkins’ involvement was also a great help in generating interest.

One of the great things about social media for me is the instant and open feedback you get from others. How have you used this to guide you?
The most controversial part of the campaign was the slogan itself – users put forward many ideas as to how it should differ from the original. I realised early on that there was no slogan which would please everybody, so as the first idea I had generated all the interest, and nothing else seemed to resonate overwhelmingly, I stuck with it. Overall, the feedback from atheists was extremely positive and helpful – several suggested using quotes from famous atheists and humanists for adverts, so I took up this idea for the London Underground tube cards.

You have over 3,300 followers on Twitter and just over 1,600 ’friends’ on Facebook, do you find it hard to keep on top of all the questions and comments you receive each day? How do you go about managing all this information?
It’s wonderful to receive so many requests, ideas and so much information daily, but it does become tricky to handle at busy times. I try to keep on top of it in quieter periods, but sometimes I let it all mount up and then reply to everyone in one long session. However, at the end of last year (during the campaign donation phase) I wasn’t at all prepared for the initial influx of communications. It really got on top of me, and I failed to reply to hundreds of emails sent at that time – it seems way too late now, which I regret, as so many people were so kind and supportive. I also have a mailing list which visitors to my website can sign up to, and there’s an RSS feed on my blog and for my Guardian pieces, so people can be alerted to what I’m up to without having to email me directly.

You have been writing a blog for a few years now, how has that developed over time and what is its purpose now?
Interesting question – I didn’t start it for any particular reason, just because I enjoyed writing my thoughts down, and it’s remained the same over the years even though hundreds of people now follow it. I update less frequently than I’d like to, but hopefully that means it’s retained its slightly haphazard character!

What have you found to be the positives and the negatives of embracing social media to the extent you have?
It’s almost all positive – the only slight drawback is the sheer volume of responses, but that’s a good thing as it’s a sign that your campaign has been successful. I also get alerted to any developments very quickly by supporters – e.g. if a new article has been published about the campaign (I do use Google Alerts, but they don’t always alert me to links that quickly).

Would you consider adding ‘sponsored tweets’ in to your Twitter feed?
Definitely not. That’s not what Twitter is about, and I imagine anyone who did that would see a sharp drop-off in followers. I’d certainly unfollow anyone who used sponsored tweets – I don’t even like blogs having Google ads.

And finally, do you have any plans for developing your campaign further?
No – it went better than I could have ever imagined, and I’ve taken it far further than I expected. I’m looking forward to doing lots of new, different and completely unrelated things in the future.

The Atheist’s Guide to Christmas is available now, published by The Friday Project, in aid of the UK HIV charity Terrence Higgins Trust.

Name:Matthew Telfer

About:Matthew is Heart Internet's Marketing Manager, and has held senior marketing positions in the web hosting industry for half a decade. With a passion for online marketing, Matthew is responsible for shaping strategy and developing the Heart Internet brand.

Posts by Matthew (182)

We recently had a chat with Mark Forrester co-founder of the premium WordPress template site  www.woothemes.com about how he got started, how they come up with new theme ideas, how he see’s WordPress developing in the coming years and some great resources for your WordPress powered website.

Could you provide a bit of information about yourself and WooThemes? E.g. Your background, why the site was created, how long the site has been running, who uses your website…

I’m a half baked English / South African web designer and online entrepreneur currently living in London, UK.  I met Adii, one of the two of my now business partners at WooThemes.com, on one of my holiday visits back home to Cape Town a few years back. We got on well and shared a passion for the up and coming content management system WordPress and digital design. Adii had been testing the waters with designing a commercial theme for WordPress when they first started appearing and asked me to collaborate on a theme design with him. At the same time Magnus Jepson, our now Norwegian business partner had also been trialling a collaboration with Adii.

After a few months of building, supporting and marketing our WordPress themes we saw there was more in it and a huge gap in the market for affordable, good quality and well supported WordPress themes. The 3 of us decided to collaborate on a more serious level and sell our themes under the name WooThemes. A month later as WooThemes gained momentum Magnus quit his job as a developer, Adii quit his online media job he’d only started a month previously, I stopped my freelance design work and the rest is history! We are now a completely international online company with team members in England, South Africa, Norway, Portugal, and America (http://www.woothemes.com/meet-the-team/)

When you are creating a new theme, from the initial idea through to it being put on your website what are the stages involved at WooThemes?

We usually brainstorm a theme idea over Skype and email, based on user’s feedback and reports of what has been selling well. One of us then sketches up some wireframes and design mock-ups in Photoshop. We then get feedback from the rest of the team and tweak until pixel perfect. Once we are happy with the design we slice and dice it into neat semantic html/css. After that we build in our WooTheme WordPress framework and build in our theme option’s panel that gives the end user great customisation options to the layout and content structure from within the WordPress backend.

We of course test our themes rigorously and in different web browsers, before packaging the theme, writing the theme documentation, setting up the demo, setting up the support forum for the theme, posting the theme listing page and the launch blog post. It’s quite a process, but we are a team of 5 designers and developers so the responsibilities are shared.

You have committed yourselves to two new themes every month, how do you gain inspiration for your new designs?

We are never short of inspiration, one of our unique selling points is that we collaborate with the cream of the crop international web designers nearly every month (http://www.woothemes.com/collaborative-designers/) – each with their own unique styles. Every month’s theme releases are therefore unique, and really motivate us to come up with wonderful new theme designs too.

WooThemes thrives off listening to its community as is evident by the amount of comments on each and every blog post we publish. Our community decides on what sort of themes they want and we launch.

What are the key design and usability features you ensure all your designs have?

All our themes are built off the same reliable, tested theme framework, with each theme we try to make sure the user has the option to customize the navigation, home page structure and widgetized sidebar spaces. All the while somewhat restricting them to our design layout, as after all we are a team of experienced web designers and we don’t want our often novice wootheme users to completely run riot and break the themes they have purchased.

Our themes are built on a clean grid structure making sure everything aligns neatly, but well commented and coded so that freelance web designers, and web agencies using our themes as a base design to build their client work upon is flexible and ready for modifications.

We recently published a blog post about essential WordPress plug-ins. Are there any WordPress plug-ins you would recommend?

Page Navi – http://WordPress.org/extend/plugins/wp-pagenavi/
Navigation List – http://WordPress.org/extend/plugins/WordPress-navigation-list-plugin-navt/
Mail Chimp’s Analytics360 – http://WordPress.org/extend/plugins/analytics360/
CformsII – http://www.deliciousdays.com/cforms-plugin

A lot of your themes are using WordPress as a CMS rather than just a straight out blog. Do you see WordPress developing in to a traditional CMS over time?

I think it already is. WordPress has matured over the past year with nifty tagging, and categorization features. It’s core code is hugely powerful and flexible and we are seeing it used far more creatively than just for blogging purposes. Have a look over our theme portfolio – http://www.woothemes.com/themes/ – to see how it can be used and moulded for other CMS purposes.

As a blog owner, how do I encourage more reader interaction and loyalty?

We are theme designers not expert bloggers so aren’t the best people to ask. However, we’ve learnt a huge amount since we formed WooThemes in June last year. We run a blog called WooCamp which is our “design, development and better blogging outlet”. We’ve documented a lot of our journey. See this post for example: 8 Ways to guarantee steady, incoming traffic – http://www.woothemes.com/2009/08/8-ways-to-guarantee-steady-incoming-traffic/

When it comes to placing advertising on a blog, are you a believer that less is more or should I put banners and text links wherever I can?

Personally I despise sites littered with adverts, and it certainly forms a bad first impression of that site.  If you write good content and interact with your readers and market your content creatively using the online social media tools available to you you’ll draw traffic and retain it. The more traffic you generate the more valuable your ad space becomes and the more you can charge for it, eliminating spamming your readers with too many adverts.

Are there any resources/ articles on the internet you use that you would recommend people read?

Plenty, but I’ll leave you with a few, other than the WooThemes blog of course – www.woothemes.com/blog.

WP Topics for a directory of some great WordPress resources – http://www.wptopics.com/

Our South African friends The Perel Brothers who run a weekly video show on anything web design related – http://www.from-the-couch.com/

Pro Blogger – for some great blogging tips – http://www.problogger.net/

And for some inspiration the “Four Hour Work Week” by Tim Ferriss – http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/ and the online hussler – Gary Vaynerchuk – http://garyvaynerchuk.com/

Name:Matthew Telfer

About:Matthew is Heart Internet's Marketing Manager, and has held senior marketing positions in the web hosting industry for half a decade. With a passion for online marketing, Matthew is responsible for shaping strategy and developing the Heart Internet brand.

Posts by Matthew (182)

So far we have covered online marketing and web design in our blog sneeze series. In this post we are going to look back at the interviews we have run on the Heart Internet web hosting blog. Below are links to the interviews we have posted on the blog along with some excerpts from the interviews…

Oliver Dale

Our first interview was with designerstalk.com’s Oliver Dale.  In the interview we talked about the challenges of managing such a large and popular website along with how to approach freelance web design work.

“Going freelance is a daunting prospect, what advice would you give to anyone thinking of going down this route?
If possible, build up your client base while working employed for someone else – use networking events to meet potential clients and build up good relationships with your first set of clients and hopefully they will refer you to other people they know requiring your services. It’s a slow process but if you stick to it and produce high quality work you should be ok. During bad economic times such as at the moment, approaching other design agencies and offering your service may work as they can’t afford extra full-time staff but would like to pay someone on a per-job basis as this lessens the risk for them.”

Mark Roberts

The following month we moved on to cover CSS with Mark Robert’s owner of the popular CSS template site free-css.com. The interview centred around why web designers should use CSS and the future of CSS (as well as browser compatibility). An excerpt is below and you can click here to read the full interview

“There is increasing talk amongst designers about ignoring IE6 compatibility, what are your thoughts on this?
A question that has to be answered in 2 steps:
a. If you are building a personal or portfolio website then cover as many browsers as possible – this shows that you know what you are doing and that you have taken care in accommodating as many internet users as possible.
b. If you are building a commercial website then it’s basically an argument that has to be covered with your client(s). Extra mark-up for browsers that don’t conform to W3C standards means more time has to go into the project. As we all know “Time is Money”
I personally still cover IE6 – whether it be for personal or commercial projects.”

George Chiang

George Chiang from javascriptkit.com helped to provide us with an insight in to the relationship between CSS, HTML and JavaScript as well as recommending tools and resources for programmers to use.

“When a developer comes to using JavaScript on their site have you any best practice advice to help them?
With the rise of JavaScript frameworks such as jQuery and MooTools, it’s tempting for a new comer to skip learning the fundamentals of JavaScript and dive straight into these frameworks. I think this is a mistake, because frameworks are not meant to displace the need to learn a language, but to more easily create complex applications using it. A good understanding of JavaScript is essential in properly harnessing the power of JavaScript frameworks.”

Evie Milo

One of our most popular blog posts ever, our interview with freelance web designer Evie Milo provides some great information for budding freelancers straight from the horse’s mouth.

“What are your most effective methods for attracting new clients?
I attract new clients through the work I’ve done and can honestly say that 95% of new clients come to me because I have been recommended to them. The only cold calling I have ever done is when I initially started out and the thought of it filled me with dread. So I devised a cunning plan and created a short animation entitled ‘Seeking Big Fish’ – you can view it on my website – I placed it in a password protected directory and sent out an illustrated postcard to the companies in Edinburgh I wanted to work with. After checking my website stats to see which of the companies had logged in – each had a different username – I phoned them up to talk business. They all liked my approach and some put my details on file and others became my first ever clients.”

Frank Paul

Essentially kick starting a series of blog posts covering the issue of using a website to generate revenue, Frank Paul’s interview is a gold mine of information for any website owner who want to make money from their website.

“Which areas on the page have you found to be most effective when placing adverts and what is your approach to balancing the amount of advertising to content?
I find using text link advertising converts much higher than using flash banners, as in my experience of split testing, most visitors suffer from “banner blindness” as they see banners on almost every website they come across, so therefore they tend to subliminally block them out. Another benefit of this, is that the links can be added to the text so therefore it blends in much easier than banners.”

Paul Bryant

Following on from Frank’s interview we spoke to MoreNiche’s Paul Bryant about creating a website from scratch with the sole intention of making money.

“Are there any verticals you would advise caution against entering (and why)?
To be honest, probably not, because what isn’t a good vertical for one affiliate could be the perfect one for another. It all depends on your own viewpoint, experience and knowledge.

There are some such as credit cards and even price comparison websites that although are potentially very lucrative are also insanely competitive and I just wouldn’t consider. Unless you know the marketplace or can see a gap that you can fill you should avoid these ultra-competitive niches. Unless you get lucky you are unlikely to find much success there.

Instead concentrate on niches you already know, have an interest in, or simply that you can see good potential in entering. I would also strongly advise affiliates to spread their risk across different niches, products and networks. Never put all your eggs in one basket as they say.”

You can read our previous blog sneezes here:
Online marketing
Web design

Name:Matthew Telfer

About:Matthew is Heart Internet's Marketing Manager, and has held senior marketing positions in the web hosting industry for half a decade. With a passion for online marketing, Matthew is responsible for shaping strategy and developing the Heart Internet brand.

Posts by Matthew (182)