I was getting sick of looking at my old card that I basically threw together far too quickly, and as a result didn’t like handing it over to people, because I felt it sucked… should’ve put more effort into it to begin with.

But that is history now, for my new card I decided to do a bit of research on current trends, and look around for some good ideas, I came upon a lot of good ideas, and of course some terrible ones as well.

Once I had an idea down of what I wanted my new card to look like I started designing it in photoshop, I actually got it down pretty quickly, only about two hours.  I then asked a few people their opinions, made a couple of changes based on that, and then simply left it alone for a couple of days.

I wanted to leave it for a little while, so that I could have the chance to come back before anything was finalized and have a fresh look at it, to make sure I still liked what I was looking at. I think that is an important part of any design, I find if I work on a design one day, a lot of it will be based on my mood that day, but that is never a good idea, sure a design should have an element of your own personality on it, but it’s main focus should be about setting a mood, not being controlled by one.

So after giving it a couple of days, I approached it again, and I still quite liked it.  I made a few further adjustments, to alignment, sizing, and colouring, until I was happy with the result.

All that was left was sending it off for printing, I decided to send it to Australian Trade Printers, their prices were very reasonable, they were helpful, friendly and prompt.

I digress so back to the topic.  I’m kind of spewin, cause Australian free to air TV does not have the best coverage of the Olympics, so when all I want to do is watch some of the winter sports I can’t.

So currently I’m looking around for some online coverage, so far I have found the official site, but it only shows interviews rather than the action, although it is a cool site, and youtube hasn’t got much up either, but I don’t think they are allowed to.

Other than those few things I’ve enjoyed watching it so far, makes me wish I was over there, maybe I’ll start planning a holiday to whistler, and spend some time snowboarding, speaking about snowboarding, a shout out to SnowboardRealms I stumbled across these guys on youtube, they have some awesome vids.

Anyway I’m looking forward to the rest of the Olympics, maybe I’ll just have to buy the dvd after it’s finished.

It’s an important aspect of a web site design, since people will have judged your site in the first few seconds of being there, so you want to make sure that whatever you display in this area will immediately catch your audiences attention.

Basic stuff, but sometimes hard to work out, since it comes down to several different technical factors, like your audiences screen resolution.  Obviously if one person had a resolution of 800×600 then less information would be displayed above the fold compared to someone with their resolution set to 1024×768 or a higher setting that most people have these days.

So it would come down to some site management to find out who uses your site the most, and which users become the customers, and work to appeal to these more so than others.

Your heading, navigation, catchphrases, advertising, and multiple other things can influence this ‘Above the Fold’ area.

Most people when reading through a website will be using their mouse to guide their eyes, it means they will be ready to click through on a link, or take action straight away when they need to.

As such, we can track what people look at, and better understand our website, like where things should be placed if we want to give them more attention.

Hotspots – Usage

I haven’t started using this method of tracking on any of my sites yet, but am looking into it.

Apparently, though, the javascript that tracks movement can slow down the websites loading, which would perhaps suck slightly.

Anyway, I think it would be a useful tool when it comes to making alterations to a site.  It would give us an idea on where we should move more important elements, or information we want to draw attention to.  It would also tell us whether or not our leading lines, or attention grabbing techniques are actually working.

Focus

From what I can tell, these maps are used mainly used by advertisement companies, as indicators as to where best to place there advertisements.

I see no reason why they shouldn’t be used as guides to designing websites though, within reason of course.

People expect sites to follow a fairly generic standard of placement, when it comes to images, navigation, and content, so the ‘heat’ marks should follow that standard to a degree.

We shouldn’t place advertisements or irrelevant things on these spots, because if someone doesn’t want to see it, rather that hanging around or looking further into our site, they will simply click out.  We can use these heat guides as places to put relavant information and catchy headlines.

We wouldn’t base, say for example, a new site design, on the prexisting sites heatmap, because the view would shift based on the information displayed.

…Anyway this is something I will be looking into further.

Sites that offer the service

• http://www.labsmedia.com/clickheat/index.html
• http://www.clickdensity.com/
• http://crazyegg.com/

When it comes to print, like newspapers and magazines, these have already set standards, depending on the audience.  They know what font works best, the sizing and colours that capture attention, and leading lines.

But what about the web, since it often needs to perform the same task as print?

Because it is a different medium, sometimes it’s unclear to people, how they should be setting up the font to work best on their web site.

Far from being the the be all and end all as to web fonts, this article just shows what I find to work best for me… in most situations.

The Nature of Ratios

There are many relationships in nature that hold clues for us, like formulas that make things appear clean, or emphasize certain points.

There are a few that I found;

• The Golden Ratio
• Fibonacci’s Sequence

The Golden Ratio

If you were to look this up on a search engine, you may find a lot of sources that give you math equations to explain it, it can become complicated if your not that way inclined.

Put basically, this golden ratio equals 1.6, meaning that if you were to have 2 lengths, (length a and length b) where a might equal 1 unit, b would equal 1.6 units.

This formula has been used and studied throughout history not only by mathematicians, but also by architects, artists, musicians, and many others, the reason being is because of it’s aesthetic property.  It seems that wherever it is used, whether it be a piece of music or a well designed building, by using this golden ratio, the design will be pleasing.

So how can we make use of this for the web?

I use this formula when dealing with line height, and paragraph margins, in my main body text.

If my font size was 16px, my line height would be; 16×1.6 = 25.6 or 25px

Using the same rule I would work out the margin between my paragraphs, but in the other direction; 16/1.6 = 10 or 10px

I find that following this rule, gives me an easy to read block of text, with an appealing amount of white space surrounding my lines.

This rule can also be used in seperating or dividing content on your pages.

Fibonacci’s Sequence

These sequence, is again found in nature, and has a very close link with the Golden Ratio.

First the sequence; 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34… and so on, basically each consecutive number in the sequence, is the result of the addition of the previous two numbers.

The relationship it has with the Golden Ratio, is that when you divide wto adjacent numbers, dividing the higher over the lower, the result equals 1.6 or this Golden Ratio.

It is suggested that when picking font sizes, rather than just picking some arbitrary number for the font sizes, of paragraphs, headings and so forth, you instead pick the font sizes from a predetermined sequence.

Fibonacci’s Sequence is one of these, that can be used.

In Summary

These rules and formulas are certainly not the only ones that should be used, however they do offer some guidelines, and definitely illustrate the importance of consistency and intelligence when we construct our pages.

Sources

• Crabby’s Font Facts 102
• Typography Design Patterns and Best Practices
• The Fibonacci Numbers and Golden Section in Nature
• Beautiful Web Typography (#4)
• My own thoughts… sorry, you can’t link through to those

The Trip

For the seven of us that were heading out there, we only had one four wheel drive, this sort of vehicle was required for the second leg of the journey, so three of us headed out in a ford falcon, along a bumpy gravel road until we got to the sand, at which point we had to leave the sedan behind, and hop in the tray of the hilux, and off we went through the sand backtracking our direction up the beach, until we found a spot that looked good for casting out, nestled between a rocky outcrop and mangroves.

The Weather

After about half an hour of a few bites but no good fish, the storm clouds that had been brewing on the horizon were getting closer.  There was a huge electrical storm in amongst it, the thing about the Kimberley is you can see these dark clouds coming closer, and still be wearing just shorts and a shirt, since it stays quite hot.  However we got some relief from the heat when the wind picked up, incidentally it was coming from the storm, so it was cool.  About ten minutes after we felt the cool wind, the rain came, only lightly at first, but it didn’t take it long to pick up and start coming down heavy.

It almost felt like hail it was coming down that hard, and it wasn’t long before we were all cold because of the sudden drop in the temperature.  Our reprieve was the ocean, the water was so warm, not unlike you would expect from a bath.

The electrical storm came right over the top of us, and scared us half to death when one time it hit about fifty meters away, what a great experience, in the end it turned out to be a great evening, whilst we didn’t catch much, we got to have a great experience, the storm didn’t even pass over Broome either, so if we had been sitting inside, we wouldn’t have even known about it.

The Kimberley can be a harsh place, but it means well.

Of course I want to make sure that this site will meet the world wide web consortium standards, and make sure it stays that way as I make changes.

By using Wordpress in this way it will also help me familiarize myself with Wordpress, so I am better able to assist my clients, and whoever else needs help.  Just by typing this first post I am noticing things that need to happen already, for instance, currently the spell check feature is not working for me, I’m thinking I will need to sort that out as soon as possible, otherwise there is going to be a few mistakes that go unnoticed by myself.

So I am hoping to be posting about my travels both in the real world and online, the thing I like and the things that inspire me, if you are reading this, then welcome to my site, I hope you find something that interests you.