BlueHatDesign – Eugene, Oregon Web Design

Skip McDo­nald is a pho­to­grapher. Like many pho­to­graphers, he takes beau­ti­ful pho­to­graphs and makes them avai­la­ble for sale. Also like many pho­to­graphers, Skip gives pre­sen­ta­tions and workshops. Howe­ver, this is where Skip’s approach is dif­fe­rent. Skip approaches pho­to­graphy from the pers­pec­tive that the camera is a tool with which we can more clearly see our­sel­ves– using pho­to­graphy as a means of self awa­re­ness. Pho­to­graphy as therapy.

We just launched Skip’s new web site. Like most of my recent work, Skip McDo­nald Pho­to­graphy is a Word­Press site. The thrust of the site is to publi­cize Skip’s upco­ming  pre­sen­ta­tions and workshops, detail the phi­lo­sophy behind Skip’s work, and to show a sam­pling of his work through seve­ral galle­ries.

Wor­king with Skip is an abso­lute plea­sure and I’m sure you’ll find his site to be enga­ging, edu­ca­tio­nal, and inspirational.

MSRPO (Min­ne­sota Sea­so­nal Rec­rea­tio­nal Pro­perty Owners) Coa­li­tion speaks for rec­rea­tio­nal pro­perty owners at the State Capi­tol, see­king tax fair­ness, and grea­ter sup­port for fami­lies that own cabins, lake-shore, hun­ting shacks and sea­so­nal pro­perty in Min­ne­sota. In order to effec­ti­vely carry out this mis­sion, it is para­mount that they are able to com­mu­ni­cate effec­ti­vely with their cons­ti­tuents. Read the rest of this entry »

The 10th anni­ver­sary of Web­Vi­sions, a nationally-recognized con­fe­rence that explo­res the future of Web design, tech­no­logy, user expe­rience and busi­ness stra­tegy was held in at the Port­land Con­fe­rence Cen­ter this past week. I have to con­gra­tu­late exe­cu­tive direc­tor Brad Smith, the great staff, and an ama­zing crew of volun­teers for put­ting on a fan­tas­tic conference.

The line up of spea­kers was top-notch as always. Topics ran­ged from Luke Williams’ “How to Spark Dis­rup­tive Inno­va­tion” (ope­ning key­note), to Shashi Bellamkonda’s “Per­so­nal Bran­ding”, to nuts and bolts stuff like “Desig­ning Our Way Through Web Forms” with Kim­berly Bles­sing and Chris­topher Schmitt.

I came away from this con­fe­rence smar­ter, more con­nec­ted and more ins­pi­red to keep lear­ning, and keep buil­ding awe­some stuff for the web!

(photo by Shashi Bellam­konda)

Mood boards are a way to get the client acti­vely invol­ved in the pro­cess early-on in a web pro­ject. This allows them to feel that they are being inc­lu­ded and kept in the loop. It even gives them a way to par­ti­ci­pate in the design process.

I am a fairly linear per­son, espe­cially con­si­de­ring that I’m a desig­ner (we tend to lean toward the crea­tive and quirky). It has been my habit to want to jump in on a new design pro­ject, open Pho­toshop and bang out the design tem­plate straight away. I have a pretty good idea up front what will work in HTML/CSS and what wont, so I usually feel con­fi­dent that I can come up with a good, usa­ble design on the first cou­ple of attempts. This approach has wor­ked well for me for the most part, up to this point. Read the rest of this entry »

Consi­de­ring the name of my com­pany, this is a no–bea­ner brai­ner. This Mon­day, Novem­ber 30th is the 3rd Annual Blue Bea­nie Day. Accor­ding to the Face­book page,

“Thou­sands of Stan­dar­dis­tas (peo­ple who sup­port web stan­dards) will wear a Blue Bea­nie to show their sup­port for acces­si­ble, seman­tic web content.

It’s easy to show your sup­port for web design done right. Beg, borrow, or buy a Blue Bea­nie and snap a photo of your mug wea­ring the blue. (Or get crea­tive with Pho­toshop). Then on Novem­ber 30, switch your pro­file pic­ture in Face­book, Twit­ter, Flickr, (and any other social net­work) and post your photo to the Blue Bea­nie Day group … watch for more infor­ma­tion coming soon.

Twee­tups and Beanie-ups are being plan­ned all over the globe … watch for more infor­ma­tion coming soon…

see also http://www.flickr.com/groups/bluebeanieday2009/ ”

I always wear a blue hat (bea­nie?) but this one is spe­cial.

The Busi­ness Web­site Star­ter Pack is an early release of a star­ter kit for business-oriented umbraco sites, aiming to kicks­tart deve­lop­ment and give new umbraco devs a good star­ting point for buil­ding their own sites.

As I’ve said many times, mar­ke­ting is not my forte. I’m a web designer/developer, and I simply don’t have time to become an expert in mar­ke­ting, seo (search engine opti­mi­za­tion) and social media. That said, these areas are of great inte­rest to my clients, so the sub­ject comes up daily.

Here’s a great article by Scott Strat­ten at UnMar­ke­ting which sheds some light on how you can use Twit­ter to help engage a local market.

Lee Mes­sen­ger has published a very valua­ble blog­post at Blog­Fod­der called A Com­plete Newbie’s Guide to Umbraco which ser­ves as a collec­tion of exce­llent links and infor­ma­tion spe­ci­fi­cally tar­ge­ted to Umbraco new­bies (of which I am one!) It’s great to see this type of infor­ma­tion being published around Umbraco as it will help build the user base by making it easier for new­bies to get invol­ved in this great CMS. One of the recom­men­da­tions that Lee makes is that you should join Umbraco.tv (19 eur per month) to gain access to over 5 hours of video trai­ning. I plan on chec­king out these videos as I get more invol­ved in Umbraco.development.

It’s not always easy for free­lan­cers to get good qua­lity, cons­truc­tive cri­ti­cism on a new con­cept.  We can always ask friends and family mem­bers, but we’re not likely to get a cri­ti­que that is based on solid design prac­ti­ces and con­cepts. Asking in online com­mu­ni­ties can often lead to caus­tic, unhelp­ful com­ments.  Con­cept Feed­back is an online app that attempts to bridge that gap. Here’s what they say about their concept:

Desig­ned spe­ci­fi­cally for small and medium busi­ness mar­ke­ters, graphic desig­ners, and web deve­lo­pers, Con­cept Feed­back pro­vi­des a sim­ple tool to get qua­lity feed­back on mar­ke­ting con­cepts. Best of all, it’s 100% FREE!

There is a full review at Fuel Your Creativity.

I’ve just had my second look at Umbraco, an ASP.Net con­tent mana­ge­ment sys­tem (CMS). When I first stum­bled on Umbraco about a year ago, I misun­ders­tood the license agree­ment to mean that in order to use the open source ver­sion of the soft­ware, you were requi­red to put “Powe­red by Umbraco” on the home page of the site.  After a clo­ser look, reveals that this is not true. The only Umbraco bran­ding that you’re stuck with is in the con­trol panel. This works just fine for my pur­pose which is to give my clients a fra­me­work within which they can edit their own con­tent. Read the rest of this entry »