There are a million web designers out there and every seven seconds there is a new blog that goes live. The connection? It’s competition. At least for freelance web designers.

The truth is, the online world is a very harsh place for freelance web designers, or even web design firms. It takes a gazillion tons of sweat and marketing to be known. People’s attention spans are very short. Who are you again?

What if I told you that guest posting is your way to fame? That simply by guest posting you are increasing your chance of getting hired for new projects, or be an authority figure?

It only takes 5 minutes of reading.

Also, I wrote this article in under 40 minutes. Do you want to know how?

Which of the Three Are You?

1. Design blog owner?

There are thousands of active design blogs on the internet and yours is probably one of them. Your problem might lie in the fact that no one is visiting your blog.

How do I promote my blog? To whom should I reach out? Should I spend money on advertising?

2. Freelance web designer looking for job?

I told you before, the internet is a very harsh place where only the strong survive. Remember MySpace? Facebook came along and now MySpace is only a fraction of what it used to be. Freelance web designers are the same.

How do you tell the world that you are different?

3. Web design firm?

Of all the web design firms out there why should clients choose you? Well, they will probably choose you because of the services you provide. But is that enough? Unfortunately, no. Clients will choose to work with you over other design firms because you are known to them. Becoming well known is not really that hard, all you need to do is establish a constant presence out there. Scrap social media for a minute. It’s “that place where a lot of designers and people who want to have a website” go to that you want to anchor your presence on.

The Real Problem

The truth is, you don’t need to spend money on advertising just to get known. You don’t need to be ultra unique to compel people to visit your website or hire you or use your service. All you have to do is to make your presence known.

Make my presence known? Yes.

The citizens of the internet have a very short attention span. You too. Name at least five new blogs you visited in the past month. Can you? Yes, quite hard right?

I have a solution for that.

And it will only take you an hour to get started.

Why Not Guest Post?

Solution to your problem? Guest posting. Submitting articles and tutorials on blogs will never put you at a disadvantage. You can earn money by guest posting, a lot of people do this regularly and earn a living. Through guest posting you can also shout out to the world that you exist, that you are worth looking at the first time and the second time and on a daily basis.

By guest posting you are establishing dominance, if done right. You get your existence known.

10 Design Blogs to Guest Post On, okay?

(never end a sentence with a preposition, so I added “okay”)

1. 1stwebdesigner

2. Smashing Magazine

3. A List Apart

4. Hongkiat

5. WebDesignTuts+

6. Onextrapixel

7. Webdesigner Depot

8. Think Vitamin

9. Web Design Ledger

10. Web Designer Wall

How to Write a Guest Post?

A few things you need to know before whipping out that pen and paper (or keyboard and text editor):

1. You should know what you are writing about
2. You should have a good grasp on grammar and spelling
3. Be persistent

Do the following:

1. Visit the blogs I posted above, including 1WD
2. Visit at least 10 pages of each blog and check which articles tend to get shared and commented
3. From there you’ll know what kind of articles are accepted and what tends to be popular

Then you contact the blog editor or owner. Be sure to read their “Write for Us” page or whatever they may have.

Writing the Article

Once the blogs reply to your guest posting inquiry, that should be when you present your ideas to them. Choosing the perfect idea is crucial to building a long-lasting relationship. Choose a topic that is needed, current, and you have a solution for. CSS, jQuery, Photoshop, HTML5, PHP, and a lot more.

Follow this structure:

1. Introduction – in the most simplest sentences tell the readers about the whole article.
2. Statement of the Problem – this is important, everybody has a problem they’re trying to solve. Tell them you know what it is and that you have a solution for it.
3. Offer a Solution – people love solutions, so should you. Either the solution is a tutorial on how to hack WordPress or design a better logo, this is the place where you drop the “awesome” bomb.
4. Conclusion – not necessarily a conclusion. It can be a piece of advice, a more pressing question, or more resources that can help them solve their problem.

Follow this structure and you will write that first guest post of yours in under an hour.

Keep in Mind:

• Provide valuable content. It’s your name that is at stake. Write terribly and even if it gets published no one will be impressed.
• Have a list of blogs to follow and read from on a daily basis.
• Don’t just “post and run”. You should engage with your readers by replying to comments, that way they will know that you’re not a robot.
• Guest post regularly – establish a relationship with blogs.

Special thanks to Danny Iny. Danny is the “Freddy Krueger” of Guest Blogging. He got that name because every online marketing blog you go to he’s always there. And together with hundreds, if not thousands, of people he taught me how to write in under an hour without losing the essence of the whole post.

You might not realize how important colours are in web design. If a website is green, it might as well be blue; it doesn’t matter. And while I thought this myself for a long time, I recently came to the conclusion that the color is actually going to make a huge difference and express something different to your audience. There are psychological effects behind each color and tone, therefore I decided to tell you more about them today.

Human senses get excited about lots of stuff. One of the most effective ways to excite somebody is to project a red hue color onto the walls of their room. It’s been done before by scientists and they came with a clear conclusion. A person who lives in a red room has a higher heart rate and blood pressure than a person living in a blue room. This is because red symbolizes excitement, we all know this. There is a reason why fast food companies choose red as their main or secondary color. Good examples are Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Burger King or Pepsi (although blue is their main color).

Colors Stimulate Senses

Colors can stimulate and excite people, increase their appetite, make them feel warm or make them feel tranquil. Red simply makes you excited according to those who study chromodynamics. Coke’s website is red – it gives you a feel of a lazy, hot summer day – just when you feel the need to drink Coke.

Image Source: StockLogos

There’s more to colors in web design than just the emotional factor. People tend to gamble more under red light conditions than under blue light. This is the main reason behind cities like Las Vegas using a lot of red lights. Colors have impact on performance. Red lights make people act quicker and feel more powerful, which is not always beneficial, while blue makes people think more before acting. There is a reason STOP signs are red – you need to act right away and stop the vehicle you drive, otherwise you are in danger.

Mixing Colors

Mixing colors is beneficial if done the right way. Mixing very complementary colors is also something people do, but it should only be done occasionally. It shouldn’t be overdone because it has a bad effect on people’s eyes. You can think of a black website with pink text. Now that’s an image I would like to get out of my head as soon as possible :).

There is a very good trick behind using complementary colors together. Drawing a thin neutral white, gray or black line around the two colored shapes will make the eyes see both colors separately. Just look at the Pepsi logo below: red and blue are separated by not only a thin layer of white, but by a quite big one. This white shape blends red and blue better then if they would be placed right on top of each other.

Image source: Pepsi

Colors and Cultures

Moreover, colors mean something else in different parts of the world. While red means luck in China, it means a lack of it in Germany. Huge corporations with lots of financial resources will use large amounts of money to study the effects different colors have on different cultures, before entering a new market. Many think it is impossible, but clients can be lost because of using the wrong colors.

And while huge corporations usually hire experts to do this research for them, the results are not always good. Every designer (and every person in general) has a tendency to like colors or combinations of colors and to use them in different situations because it’s what they personally like. I myself love red and black together, pretty obviously because I’ve been supporting Italian outfit A.C. Milan for almost ten years now. This is not such a good asset when working with colors is your way of earning a salary. It is crucially important for designers to tear all their personal favorites apart and only focus on the clients and their needs.

Colors for a Website

Picking a color for a website means much more then picking your favorite color and turning it into a layout. It means picking the right color in order to get the desired response from your audience. If you know your audience well and figured out which color works best for them, you are already halfway there in the creation process. It is also quite unlikely to pick a color that will fit every visitor of your website, therefore it is even more important to be able to determine which color and tone works best for most users you target.

Image source: 123RF Stock Photos

According to different sources, half of the people visiting a website don’t come back because of the color of the design. The first thing people need to recognize when they see your site are the brand colors. If you have multiple colors and they can’t see the most dominant, it means you should consider a redesign.

• If you have a blue color scheme, people will likely give you a better response when in a good mood. If you want a clean, white design, it’s fine too. But if you want to make it exciting, use bright red or orange here and there. White and green work great together, and if you want to be stylish and modern without using intense colors, go for white and gray. Such a combination illustrates something glamorous, sleek, fresh and clean. Just look at the classy example below.

• If you like darker shades, pretty much everything works well with black as long as black is not the dominant color. A website with a black background can be fancy and look good, but is not easy to read. The two simplest combinations you can go for are black and white or black and a bright gray. Although a very powerful contrast, black and orange work really well together, but might require white for balance.
• If you want to combine both black and white with a color, then they work really well with blue; make sure white is dominant, otherwise you need a very bright blue to dominate. Don’t give black a lot of emphasis in this combination. You can see a good example below. The second example is quite poor and shows how this combination can be put into practice. Not only is the design outdated, but the colors make it even more difficult to bear.

• Black and white work very well with red too, but make sure red is not dominant, as then it gets too powerful and creates an unbearable contrast with black. You can see two good examples below.

• A third combination I would recommend is black, white and green, and you can see down below why.

Image source: Website Templates Online

Conclusion

Using the right color in your designs is crucial and I am sure you can see why. Although it might sound wrong, by using the right color in accordance to your audience will increase the likelihood of them doing what you want them to do. But wrong or right, this is what all designers work for, sending a message to an audience and then hoping to get a response from them. If you understand how color psychology works and which color fits your audience, you are a step closer to launching a successful website.

Do you ever compare your work to the work of other designers? Are you afraid to ask clients for money?

If you are a freelance web designer, you know how difficult this lifestyle can be. From scheduling, to dealing with crazy clients, to managing your own work/life balance—there is a lot to juggle!

So to simplify your life a little, I am letting you in on my 10 Commandments of Freelancing that have helped me through many tough times. I hope they help you too!

Freelance Web Designers Commandments

1. Thou Shalt Start Small, but Dream Big

Whether you are just starting out or have been freelancing for a while, remember, everyone starts small. If you keep working diligently at building your freelance career and believe you can succeed, you will notice positive growth over time. Don’t ever give up!

2. Thou Shalt Not Beat Yourself Up and Compare Yourself to Others

Image by Nighthawk

Low self confidence will impede your progress as a freelancer. Don’t let anyone ever tell you that what you do is easier than working a 9 to 5 job. Yes, you create your own schedule and there are many perks, but the mental battle can be fierce! You must constantly put yourself out there and you become vulnerable every time you submit work to a client.

Have you ever had these thoughts?

Will they like my work?
Will they reject it and think I am not qualified?
What if they don’t like it? Will I ever make a living doing this?

First, remember that your work is not a direct reflection of who you are as a person. Separating your personal worth from your work is half the battle. It’s OK to make mistakes and work through them. Mistakes do not define you; they make you stronger.

3. Thou Shalt Not Forget How Much You Know

You do not have to be the award-winning, perfect, millionaire-making designer to provide your clients valuable services. This doesn’t mean you should stop learning and growing in your craft. But, most web designers fail to realize how MUCH they actually know because they are so busy comparing their knowledge to other successful designers instead of serving their clients.

And if you have been working as a freelancer for a long time, it is easy to forget how much knowledge you have because your skills have become so commonplace to you. It is NOT common knowledge to your clients, if it was, they would not be coming to you for help! You have something to offer!

4. Thou Shalt Not Feel Guilty About Asking for Money

Image by johnridley

This commandment ties into the last one. If you know the value you offer, you will not feel guilty about invoicing a client. Your clients are paying you for your service and time and if you gave the project your all, you deserve every penny owed to you.

5. Thou Shalt Keep a Schedule or Face Procrastination

Procrastination is like our evil sidekick that vies for our attention. For me, it attacks when I hit an obstacle with a project. It’s much easier to check Facebook or respond to a friend’s email then to tackle an obstacle head on.

To avoid procrastination, create a weekly/daily schedule and assign hourly tasks. When I create a schedule the night or week before, I know exactly what needs to be accomplished and how much time it should take. If you do not create a schedule, you will be tempted to push a project back another day and convince yourself you will have time to finish it tomorrow.

6. Thou Shalt Not Work Yourself to the Bone

Some freelancers have the opposite problem of procrastination. If you stay up late at night and take on more projects than you know you can handle, you may need a reality check. The extra stress is not healthy, even if you need the money. Your health is not worth it!

If you feel like you are working too much, it may be time to raise your rates. Never underestimate what you are worth.

Don’t think that no one will pay you what you are worth. When you have this mindset, you take the low-paying projects and work harder than you have to. There are plenty of clients who pay for quality work. You just have to know how to brand yourself to look like the expert that you are and market your services accordingly. If you are confident in your services, your clients will be as well.

7. Thou Shalt Change Out of Your Pajamas

Image Credit

I know I am not the only one who, from time to time, stays in my PJ’s all day! Raise your hand or leave a comment if you are equally guilty! It’s way too easy for freelancers to roll out of bed and go straight to your desk.

On days when I am not leaving my office, I find it productive to get ready as if I am leaving for a meeting. When you remain in your pajamas, you will stay in “sleep mode.” When you get dressed for the day, you become energized and more ready to face the day.

8. Thou Shalt Get Up and Move Every Hour

Have you ever sat at your computer in a comatose state for more than 10 hours at a time?

For health reasons it’s good to get up and walk around every hour, even if for just a few minutes.

It gets your blood circulating. It’s not good to stay in a sedentary state for longer than an hour at a time.

9. Thou Shalt Say No!

Image by Oddball27

Remember that it is OK to say “no” to a project if it doesn’t line up with your skillset or your desired budget. You are hiring your clients just as much as they are hiring you. If you are not comfortable with a task or the nature of the work, pass on it. You will be happy you did.

10. Thou Shalt Not Work for Free

If you are just starting on your first few projects, you can offer free work in exchange for exposure, but most of the time it is not worth it. Clients will give you every reason to work with them for next to nothing and promise you grand exposure even though their website doesn’t even have enough traffic to track. Do your research and just say no!

Do you have other commandments you live by? I would love to hear more!

The Problem: you just had a meeting with a new web design client. It went great. You asked all the right questions, and have a good sense of the client’s goals. Before wrapping up, you ask them where the content for the site will be coming from. “We’ll just write it ourselves and email it to you,” they say. Fantastic.

They sign the contract, which outlines a rough time estimate, including a deadline for when your client should send their site copy to you. You start designing (with dummy text,) and you’re just waiting for the copy to arrive.

The deadline comes and goes. No copy.

You write your client a polite email reminding them about the deadline, and you ask them when they expect to have it finished. “Oh, we got busy, we should have it to you next week.” Next week comes and goes, and still nothing.

You get the point. You have probably been in this very predicament yourself. In all my years as a graphic and web designer, I have found that nothing stalls a project more then a procrastinating client. The problem is that in an effort to save some money, your client may volunteer for the task of writing his own site’s copy, a job that he may not have time for, or even be suited for. When the harsh reality of an empty text document sets in, your client may just do nothing. This can result in lengthy project delays, or even all-out project abandonment.

The Solution

The next time you meet with a new client who needs a brand new web presence from scratch, imagine not asking who will be writing the site’s copy, but rather telling them that they can expect a call from your copywriter. It will then be your writing partner’s job to get in touch with your client and interview them. They can then extract all the important details that must be included, and craft a well written (and on-time) website’s worth of copy to be delivered to you.

Sound like a bold maneuver? Well it is, and that’s the whole point. By taking control of the situation, you can finish projects much faster, and deliver a better end product. Of course, you will have to build in the cost of your copywriter, but that is also a good thing. By raising your rates, you will be able to weed out bargain-hunting clients, and focus on the more serious prospects.

Where to Find the Right Copywriter for the Job

Image credits

I was lucky enough to have been in many work situations where I was introduced to very talented copywriters. So I have a good pool to dip into when necessary. Maybe you know some yourself, maybe not. Even if you don’t, there are many avenues online you can use to find the perfect copywriter for the job.

If I had to find somebody new, the first place I would look would be LinkedIn. A simple search will uncover thousands of qualified writers, most of whom will have links to their portfolio so that you can check out their previous work, as well as recommendations written by former clients. These resources can be invaluable when evaluating and vetting just about anyone, including writers.

You want to be on the lookout for someone who has experience with web writing specifically. Writing for the web is a skill in and of itself, as it must combine marketing language with SEO writing, and above all else, it has to tell a story. The story is what draws users in. It is every bit as important as good design for keeping users engaged, so choosing a writer who excels in this area is key.

While I think that LinkedIn is your best bet, I have heard of others having success finding copywriters on Twitter, FreelanceSwitch and oDesk. But be forewarned that if you place an ad on a site like oDesk, you will most likely be inundated with responses, many of whom are not native English speakers. That is not a problem necessarily, but make sure that their writing is consistently grammatically correct before tasking them with writing for your clients. After all, any mistakes on their part will reflect badly on you.

Paying Your Copywriter

When it comes to paying your copywriter there are any number of arrangements that you could enter into. Since I prefer to include the copywriting as a part of my services rather than as an optional add-on, I like to bundle it in with my rate and invoice my client for the full amount. Then I, in turn, pay my copywriter.

And since I like to quote an exact price for my clients, I will usually brief my writer on the project, giving all pertinent details and ask her to give me a price range that my client could expect to pay for the job. I then simply split the difference between the two numbers, and maybe add a little extra for safety. I then add this amount to my quote. I don’t specifically call out as a line item, but rather, i include it in the overall cost of the site. It really helps to just sell it as an all-inclusive package.

If you would rather not deal with this yourself, you can always tell your client that they will be paying your writer directly. This will make things easier on you, and you won’t be on the hook for any overages your writer may charge. But keep in mind that this will sometimes invite the possibility of your client dismissing the idea of a copywriter at all. Then you might just be right back to square one.

Conclusion

There is nothing more frustrating in the life of a web designer than a client-stalled project. It breaks up our work-flow and consequently, our cash-flow. By taking the responsibility away from your client and bringing it in-house, you can take the power to control the pace of the project. And by bringing in somebody who knows what good writing can bring to a website, your client will be that much happier in the end.

By considering a few common variables like screen size, adapting a site to its visitors’ particular needs becomes a matter of some clever CSS planning and Javascript rather than the detailed design of numerous, parallel sites. For anyone whose faced the logistical minefield of multi-site coordination, responsive design is, to put it mildly, a very good thing.

As you may know, the concept itself is actually borrowed from architecture, another discipline that focuses on the relationship between people and created environments. The crossover makes sense.

According to Steven Johnson’s book Where Good Ideas Come From (2011), this kind of conceptual cross-fertilization has been responsible for numerous key breakthroughs throughout the history of thought and invention. This insight gave me an idea. Although I’ve been casually designing sites for almost as long as the internet has been around, until about six months ago most would have thought of me primarily as an English professor. A recent career shift to full time developer/designer, in combination with my background in literary studies, has given me a unique and perhaps weird perspective on the world of design.

Now I wish I could pause here to blast the cold-hearted bastards that swore I’d never set foot in a university again, because that would be so badass, but the fact is I actually left teaching on purpose and on good terms. I did it to explore the relationship between technology and culture, something that has fascinated me at least since I first sat down and played King’s Quest II in 1986. When I was asked to write this article, I got to thinking about the productive cross-fertilization between design and architecture. I wondered what — if any — concepts from literary studies might be usefully applied to web design.

After some musing, I’ve compiled a list of six possibilities. These represent only a first pass at the question, but I hope they can at least be suggestive and perhaps provocative. In literary geek terms, I’m doing a little ratiocination. On with the concepts…

1. Metaphor

This one’s almost too obvious, but last I checked metaphor is still largely the expertise of English professors. Brace yourself for one of those annoying zingers people always says about their profession: believe it or not, the web is all metaphor! Burn! (No, not really). Metaphor — a comparison using two items that appear to have no relation — is the chief (and some would say only) paradigm we use to process new technical media.

The idea of a link is a metaphor — it could have just as easily been called an IP transfer node, but that would take the average non-technical user much longer to understand. When Tim Berners-Lee was trying to conceptualize the Internet itself, he explored metaphors of mines and meshes. The Web, Windows, Tweets, Digg, Facebook, Canvas — these are all metaphors (and Reddit’s a pun).

Here’s really the main thing to take away from this one: being aware of one’s metaphors is a great route to successful design. The secret of numerous well-known websites is that they are fully aware of the metaphors they use: they pull ideas down to earth from the ether of code (interestingly, at least to me, the point of comparison in a metaphor is actually called the “ground”). Metaphors appeal to people’s visual and tactile senses, and this makes them much easier to remember, particularly because we live with increasingly visual and tactile technologies.

To make the word more palatable to the executive ear (tsk, tsk), you could introduce it as “visual coherence” or “tactile consistency.” They would eat it up like a dog’s breakfast (oops, simile).

2. Signature

When I used to teach first year composition classes, signature was the single most important concept I worked on communicating. It doesn’t just mean putting your John Hancock at the bottom of something. It refers to the unique trace of the person that peaks through the words and ideas. Closely related is the idea of voice: the vital, unique force that speaks through a particular project.

Best practices can take you a long way, but good design usually has a clear signature and a voice, and again, the best coders are the ones who are conscious of their unique style. While a cranky client may seem to relish nothing more than the thought of destroying your signature entirely, it peeks through in everything from color palate to font to layout to cross-browser solutions (and, yes, even your particular implementation of responsive design). It’s not quite the same thing as brand, because it is always implicit rather than explicit. To look for its traces think about how you’d redesign Google or Facebook.

If that’s all a little too abstract, you can always see how the buzzwords “design subtext” or “sub-theme” or “implicit scheme” or “subscaping” roll off your tongue.

3. Busting the Cycle

Okay, this one’s not strictly from an English classroom. I actually stole it from an episode of The Show with Ze Frank, but I often applied it to lessons on how to write A+ papers. The most brilliant papers are those that not only identify current ways of thinking but also take them a step further.

Although I’m still in love with the curvaceous joys of CSS3′s “border-radius” attribute, for instance, I noticed that Twitter’s new rollout actually did round corners in a scaled-back, toned down, 3px kind of way. Along these lines, very few designers have explored the possibilities for asymmetric curves in an effective way (somebody get on that!).

True creative talent resides in the ability to spot and explode a cliché — to swerve at the last moment away from the creative dead end. If you’re just copying what’s out there, then you’ve already fallen behind. The people who designed current hot sites are already working on their next phase.

There’s only one sure-fire method for spotting the clichés and busting the cycle: research. Before you groan and writhe in agony, just stop and realize that research in this case means surfing a lot of what you consider to be really fantastic websites. Steven Johnson notes that research is so effective because it leads to improved generation of what’s called the “adjacent possible” — the possibilities that lay just beyond the limits of current ways of looking at things.

I’ll term this one “predictive development” or “proactive design” or “tactical border-trashing”, just for kicks.

4. Nonce Taxonomy

What, you may be asking yourself at this point, does this guy have for all these random terms? Let me explain.

The term “nonce taxonomy” is borrowed from a woman who died way too soon, my literary-critical hero Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. Nonce means “for the once”, and a taxonomy of course is a system of naming. So a “nonce taxonomy” is a system of concepts and terminology that’s tailor made for the project at hand, and disposed of or redeveloped as soon as it becomes cumbersome or meaningless.

Not only does this way of thinking about a project allow for a good supply of fresh ideas, it also allows you to tailor each project to the particular (and peculiar) demands of the client. A simple way of inventing a nonce taxonomy is to work for awhile and then whiteboard a list of terms, themes, ideas, recurring patterns, and code elements that seem most relevant to the project at hand. See if these lend themselves to any further patterns or terms, and regularly add and subtract from the list as you see fit. The idea here is to befriend the mobility and flexibility necessary to any creative project.

As a further note, XML and OOP languages are nonce taxonomic systems of sorts, though they’re obviously a little more rule-bound. In terms of more specific practices, nonce taxonomic design can be incorporated into everything from variable names to documentation, and certainly can be used to spice up client interactions (Jargon is sexy). You could say it provides a “soul” for the project, if you’re into that kind of thing. I’d come up with a feisty buzzword here, but I think this one’s a thing of beauty in itself. R.I.P Eve.

5. Contact Zone

This term was developed by a critic named Mary Louise Pratt in response to the idea of frontiers (as in Wild West frontiers). She claimed that frontiers are the wrong metaphor for the situation, because they only suggest that action occurs in one direction from one perspective. The fact is that even in situations of extreme power imbalances, such as that between cowboys and Indians, multiple perspectives and motives from both sides shape the outcome. By acknowledging the influence of these multiple desires, a more realistic assessment can be made of what leads to successes and failures in a given situation.

So what does this little revisionist history lesson have to do with web design? A web site is a contact zone in the sense that you have a designer and a user, and it is generally a very unbalanced interaction. Although Web 2.0 sites offer a bit of theme customization, and of course platforms for communication, they are a far cry from handing over the reins to the code and letting anybody do whatever they want. So why do some fail and other succeed?

The strength of a site like Reddit is that its creators keep its users in the loop of creation and modification. It is as unintrusive of a site as possible in terms of privacy and even layout, and thus the feel of its being a contact zone remains at the forefront. I mean, have you ever really looked at Reddit? There’s nothing there (but thousands of Redditors). The designers and users create a feedback loop that self-designs the site.

Although the term “contact zone” is pretty decent on its own, let’s throw out a few more fun design buzzwords: “permeable interface” or “generative feedback.”

6. The medium is the message

Famous techno-visionary Marshall McLuhan articulated the idea of “hot” and “cold” technologies. If a technology is “hot”, it gives you almost all the information you need, leaving little up to the imagination — think 80 inch large screen TVs or 3D movies. The colder a technology, the more it requires participation and involvement (Reddit is cold…so cold, babe).

When McLuhan said that the medium is the message, he meant that media transform the way we think and know the world. As we become so totally immersed in cold technologies on the web, they literally start to reshape our perceptions. What’s would the world be without Facebook? I don’t want to live in that world. Well, maybe. It’s heated up a little much for my tastes lately.

Before I retreat too far into the rantings of a fuddy-duddy technophobe here, let me get to why McLuhan’s observations matter. It gives us a new terminology for thinking about the impact of a website. For the most part, as the web has developed, it has turned increasingly from a hot technology to a cold technology, particularly with the surge of Web 2.0 design in recent years. Now you can customize much more of what you’re seeing, and interact with and produce content in ways that were unimaginable a short while ago. It’s not over yet. With smart phones in particular, the medium/message changes again, I think for the hotter because the interface becomes so seamless it’s hard to escape.

There will always be those who crave the opposite of the dominant “temperature”, and this is wise to keep in mind when trying to buck old trends with new web design. It’s also worth considering what the comfortable temperature range is for your clients and their clients — do they want a lot of interaction, or are they the kind who long for the good old days when people would just tell them what to buy? Are they the immersive Flash type? Crazy for the dynamic content offered by PHP and others? Or throwbacks to some good old-fashioned static HTML? As you approach design for a new medium, it may also be valuable to consider questions of how the medium itself transforms the user’s expectations and capabilities and how this affects the overarching purpose of the site.

If we need a design concept here, perhaps we could call it something like “media gauging” or “hot messaging” and “cold messaging.”

Parting Shot

All in all, the genius of responsive design is the way it imports a foreign but uncannily relevant concept into a completely new context. When you do this, old ideas spring to life in new ways. The cross-fertilization of ideas is what drives forums like TED, IFTF, and this very eZine. If you spend too much time cycling through the same buzzwords over and over, you stagnate and your work suffers — things must evolve or die. By offering these ideas up here, it’s not at all my intention to try and force unwanted suggestions on a field of already smart and motivated designers. The main aim is just to be a little provocative. If we expanded this type of cross-disciplinary exploration into Philosophy, History, Politics or Psychology — those oft-disdained liberal arts — just imagine the host of new concepts that would become available.

Ryan Melsom is a freelance web designer and the founder of lintropy.com, a start-up based in Ottawa, Canada. His love of all things technology and culture has brought him everywhere from a PhD in English to PHP development. You can follow him on twitter at @lintropy.

What lessons can you share about web design that have come from other aspects of your professional or personal life? Let us know in the comments!

A Ginormous Bundle: 1,500 Vector Icons – only $27!

One page websites look great with many having very simple designs, large typography and amazing illustrations and graphics too making them some of the best looking sites on the web in 2012.

Often using the very latest CSS3 and jQuery they are a great way to create a site that has maximum impact.

Here is a roundup of 30 single page websites featuring lots of different styles.

Auxillary Design Co.

Auxillary Design Co.‘s is a well designed, vertical scrolling, one page website with a nice, simple color scheme, it looks great.

Carrot Creative

Carrot Creative‘s site is well designed with a nice rotating gallery on the page and easy to find links to all their various social media platforms.

Diaz

Diaz is a great one page site, with a dark feel, it creates an atmosphere. The color scheme is well selected too and the touch of grunge works really well.

Dinebook

Dinebook‘s launch page is well designed, professional, with an easy way to stay in touch about future updates.

Dangers of Fracking

Dangers of Fracking is a one page site that displays its message in an easy to navigate way with a nice touch of texturing added which adds to the site’s feel.

Ben Fryc

Ben‘s one page website features some great large typography and some great illustration too. A really nice one page website that is well designed.

Fuel Brand Inc.

Fuel Brand‘s website looks great with great flowing animations when moving between pages and varying colours making it an attractive site.

Identix

With a focus on big, bold typography, the Identix website is a great example of a vertical scrolling one page website.

Indo Folio

A well textured site, Indo Folio‘s site is well crafted with an amazing background image that makes it stand out from many other sites.

Heidi Tao Yang

Heido‘s site is a very simple one page site with a great feel and a nice use of large typography too.

Launch Factory

Launch Factory‘s site is a great vertical scrolling one page website; it’s well textured, easy to navigate and flows well. The color scheme is well chosen, the oranges work really well.

Anthony Fonte

Anthony’s site is a portfolio site that features a great fixed navigation sidebar on the left and pull-down portfolio items in the main body; it’s well designed and allows you to go through his portfolio without clicking away from the home page.

Will Forsyth

Will‘s site is a great one page site that features a well chosen font selection and color scheme.

Emilie and Vincent

Emilie and Vincent‘s site is very simple, great feeling, one page site with easy links to the different sections. It’s well laid out and easy to navigate.

Goin’ Nutty

Goin’ Nutty‘s iOS app website is a great example of a one-page website; with a nice rotating gallery of the app, a link to the App Store and a well illustrated background; a great site.

Bicho Malvado

Bicho‘s site is a HTML5 one page website displaying Bicho’s latest tweet with a well crafted graphic at the center of the site and links to various social media platforms. Simple but looks great.

Fashion Photography

Fashion Photography, as you might expect, focuses on images. It’s a simple site that guides you through the stages of a photoshoot and then ordering the DVD. It uses a minimal, slightly retro, color scheme that fits perfectly.

Feel Wire

Feel Wire has gone for a clean, white, background with a focus on a featured web application; it’s a nice site, well positioned and professional.

Peter Pearson

Peter’s site is an example of a horizontal scrolling site that is great to navigate through making great use of the sky background that is the theme throughout the site. It’s a great site and a great example of what can be achieved using some simple scrolling jQuery.

C People

C People‘s site has an amazing background image accompanied by a very simple, easy to navigate site. The focus is the great background image.

Site Leaf

Site Leaf‘s site is another example of a fresh, clean approach to webdesign with a well laid out one page website that highlights the key features of their CMS. It’s a well constructed site that focuses on what a visitor would want to know about their product.

Enzo Livolti

Enzo’s site is a clean and simple one page website that focuses on what he does; the message is clear. The use of colour is really good too and the site doesn’t feel cluttered.

Ryan Scherf

Ryan‘s site is full of texture, from the social media icons to the background, making a great impact on the viewer. The fonts are well chosen and the site is really well constructed.

Damp Bicycles

Featuring a fixed navigation on the left with big, well chosen, photographs in the content Damp Bicycles is a great site that’s clean, simple and professional.

Ben Markowitz

Ben‘s site features an awesome CSS3 header that moves as you move your cursor across the screen, it’s a great touch that makes this site stand out from the rest.

Dann Petty

A perfect example of a one page site using a large background with big typography; it’s looks great, uncluttered and effective.

Bennett Feely

Bennett’s site is a simple, well textured one page website. The use of the rectangles to add some perspective is a great touch.

Dan Rajan is a video editor, creative content designer, and passionate writer from the UK, follow him on twitter!

What are the best single page sites you’ve seen recently? Let us know in the comments!

Get a Fresh Take on Sans Serif with Grammatika – $25

You must have noticed the increasing trend of using ribbons in web design. By using ribbons in web design you can make the noteworthy objects of your website more appealing and prominent. More often than not, a ribbon is used as background for navigation. Here is a beautiful and inspiring showcase of some visually appealing web designs that feature ribbons.

1. Wells Riley

2. Carnivale du vin

3. Wp1000 Themes

4. Urban off

5. Decorama design

6. Tech jobs under

7. Future of car sharing

8. Pistachio app

9. Small studio

10. Le tipi

11. Less Money

12. Table 37

13. Sleepstreet

14. Pixel Stadium

15. Simple as milk

16. Fe.Rocious

17. Quote Roller

18. Tapp3 Media

19. Jopp Design

20. Tanya merone

21. X graphica

22. St. Kilda High Hopes

23. Letter Learner

24. The Portfolio of Alex Pierce

25. Rockaholic

26. Paris Jones

27. Myselfdsk

28. Made by Chipmunk

29. ParkBud

30. Appmiral

31. Sunday Best Websites

32. Cake Sweet Cake

33. Moving

34. Webzguru

35. Ruby Bots hosting

Here a dark blue color ribbon that lets you give your email address and become a beta tester of Ruby Bots. The graphic elements also liven up the ribbon look.

36. Run do to-do

37. Ebridal

38. Pongathon

39. Legal Services of Southern Missouri

40. Consafan

41. Krichevtsova Alexandra

42. Elevated Imagery

43. CJs Favorites

We recently did a round-up of some of the leading design blogs that you need to follow in order to stay up to date with the latest trends in the design world. In this article we take a look at some blogs and websites that cover WordPress.

Most, if not all, design blogs have WordPress-related articles. However, these blogs deal specifically (and, in most cases, ONLY) with WordPress. Also, not all of the websites below are ‘blogs’ – some of them are feed aggregators, some are design showcases and wpMail.me is an email newsletter. However, they are all related to WordPress.

Honorary Mention: LabZip

LabZip provides everything you need to create and monetize WordPress websites. Themes, plugins, and tutorials are all included for one simple monthly price. The goal is to end designer poverty, financial freedom for 1,000,000 freelance designers!

1. WordPress Arena

WordPress Arena offers articles related to WP themes, plugins, tutorials and offers some freebies. The website also has a WordPress ‘Showcase’ which features various sites that are built on WordPress.

2. WordPress Planet

WordPress Planet is not really a blog – it is an aggregator collecting posts related to WordPress.

3. WordPress.tv

As the name suggests, WordPress.tv provides videos related to WordPress.

4. WeblogToolsCollection

Weblog Tools Collection is one of the most popular WP-related blogs out there – it features theme updates, news, plugin updates and other similar articles.

5. WordPress Tavern

WordPress Tavern is another very popular WP-related blog that features articles and opinion pieces on some of the recent happenings all across the internet pertaining to WordPress.

Some Other Noteworthy Options:

6. WP Engineer

7. WP Vibe

8. WordPress News

9. WordPress Development Updates

10. WPMU.org

11. Alltop – WordPress

12. Planet WordPress (feed aggregator, not a blog)

13. WordPress.com Blog

14. WP Force

15. BobWP

16. WP Garage

17. ManageWP

18. Digging into WordPress

19. WordPress Guerrilla

20. WP Teach

21. WP Recipes

22. TutsPress

23. Theme Shaper

24. Lorelle on WordPress

25. WP Mayor

26. WP Topics (feed aggregator, not a blog)

27. WordPress Hacks

28. ThemeLab

29. WP Beginner

30. Konstantin Kovshenin

31. WP Modder

32. Yoast (Blog)

33. WordPress Tutorials (feed aggregator, not a blog)

34. The WP Guru

35. WP Inspiration

36. We Love WP

37. WPLift

38. WordPress Mods

39. LatestWP

40. WPWebHost Blog

41. wpMail.me (email newsletter)

42. Pippin’s Plugins

43. WP Tuts+

44. WPCandy

Since no list of websites on any given subject can ever be deemed ‘complete’, I’m sure there are many WordPress-related websites that I’ve missed. Feel free to add to the list by commenting below!

Lea, please introduce yourself to our readers.

Hi, everyone! I’m Lea, the creative principal to Lealea Design where I craft digital experiences for clients, big and small. Additionally, I host the ExpressionEngine podcast, teach interface design at my local university, and do the occasional conference talk about personal branding.

When people hear the word “brand”, they often think about big companies like Coca-Cola and Apple, which are corporate brands. You’re talking about something different: personal brands. What is a personal brand?

A personal brand is essentially the perception you project to others. It’s a summary of all you say, touch, and do.

Why do you think that it’s so important for freelance web designers to develop their own personal brands? What difference does it make?

A freelancer’s livelihood is based on their personal brand, their reputation — business is about building relationships and people want relationships with human beings. Having a personal brand helps you communicate to others clearly what you’re about and that in turn, helps attract the right clients.

The first part of your method is pretending to be an amnesiac and trying to figure out who you are. There are two steps in this: defining who you think you are and then asking others to reveal who they think you are. Can you explain how to do that and why it’s important?

In my article, the Art of Self-Branding, I go through a word association exercise: write down three adjectives, the first three adjectives you would associate with yourself. Next, do an informal survey of the people in your life — personal, professional, casual — and ask them to associate adjectives with you as well. Ask them to be honest, good and bad. When you’re complete, put the data into a table that ranks them in terms of relationship and years known.

Once done, you can weigh the responses based on those types of relationships and how people perceive you depending on how intimately they know you. It’s so important to do this because there’s so many different types of personas we project to people depending on our relationship with them. It’s a way to see what’s common among everyone no matter how long or well they know you, what’s different, and also a gauge to see how your own perception of self matches along with others. It’s also a wake-up call in case there are some flags you need to address.

The second part of your method is about dealing with the information that you’ve gathered through your self-discovery and research. You say that once you’ve “regained your memory”, it’s time to “Recycle, reduce, recover, reuse”. Can you explain how to do that and why it’s important?

Our entire lives we’ve been building our personal brand. The environmentalist analogy is simply trying to see how you can reflect on all the choices you’ve made in say, your wardrobe or your home decor or your past design projects. It’s important to use that since it’s what you’ve been building to establish your identity in a natural way. Then, you can compare that to your adjective table and see how to align these items to create a design system for yourself.

The third part of your method is all about honesty. What do you mean by honesty and why do you place such a big emphasis on it? Can you explain how to be honest when it comes to branding and why it’s important?

I put big emphasis on it because if you try to stray from your real values and personality, then you will come off to everyone as awkward and fake. People can spot someone “trying too hard” a mile away.

Also, when you’re really honest about your goals and values, then you’re able to really focus on the right type of clients and work, which will pay off in the long run. We don’t want every client under the sun; we want the right clients who give us fulfilling work and pay us well.

You emphasize a lot that when it comes to branding, it’s extremely important to be consistent. What do you mean by consistency and why it’s so important?

This all harkens back to honesty, as well. Consistency is delivering, day-to-day, the quality of work and professionalism that is expected of you (and then some). If you’re all over the place, it shows a lack of focus, and a lot of clients will be put off and worried about reliability. It comes off dishonest.

Lea, would you be able to recommend great resources on personal branding that would be valuable for web designers who would like to gain deeper understanding of this subject?

I’d encourage everyone to visit my one-page site:

Art of Self-Branding – it has links to tutorials and articles on the subject of branding.

I also wrote a recent article  at .net magazine that talks about it a bit more, too.

Last, but not least, if you could only give one piece of advice to a web designer who wants to create a powerful personal brand, what would it be?

That a personal brand isn’t built-in a vacuum. If a personal brand is built on the perception of others, it’s really a team effort of building relationships with family, friends, colleagues, clients, employers, and peers.

You need them to help discover your personal brand. You need them to help promote your personal brand. There’s a lot you can do to help communicate your brand, but in the end, be as genuine, helpful, and kind to others… the rest will follow.

Thank you very much, Lea!

Design is the balance of elements to create a visual message and nothing does it better than the propaganda poster. Simple, bold and moving, these have been used throughout history to provoke an emotional response in people. It’s been used in ads, album covers, politics, war, and can be used in web design for some really stunning, incredible impact.

It’s not just looking at examples as many propaganda posters break the rules of the real world. Forget what you learned in foundation drawing and painting classes. There’s no denying that propaganda posters are popular for their powerful visuals as well as the nostalgia they evoke: of better days when we all tried to murder each other with gleeful abandon and portray other cultures as less than human.

Propaganda is a message that may or may not be true but it convinces people to see its message and persuade them that it IS the truth. This power can be harnessed by web designers for UI that will make atheists pray and the devout sin.

*Author’s note: Posters are presented solely as examples of design and in no way promote, excuse, or highlight fascism, communism, patriotism, or any other “ism” that exists or has existed. This article deals with the power of images and a survey of what makes them so persuasive. They were not chosen to offend anyone…but they will. That is part of their power and what we will explore.

Some examples of powerful images

War propaganda has included the most notable images in the history of coercion. Big, bold uses of strong and brave men and women, selfless dedication of soldiers and civilians, suffering of civilians, heavy lines, pushed angles and depth, and powerful use of photographic images, color, and shading.

Heroic and bold! It romanticizes war and those who fight, struggle, and die. Notice how the lines of perspective create dramatic focus. The perspective is not real but the push of non-reality helps the power of the images. Also notice that the images are dark, which adds mystery and strength. The lightest areas in these images fall on the faces. Stern and purposeful faces, which are the human element in the posters.

On top of powerful images, twisting stereotypes dehumanize the target enemy. It’s so much easier to kill others if they are monsters, rather than human beings. Not long ago, in the dark days of Madison Avenue advertising, the beautiful people used the best product while ugly, stupid people used the other brand and suffered dingy clothes and bad breath. No one wanted to be “those” people.

Of course, using heart-wrenching emotion, guilt, furor, and death are great motivators. It works for war and, as we’ve seen with the upcoming 2012 presidential election, politics! It was said of advertising that if you put a puppy or baby into an image, you will have a winning ad. If you have a baby WITH a puppy, you’ll have the greatest ad! In propaganda, a dead mother with her crying baby was the way to rev up emotions. Can you imagine a dead puppy in there, too?

The trick to all the angles

One of the most powerful elements in these designs is something you probably don’t see: the areas of maximum attention. The angles used in the design of these posters push the eye, draw attention, and create movement and even emotional response. Let’s break down some of the layout techniques in these posters.

Using the areas of maximum attention isn’t only for drawing attention to the image in the posters shown here, it is also to use the image area to make the negative space more important and powerful. Use that attention and power for the elements you need to navigate and educate. Photographers, illustrators, and designers of great propaganda posters knew the power of the angularity they captured in their work.

One of the best examples of pushing angles and breaking the rules of real life are the propaganda posters (although some would refer to them as “motivational” or “cause-based”) created in China. Upward angles for those in the forefront, descending perspective of crowds behind them and giant figure elements taking the same importance as the smaller elements, yet everything holds the same attention without overpowering the other element.

Usually, in depth-of-field, elements in the far background will appear blurred and muted but these poster examples break that reality, and do it with extreme effectiveness. It drives a powerful message and it is worth exploring for use in web page design. I don’t understand why someone hasn’t used these except with everyone holding iPads instead of Chairman Mao’s little red book.

The negative space also works well in conjunction with these mixed elements and that is the space you will use for text, menus, or anything else that needs to hide in plain sight. The angles of the images will also help spotlight whatever you choose to place in this area. Give it a try. Open a propaganda poster in Photoshop and drop in a menu or picture or logo and see how it stands out.

Colors and emotion

Stay mindful of the colors in these posters. They push some odd but effective palettes. Color is a powerful motivator of the sense of sight, just as aroma is used for the sense of smell. Colors bring about emotional response in the viewer. Our personal and cultural associations affect our experience of color.

As I wrote in an article on the psychology of color, colors are seen as warm or cool mainly because of long-held (and often cross-cultural) associations. Yellow, orange, and red are associated with the heat of sun and fire; green, blue, and violet with the coolness of leaves, sea, and sky. Warm colors seem closer to the viewer than cool colors, but vivid cool colors can overwhelm light and subtle warm colors.

Although red, yellow, and orange are in general considered high-arousal colors and blue, green, and most violets are low-arousal hues, the brilliance, darkness, and lightness of a color can alter the psychological message. While a light blue-green appears to be tranquil, wet and cool, a brilliant turquoise, often associated with a tropical ocean setting, will pop more to the viewer’s eye. The psychological association of a color is often more meaningful than the visual experience of the elements themselves.

Studies have also shown that certain colors can have an impact on performance. Exposing students to the color red prior to an exam has been shown to have a negative impact on test performance. More recently, researchers discovered that the color red causes people to react with greater speed and force, something that might prove useful during athletic activities.

Black is the color of mystery, authority, power, and evil. It is popular in fashion because it supposedly makes people appear thinner. It is also considered stylish and timeless. Black can be accented with any other color as it is the ultimate neutral color, albeit the most powerful.

White is cleanliness, sterility, innocence and purity. White reflects light and is considered a summer color. White is popular in decorating and in fashion because, as with black but at the opposite end of the spectrum, it is light, neutral, and goes with everything.

Red is the most emotionally intense color. It is the color of blood, the color of the devil, Mars (the god of war), but also the color of a Valentine Day heart. Red stimulates a faster heartbeat and breathing. Red ties are known as “power ties” and are favored by CEOs and politicians. Red cars, according to police statistics, are popular targets for thieves. In decorating, red is usually used as an accent to draw attention in a room or for a doorway.

The most romantic color, pink, which is a shade of red, is more tranquil and considered feminine. Candy is often pink and it is a color that inspires happiness.

Blue, as the color of a clear sky and a deep ocean, is one of the most popular colors. It causes the opposite reaction as red. Blue causes the body to produce calming, tranquilizing chemicals, so it is often used in bedrooms. Blue can also be cold and depressing. Fashion consultants recommend wearing blue to job interviews because it symbolizes loyalty. People are more productive in blue rooms. Studies allege that weightlifters are able to handle heavier weights in blue gyms.

Green symbolizes nature and the current recycling, save-the-planet movement. It is the easiest color on the eye and is reported to improve vision. It is a calming, refreshing color. People waiting to appear on TV sit in “green rooms” to relax. Hospitals often use green because it relaxes patients. Dark green is masculine, conservative, and implies wealth. It is also a color of luck, as in a four-leaf clover.

Yellow is a happy, cheerful color that draws attention, especially when paired with a strong contrasting color. While it is considered an optimistic color, people lose their tempers more often, and babies will cry more, in yellow rooms. It is the most difficult color for the eye to take in, so it can be overpowering if overused. Try looking at a yellow wall of a website for a long period and you will most probably get a splitting headache. It is believed, however, that yellow enhances concentration and that it speeds metabolism.

Purple is the color of royalty and connotes luxury, wealth, and sophistication. It is also feminine and romantic. However, because it is rare in nature, purple can appear artificial and often causes a “vibration” when not used in a proper color palette.

Brown is solid, reliable, and is the color of earth. It is abundant in nature but varying shades have very different emotional responses. Light brown implies genuineness while dark brown is similar to wood or leather. Brown can also be sad and wistful. Brown is often considered a “male” color.

Posters for those on the home front were happier and certainly more colorful. The use of colors were energetic and friendly. They motivated by pumping up the emotional pride civilians needed to feel during the war, both for war production as well as to encourage volunteers for the armed services. Bold areas of color are always a winning move in design!

Translating this all to the web

You’ve no doubt seen articles with “great one page web sites” and “incredible intro pages” (lest we not forget the hilarious 404 Not Found pages). One image can wield more power and attention than a page of a thousand elements. Simplicity is the preferred human stimulus and we are becoming more acclimated to simplicity. One button, one action. One choice, one solution. One question, one answer. Strength has become something that crosses levels of comprehension. Simple and strong speaks to every level of education. All of the posters in this article were designed to speak to every member of the society in which they lived. They relied on recognizable readability and emotional response.

While these may not be web sites, it’s obvious that the designers who created these pieces got the message about propaganda design. To see more examples, just Google “Star Wars propaganda posters.”

It’s still about the navigation

Color and image will draw the viewer in. They will fascinate him or her and make them want to explore the site. So how do you make it a pleasant and efficient experience? Buttons and links must present themselves in easy to spot places. They must be readable, easy to click and present themselves in mapped places throughout the site. Have you ever clicked on a small type link on a site and then realized it was the wrong link because the links or buttons were too small and too closely spaced? Nothing will make a viewer leave a site faster than frustrating navigation.

With all of these elements mixed together, your talent as a designer and a little knowledge and inspiration, you can create stunning web pages, whether it’s single page sites or multiple pages for just one site. Even better if it’s made for peaceful purposes!

Speider Schneider is a former member of The Usual Gang of Idiots at MAD Magazine and has designed products for Disney/Pixar, Warner Bros., Harley-Davidson, ESPN, Mattel, DC and Marvel Comics, Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon among other notable companies. Speider is a former member of the board for the Graphic Artists Guild, co-chair of the GAG Professional Practices Committee and a former board member of the Society of Illustrators. Follow him on Twitter @speider

Have you created a site or print piece based on propaganda posters? Give us a link and share it!

Get 4300+ Icons from IconEden – only $37!