Archive for September, 2007

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Sunday, September 30th, 2007

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Creating a company logo becomes much easier when one begins to get a feel for what is appealing and why it is so. It is essential to learn how to use the principles of visual communications and combine them efectively with basic production techniques. Equally important is, gain awareness of how important are the factors of ethics and social responsibility highlight within the creation of visuals. Much of good logo design is a matter of taste, and invariably differs from person to person.

The company logo design is a graphical representation intended to differentiate companies and their products from their competitors trait within the market. It typically includes the brand name and indeed, an allegorical graphic element, called an “emblem” or “combination mark” aspect element within the professional jargon. A company logo must be a direct, simple and powerful representation of the brand s name and character. Complicated illustrations and types are to be avoided unless mentioned specifically. A company logo design has to convey a great number of information with a few strokes, letters and spots of color. The company logo is an asset for the company and is its registered property that goes with its products.

Originality and distinctiveness are the essence of a company logo design. highlight within the highly competitive market no one could risk to mistakenly design a logo similar to that of another company. This can lead to the confusing the potential customer about the business. Company logos have become the faces and economy of our business. Even the general public has become very responsive to logos, their meanings and implementations. The companies take pride in their logos and want to protect its image on printed matter, on the excellent Internet, in advertisements and other places that put them feature within the public eye.

The logo design process begins with the formulation of a set of objectives and a verbal description of what the logo has to convey. The consistent use of clear typefaces is a way of establishing a recognized and professional identity. The typography can and could be new to create a dynamic look that allows the viewer to focus resting on the logo. A large bold or semi-bold typeface often signals strength and significance. An italic typeface can be used to describe softer values and to convey a lighter impression. A professional logo designer develops conceptual pathways for the logo, combining the various aspects and transforming ideas into sketches.

Ultimately a logo stands for everything a company or product represents. It is undoubtedly one of the top most important parts of an organization s corporate branding strategy. It is the reflection of the company s culture; it s purpose and goals as well as the values and aspiration of its customers. Whether starting a new business, launching a new product or service or revitalizing an existing company, branding and identity would considered to be an integral part of the business plan from the start. A good company logo design stands as a part of the marketing strategy, when competitors can underestimate its value and effectiveness. The company logo can give the business a much-needed edge resting on the road to success.

Saturday, September 29th, 2007

Do you want to have a feature rich web site with animations, sound, and an opening splash screen?

Do you want to use Flash extensively on your site but and its most important to understand if you are afraid of hurting your search engine positioning?

Do you require an opening splash page but were told that the search engines would not index your site if you or someone you know had one?

Well there are ways to have the benefits of Flash on your site and still be attractive to search engines. It is all in how the Flash is used. Some of the methods are simple while others require more programming experience. But we all can use Flash without driving away the search engines.

first let s look at the problem. Search engines index a site by looking at the content. In this case we are talking about text content, not pictures, video, sound, or animation. A basic fact to keep in notion on having a very search engine friendly site is, have high quality, targeted content in text form and limiting the use of anything that can get resource within the way of the search engines analyzing this content.

But what about Flash? Flash converts everything into a Flash file, or SWF file playable by the Flash Player plug-in. All the text in this Flash file will be converted from text to vector graphics, and since the search engines cannot read text in a graphic, they will be unable to read the text in a Flash file. Therefore they will be unable to index the information element within the site.

So how to we obtain around this seemingly insurmountable problem? It is all in how we use Flash in our site. The trick is, either wrap the Flash inside typical html coding, or by using xhtml you can easily have Flash display text from an external source. I will limit this article to the easier methods for using Flash in a search engine friendly manner.

Let s look at the three main ways we can want to use Flash on a website:

1. Splash Page
2. Flash navigation
3. Flash content

Starting with the Flash Splash page there are a couple of ways to handle this. If we just have the Flash Splash page as the opening page to our web site there will be no way aside from the meta tags for the search engines to index the page, let alone learn any more pages in your site.

The trick here is, give the search engines something to work with. This can be easily done in two ways. you can most defiantly put a text only navigation bar just below the splash screen, this way the search engines can at least establish the other pages in your site. But to allow the search engines to index the actual splash screen here is a neat trick. Place the Flash file in a layer, you can most defiantly then float that layer over the web page allowing you to hide all the plain html text you want underneath the Flash layer. This has the added benefit of giving content to visitors who do not have the Flash player installed on their system.

With a Flash navigation bar things are much easier. As long as only the navigation is in Flash the rest of the page can use search engine friendly text, plus you can easily put a text only navigation bar across the bottom of the page so that the search engines can Uncover the rest of your pages. This is a good idea anyway and one that I always follow. Plus when a visitor reaches the bottom of your page they have some links to follow without having to scroll back up the page to your navigation bar.

Using Flash content in your internet site follows the basic principles outlined above. As long as you have some text based content for the search engines to index you will be OK. I have found that having Flash animation resting on the top of my page where it fills the screen, followed by additional text is a nice hybrid approach. It gives your visitors the content rich experience you want to provide plus gives the search engines all the text based content they need for proper search engine indexing.

if you or someone you know really want or need a complete Flash site there is one more thing you can easily do. This requires more work, but it will keep your site highlight within the search engines. Create two versions of your online business, one in Flash and one using regular HTML. Have a simple home page that allows visitors to select either the Flash or HTML version of your site. Include on this home page your main keywords and navigation links to at least your site map and main pages so that the search engines can Uncover their way around your site. This gives you the preeminent of both worlds, the fully feature rich Flash site, and a search engine friendly HTML web site.

One final note, Google now is able to index Flash files, pulling out the text content from the SWF files. This is a magnificent advance and allows us to use Flash more freely on our web sites, but note that they are pulling the TEXT out of the Flash file. So in order to make your Flash files Google friendly you would include your search engine optimized text as text inside the Flash file, just like you would in a regular html web page.

So with proper planning and a few tricks we can have a very rich Flash site and still benefit from easy search engine indexing.
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Affordable web design - Let s design a great website

Saturday, September 29th, 2007

Are you stuck in different types of buttons? Square, round, flashy buttons? List of buttons are going on and on? If you are after these faulty activities, think again. Will these buttons are going to serve you any more in designing a better web page? Will this bullets will increase the number of your visitors?

Now take a deep breath and read some really helpful tips for professional web sites:

1. Select a colour scheme and stick to it. Choose couple of your favorite colour and stick with it. Here is how a most common colour scheme should look like:

    * Red, yellow and white
    * Blue and white
    * Red, grey and white
    * Blue, orange and white
    * Yellow, grey and white.
You are not very sure about which colour scheme to choose? Then surf the internet and find a website that you like. You can even model colour scheme from what really interests you out there.

2. Make use of templates:

If you are one of those who can’t really decide what they like, you have another option too. That is to choose a template. If you really intend to find them, you will find several pre-set design templates. It could be your web-designing software or even some web-sites which specializes in webpage designing.

3. Let them navigation freely:

When it comes to designing a website you should not forget to provide them an easy to Navigate system where they can find what they want. You can place your Navigation bar on the left or at the top. And since most people are used to this type of navigation, it s best to stick with it. It also helps to include your navigation bar at the bottom of each page to save your visitors from having to scroll back to the top.

4. Special effect need to be special:

What we mean here is you should not use special effects at the drop of the hat. It will only increase the uploading time and you will lose your potential clients.

5. Backgrounds: Lights are right!

Be sure your visitors can read the text on the background, also be careful that your links are visible before and after being visited. The default for links in most programs is blue, and burgundy (before and after visited) so, if you have a dark background, please ensure your links are light.

6. Watch that External Links!

Help your visitor s time, by letting those busy bees open links to other websites in a new window. That way your visitors can easily return to your site when they are finished browsing the external link.

7. Map is important for your Site

If you website have more pages, say 15 or more, than it is useful and recommendable to have a site map or a Search feature to ensure your visitors can easily find what they re actually looking for.

8. Text is the most important factor:

Never refrain yourself from giving some information just to give yourself an excuse to make it look simple or clean. Remember, content is the king and it will always be. People come to web with some clear purpose in their minds, try to justify their needs by never cheating them when it comes to choosing between adding information or just saving some space.

Professional websites will exclude these things:

   1. Flash intros or animated boxes
   2. Pop up
   3. music :( which will play automatically).
   4. Hit counters
   5. Date and time stamps
   6. Backgrounds that are busy.

If you really want to make professional websites try focusing on simple facts given here. We are sure you will not go wrong with the information given here.

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Technorati Tags: logo design solutions softbean.com   Flickr Tags: logo  

Saturday, September 29th, 2007

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A good logo design is highly instrumental in establishing a business brand and creating a long lasting impression among its customers. It would be able to create a powerful impact resting on the viewers and productively exude the nature and attitude of a business. Ideally, a company logo design would be able to communicate your company ethos, principles, mission and the nature of product/service offered, to the viewers.

A professional logo design would establish a professional image of your company and strengthen your brand. Actually, in most cases the consumer gets the first impression about the company through your logo. Your business logo could build a brand that is strong enough to give your consumer a visual imagery of your company. individuals would be able to identify your company on sight of your logo.

Trend shows, most of the good logos are simple and often text based. Think of the IBM, SONY or Microsoft logo, even in most cases, if you or someone that understands and has expert knowledge view a part of it you will know the company. It is extremely essential for a logo to be easy for individuals to remember.

This principle of simplicity applies in most cases, however, we often see exceptions in Government Organizations, Hotels and Luxury resorts etc because they want to put up a classical exclusive image. This again brings us to a very important point that could be considered for a good logo design — the nature of business.

While simplicity can be the basic principle for any logo design, the designs might vary widely depending on the splendid nature of business. Case in point, a financial institution might like to use a bold face font to express solidarity and stableness where as a courier service or transport company might prefer italicized fonts to express the speed and movement involved in their business.

In addition, while specifying the design requirements for your logo you would reflect on the magnificent fact that you will probably have to use your logo on your fax cover and other places where it will be in black and white. You could ensure that your logo looks equally good and attractive in black and white.

I would also suggest avoiding a very contemporary look for your logo in generally speaking, if you or someone that understands and has expert knowledge are planning for a long-term business because what we alarm modern today might be backdated tomorrow. It is very important that your logo designer knows how to maintain this balance.

While any professional logo designer could be able to create a custom logo design once you have provided them with your specifications, you could be vigilant to select an experienced designing company and not land up with some single designer start up venture.

Last but not the least important factor is price. and its most important to understand if you are paying for your logo something that is going to be new to establish your brand and represent your business for years, so you could be ready to pay a good value amount while it is also not necessary to pay some big amount like $350 for a logo. With the online logo design firms coming into business, now you have a wide choice of price for your logos and it would not be difficult to learn a logo designer that fits your budget. Some logo design firms (www.softbean.com) could even allow you to quote your own price for your logo.

in generally speaking, if you or someone that understands and has expert knowledge posses still not got a logo for your business or are not happy with your existing logo, it s time you get your new logo. Wish you lucked with your logo hunt.

Saturday, September 29th, 2007

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