Did we tell you we also do graphic design?
Because we do! Hub Internet Media is now more actively pushing our range of graphic and stationary design products, and there is nothing we cannot do. Be it a redesign to bring a business’s branding up to date or stationary designed to match a business’s website, we can provide anything you want or need. There’s no need to worry about quality or communication either; as web designers we have the skill and imagination required to produce the very best designs.
Say hello to the hub bot!
We have recently undergone a mascot change! You may notice a new little guy around the site, try not to scare him, he’s kinda shy.
Hub bot replaces our older generic monster mascot. We hope this re branding will help Hub Internet Media stand out even more. If you just can’t get enough of the little guy then why not download the EPS file!
A sense of community
Web design is big business. There are a lot of companies offering similar services, and at times there can be a real struggle to stand out from the crowd and offer something different. You might know that you do the work for less, or offer better designs or features, but the key is persuading prospective clients that you’re different to everyone else. You’d think then that all this would lead to rivalry and disagreements betweens web designers, separating us all and making us view each other with distrust and suspicion.
That’s not the case. In fact, there is a fantastic sense of community between a lot of web designers. We’ve been to networking events and met other web designers and ended spending more time than is strictly sensible talking about our jobs and ideas. We’ve filled in for people while they’ve been away, we’ve outsourced things to other developers… the sense of community between local webs designers is incredible when you consider that we’re all aiming for the same market and demographic.
The binding agent for the community is a passion for what we do. We’re in the fortunate position that something we love is also what brings in the money, and it’s that combined love of our work that brings us together and stops us constantly fighting for position. Yet another perk of the job, I suppose!
Typography tools
As promised in the previous post on typography resources this is the follow up post which will contain links to fantastic online typography tools to aid in graphic and web design. This post will follow the same format, link then brief explanation.
Join me after the jump.
Why we love small hosting companies
It’s really easy to go onto Google and search for hosting, finding the cheapest, easiest option and buying it without a second thought. Some companies offer truly fantastic prices, with promotions and discount codes giving you a years hosting for as little as 12p. You can’t argue with that price. It’s usually the bigger companies that offer these discounts, and that’s what draws a lot of people in.
We, however, don’t take up these offers and discounts. We don’t go for the cheapest company we can find, either. What we like is a small company. Huge companies are faceless; you don’t talk to a person, you talk to a chat box or an email address. You can send your email to one person, and receive a reply from another. They talk to you as though they’ve been dealing with you the whole time, when an hour ago it was a totally different guy replying to your query.
We like small companies because like us, they offer a personal service. We use two main hosts, and for both, we have direct contact with someone. They deal with any problems or questions we might have. When we need something sorting out, we send them a message and they deal with it, giving us constant updates as they go. We use first names, we have regular contact, and because of that relationship everything we do with that company is that little bit better.
We love small hosting companies because they are like us. Who better to do business with than someone with the same ideals?
Typography Resources
Carrying on from my earlier post on the art of typefaces I’ve decided it would be a good idea to list good resources which help us understand, design and work with typography. This is going to be more of a link fest than an in depth post by myself. But I’ll give each link an introduction so you nkow what your getting into!
So lets get on with this baby, join me after the break for typography fun and links!
I’d like a quote for a website, please
Being asked for quotes is both good and bad. It’s good because someone is interested in the product you provide, and want to know how much it would be for you to create something for them. It’s bad because a quote is not that simple.
It’s easy to just give out throwaway quotes that have a different time and date on them to every prospective customer that comes along, but there’s no way of providing an accurate, honest quote without really spending some time with a customer. To get an idea of what a customer wants and needs, you need to spend time with them. Not just five minutes to exchange names. Not ten minutes to have them give you a list of things they want on the site. A proper sit down discussion. Some of our first meetings with customers have gone on 2 and half hours plus over time, and while that sounds excessive, it’s the only way to get a good feel for what they want.
Before we’re willing to issue a quote, we need to have that meeting. We need to know what they want, what they like, what they don’t like, whether they have any design direction themselves, and of course, we need to know what they themselves are like. A quote, after all, is a list of components and a tally up of what the lot will cost. Depending on the client, the list of components might contain a portfolio. Or it may not. The list of features for a website relies entirely on what the customer wants, and you simply cannot get a good idea of that over the phone or by email. Just talking it out will often mean that features the customer hadn’t even thought about suddenly get added to the list.
When someone says via email or over the phone “So, if you can send a quote” the answer might be yes, but it comes with a condition. That we see them for a meeting, so that the next quote will be 100% accurate and tailored to their needs.
First impressions count (but you have to be quick!)
Back in 2002 the bbc stated that people on average spend 8 seconds on a website before leaving. That was 2002. At the time the Internet was still growing into the beast we know and love today. That’s the problem! Back in the day Google would cough up loads of pages of content for any given search term….but now Google will cough up millions of pages!
The problem is information overload and how readily available it is to anyone searching the net. Searchers can simply leave the first result and pull the next one up and the next and the next and the next (you can see what I’m doing here). The key is to try and capture the users attention on your website and make them take your information on-board. You don’t want them leaving the site, but you want them to stay on their own, don’t force them to stay!
I want to talk about why its important to create an instant impact to cause people to stay. There is more information on producing quality content and ways to make people use your website within our blog, check it out.
Know your market
Yesterday I saw Intels new advertising campaign, and I have to admit that I wasn’t really all that impressed. It’s not because I have anything against the fine people at Intel, it’s more that the advert itself didn’t seem all that coherent. I’ve linked it above so you can see what I mean. Watch it, and then just take a moment and think about what you’ve seen. Watched it? Good.
The first 3 examples given in the advert show genuinely ground breaking stuff, from one of the first video games ever produced, to the invention and world changing development that was email, and finally, wireless networking. Those three steps are all incredibly important in the development of both the Internet and the way in which people have interacted with that technology ever since. Nearly every household has a games console now. Nearly every house has the Internet, and everyone in the house has an email account. If you enter a housing estate and turn on your laptop, you’ll notice that there are tens of wireless networks to choose from (and invariably one of them is called Skynet).
Designing for content management systems (CMS)
These days every website we produce features a CMS. Our CMS of choice is WordPress. While they make it very easy for the user to edit content without years of technical knowledge, they are far harder to design and produce for from our point of view. If we were lazy so and so’s we’d love to churn out static websites day in day out. We can cut corners and design code only we can understand! But when it comes to designing for a content management system everything changes, everything needs to be more formal and consistent to produce the desired results.
I’m going to use this post to speak about how we tackle designing for content management websites.
