Susan MacPhee's blog

Designing with Metaphors

Submitted by Susan MacPhee
on May 12th, 2011 at 8:00:14 AM

How about things that keep on changing in your company, could it be like a kaleidoscope?

Put your product (or the benefit we derive from it) into these formats to help you make connections and create images:

"It's like a ____."
"It's like a ____ for your ____."
"Think of it as _______."
"If it were a ____, it would be a _____."

If you called the product something else, what would it be? If you compared it to something else, what would it be?

Questions to think about before you design your website

Submitted by Susan MacPhee
on May 10th, 2011 at 8:41:39 PM

Basic Business Questions:

  • How does your business make money (what is your profit model)?
  • Describe the typical touchpoint–to–sale process for your company
  • What challenges is your business currently struggling to address?
  • Is your company currently leading, keeping pace, or playing catch–up in your market segment?

Audience Questions:

  • What does your target audience care about?
  • Where/how do people learn about your company/product/service?
  • Why does your target audience need this website?

Website Questions:

  • Why do you need this website?
  • How does this website figure into your business model?
  • Should this

Style Tiles: Avoiding a Frankenstein Website Design

Submitted by Susan MacPhee
on April 12th, 2011 at 1:58:30 PM

While I was at Drupalcon Chicago 201, I saw a lot of great sessions. But the one I find myself thinking about most, and the one I share with my fellow designers is Samantha Warren from Phase2 Technology's presentation: Avoiding a Frankenstein Website Design: Collaborating with Clients

Check out her use of style tiles. Love it!!

http://chicago2011.drupal.org/sessions/avoiding-frankenstein-website-des...

Looking for a great color scheme for your website?

Submitted by Susan MacPhee
on April 12th, 2011 at 1:53:40 PM

I found this to be the best resource out there. Do you have a favorite?

http://kuler.adobe.com/#

Twitter Profile Widget for Your Website?

Submitted by Susan MacPhee
on March 14th, 2011 at 4:30:08 PM

It's easy to make a widget from Twitter to go on your website. Finding the the generator to make one, not so much.

So I hearby post this blog to help my social media maker friends save some time.

http://twitter.com/about/resources/widgets/widget_profile

It's best and fun to customize the colors on the widget to match the brand. Just sayin.

 

Writing for the Web

Submitted by Susan MacPhee
on March 1st, 2011 at 11:49:12 AM

A Beginner’s Guide To Website Copywriting

I read this article and love it. It's from the Web Design Ledger, July 20, 2010 written by Sally Jacobs. I highly recommend reading if you are writing copy for your website. Frequently, I advise on this subject but here it all is, just how I want you see what I mean. Plus you can come back and read over and over till we get your site's content perfect. Please take a peruse...

When writing for the Web, writers should always keep one analogy in mind: the Internet is a jungle and Web users are information foragers within it.

How Many "Likes" for a Facebook Name?

Submitted by Susan MacPhee
on February 23rd, 2011 at 3:23:33 PM

25. I have a client that just started a Facebook page and they want a vanity URL (facebook.com/ourpage). Well, you have to be liked first. So, once you have 25 "likes" you can "go ahead" (a Sethism) and make a page name in Facebook.

I blogged about this earlier but if you are wondering (took me forever to find out!) go to: http://www.facebook.com/username/ and pick your username. You must own or be an admin of the page.

If you want to do this for a client, they must make you an admin first. Don't worry, you don't need to "friend" them. Just "like" their page.

Oh, I recommend that movie

Nice! Social Media Icons for Free

Submitted by Susan MacPhee
on February 18th, 2011 at 12:33:01 PM

I'm so thankful to run across a site like this. A site that has great Social Media icons for free, and they are in nice little pngs, just the way us designers like em.

Thank you WebToolKit4!

http://webtoolkit4.me/category/design/icon-sets/

Finding RSS feeds for Twitter (The #newtwitter way!)

Submitted by Susan MacPhee
on February 16th, 2011 at 11:54:59 AM

In Drupal 7/Drupal Gardens, we have a module where you put the RSS feed in Feed Aggregator and it will produce feeds from our favorite blogs, like Twitter. So I'm always looking for RSS feeds. I'm sure this applies to other content management systems too.

Well, it's not always easy to find the RSS feed especially in the newly designed Twitter. In my last blog post I wrote about useful links for social media plugins but I thought I'd call this part of blog post out since it took me forever to figure out:

"The new twitter layout makes it really hard to find RSS feeds to add to websites. You

Social Media-A Journey To and Fro

Submitted by Susan MacPhee
on February 16th, 2011 at 10:39:42 AM

Remember designing for websites when we had enough to get started building with color, layout, look and feel, etc? Oh yea, that was then. Social media plugins are now an integral part of the design, especially in wireframes. Wouldn't you say?

A colleague and I had this very discussion yesterday. No longer are websites just websites, but more of a gateway between all of our social media connections to the world.

Every site that I build now includes a visit to other websites to grab code or account numbers (we have Drupal modules that only need account numbers, like Google Analytics).

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