Craig Soup Web Design Blog

As you can tell from my portfolio, WriterInside.com has undergone several face lifts over the past couple of years. But I think I’ve finally hit the jackpot with the current header design.

The previous design, although it was vibrant and had a little of that Web 2.0 flare to it, didn’t exactly fit the mood of what I was trying to go for with the site. So I decided to do an overhaul, something that would ring true to the intended audience of the website, and I feel like I captured that with this header.

I created the paper background of the header by scanning a sheet of paper that I tore out of a very organic-looking journal that I had. The paper’s practically impossible to write on with a pen, but the texture is really cool. Anyways, once I scanned the paper in, I touched it up using Photoshop’s Burn tool. This gave the edges of the paper background the darkened, almost scorched look to it.

The rest was pretty easy. I just pulled in a couple of images that fit the mood I was going for, overlaid some spiral shapes to give the header a sense of depth and then masked out a partial sun shape from the upper-left corner.

All in all, I really think this new header was a success! What do you think?

Sorry for the overly alliterative title . . . sometimes I can’t help myself!

As a web designer, I feel it highly important to adhere as closely as possible to Web Standards. Doing this ensures that the sites I design will be visible to as many people as possible, across as many platforms and browsers as possible, on as many devices as possible.

But thanks to an article that Nate Whitehill pointed out, I recently discovered that using Web Standards is also very important for Search Engine Optimization.

Don’t get me wrong, valid code in and of itself won’t really help your organic search results all that much, but NOT having valid code could very possibly cause search engine crawlers to skip over some of your website’s important information, thus affecting your search engine rankings.

Also, if invalid code causes your website to be displayed incorrectly on certain browsers, then you may be losing a significant amount of traffic due to people leaving your site because it doesn’t look right. This alone could kill every bit of SEO work you’ve already done.

So that’s just one more reason I’m committed to creating fully standards-compliant code. After all, you wouldn’t want to miss out on some potentially search-engine-rich material just because your web designer was too lazy to validate his code, would you?

From time to time, I thought it would be cool to show off a particular piece of work from my portfolio and talk about how it was done.

My first show-off piece was actually just an experiment — a little bit of tomfoolery, if you will. A few years ago, I decided, against my better judgment, to see if I could create a photorealistic graphic of a guitar in Photoshop. I say “against my better judgment” because I knew that it wouldn’t be a quick project that I could just throw together.

Sure enough, after many hours of hardcore Photoshopping, I created the image to the right.

Once I finished, I showed it off to several of my friends, and I knew it was a success when they just shrugged it off with a half-hearted “that’s nice.” This meant that they thought it was just an unimpressive photograph of a guitar. Once I explained to them that it wasn’t a photograph, but rather a work of sheer genius and unadulterated talent, they were genuinely impressed . . . as well they should have been.

And now, here it is for your viewing pleasure. Let me know what you think.

One of the main reasons that I’m sitting here writing this blog is because being transparent and personable is quickly becoming a crucial success factor for an online business. When the Internet first began gaining popularity, many aspects of society surprisingly became less and less personal. We had access to more people and more information than ever before, but it seems our social skills started to decline.

We started to see the Internet as an easier way to talk to people without having to worry about all the hands-on frustrations of face-to-face communication. If there was something we needed to say to someone but we were too afraid to do it in person, we’d send an email or an instant message! We suddenly became braver. Socially inept teenagers all over the world, when introduced to chat rooms and instant messenger services, suddenly became social butterflies. People who were by nature timid and non-confrontational suddenly found themselves hurling insults and threats at people who they knew they would never meet.

Unfortunately, this detachment from reality also started to seep into the business world. Hiding behind fancy websites, companies large and small built a presence on the Internet that offered them global exposure to people who would never set foot in their stores or offices. And the people who ran the companies became less and less connected with the people who were buying their products. If a company’s website had any contact information, it would ultimately send the customer’s messages to any number of obscure office workers who were being payed minimum wage to weed through customer inquiries. The end users of a company’s website were severely disconnected from any of the company’s major decision makers.

And for a while, it worked. But lately, the Internet is starting to become more personal. Blogs like the one you’re reading right now are giving personality to websites, and it’s getting to the point where a successful website without some sort of blog or personal touch is almost unheard of. Social networks are bringing people together in ways that were never imagined, and businesses are becoming a large part of it.

One company in particular, as pointed out to me on PagePlane’s Blog, has taken a drastic step in the right direction. House Industries has posted names, portraits, and email addresses of their employees on their contact page. Want to email one of their illustrators directly? No problem. Just go to the company’s contact page, and you’ll find the email address you’re looking for.

But wait a minute, Craig! What about spammers?

Well, it seems that sifting through spam is one chore that a business is going to have to endure if they truly want to connect with their customers. It’s a nuisance, sure, but in the long run, I think it’s certainly worth it.

So if you want to set your business apart, stop farming off your customer service calls to some other country just because their wages are lower. Invest in your customers by giving them access to YOUR people.

The fear of not knowing enough has often hindered me from doing the things I love to do. For example, four years ago, I was working for a small web design firm that consisted of my brother, my boss, and me. Unfortunately, my boss was a self-centered jerk who preached good works and then cheated me and my brother out of thousands of dollars in taxes that I’m still trying to pay back to this day, but that’s another story for another day. The point is that my boss’s inability to run an honest business resulted in the downfall of the business, and I was left with no a job (and a $6,000 tax bill).

While unemployed, I was often tempted to start up my own web design business, but all I had done for my previous employer was web design. I would design the sites and then hand them over to my brother to do all the hardcore back-end programming. So for fear of what I didn’t know how to do, I never did start that business. Instead I started studying web development in more depth, which was a good move, but I never got to the point where I felt confident enough to find clients and get busy.

Only recently have I realized that I don’t have to know everything there is to know about web development in order to create killer websites! Instead of dwelling on my weaknesses, I’ve started focusing on my strengths, and I’ve been able to create some great stuff.

This morning, I stumbled across a post by one of my favorite bloggers, Josh Mullineaux, where he talked about ‘Why It’s Okay to Suck Sometimes’. This post reminded me of how I got where I am today by overcoming this feeling that I wasn’t good enough. Thanks, Josh!

For a while I thought it was just me, but I’m starting to realize that with most creative personalities, it’s not always easy to find your passion when it comes to career choices. As a college student, I officially changed my major three times before my freshman year even started, and I lost count of the number of times I changed my mind by the time I finally settled for Management Information Systems.

I used to think that the problem was a result of chronic indecision, but lately I’ve realized that it’s not so simple. What brought me to this realization was the fact that everything I’ve shown interest in has involved some form of creative expression. I have wanted to be everything from a choir director to a writer to a web designer, and every time I find something I’m interested in, I discover ten new things that I want to try out.

And this is true on a more microscopic level as well. Even within the realm of web design, I have found all kinds of tools and techniques that I have wanted to experiment with. For me, it’s not enough to master one technology or one skill set. I need variety. I need freshness. I constantly need to be learning something new.

Lately, my focus has been on Ruby on Rails. Rails seems to be a phenomenal way of developing web applications, and I’ve spent every moment of available time lately trying to learn it. I’ve got at least three personal projects in mind that I want to try building with Rails, and I can’t wait to get started.

Wish me luck!