Archive for October, 2005
October 19, 2005 at 11:34 pm · Filed under ASIA, Icons & Web Design, Personal, Projects, Redhu
I am tweaking the design of this blog – so if you are a visitor you might see some displaced layouts in the coming week. The things that I am planning on changing:
- The header bar – I want to make it narrower so it doesn’t eat so much into the content.
- A navigation bar somewhere on top – for access to the aside website and to make it easier for visitors to take a look at specific sections like the graphic design work, corporate identity work, logo design work, photography sections on the website.
- Wider body – I am thinking of widening the body column to reduce vertical scrolling.
If there are some other suggestions that any of the readers might have, please feel free to suggest and leave some comments!
UPDATE: 22nd October 2005
Ahh! Finally managed some updates – it still doesn’t look “exactly” like I would have wanted it to – but it’s a learning process! The blog looked like this earlier:
And this is what it looks like now – you’re on the new blog so no screenshot.
There are new buttons and a brand new header – which is much thinner than the previous one. I have also added a new plugin to display 5 recent posts – I still need to figure out why the bullets don’t show in IE – they show fine in Firefox – I also need to put those bullets and manage the line-height in the two new lists of Recent Posts and aside Links.
The main category headings have also been changed from text to images using a cursive font, which matches the faded text on the header.
will take you to the aside website.
will send me an e-mail with the subject ‘Just Visited the aside Blog!’
will let you subscribe to the feed of this blog – it gives you a choice of more than 31 Feed Aggregators – pick your favorite!
I have also reduced the font size by one point. I want to change the color of the sidebar but have no clue how to! And I want to add some javascript to handle the long lists on the sidebar – I have the script for that but might have trouble integrating it with the blog structure – lets see – that’s a component of another update next month!
Popularity: unranked [?]
October 19, 2005 at 11:27 am · Filed under ASIA, Icons & Web Design, Projects, Redhu
Sam Decker posted on his DeckerMarketing Blog that he would be doing website reviews for his readers who had websites. I jumped at the opportunity – friends and family will always say they love your work and since I am re-designing the website, I thought I could use some good advice from someone who doesn’t know me at all and would review the website in an unbiased way. This is what he had to say:
- The rollovers on the home page – bad idea. . I want to see the links to your clients, portfolio, and about. Suggest you put images on the home page with the text or put the top navigation on the home page
- The images on the front are inconsistent in quality and tone. Doesn’t look like they came from the same photographer (you?).
- Copy font is way too small.
- No html text or links on the home page. No title tag that’s relevant. This site will perform poorly on search engines.
- Good to have the email and phone number on top. Link the email address.
- So what do you do? Photography, design, etc? Not clear on the home page. How are you differentiated from any other designer?
And my response to the same:
“Thank you for the wonderful feedback! I agree on most points 
The new thing that I am planning can be seen in this blog entry.
I am keeping the images on the home-page – want to keep the continuity – a drastic change might adversely affect people who’ve visited the website in its current state – might lose it’s identifiability. But yes, no more roll-overs. Instead, I am using the title tag and adding a common navigation bar on all the pages.
The current website is completely image based [ sliced and diced in Photoshop ] – in spite of that I managed a PageRank of 4 – imagine if the website had been search-engine friendly – I’d have a PageRank of 7 by now! But it’s never too late.
And all the photographs on the website have been shot by me. The ones on the homepage are cropped and uncropped versions hence the discontinuity in the quality.
Even the “copy font” is actually a Photoshop sliced image! Not so in the new design – am changing that to include real text – easier for search engines to pick up ].
And I am a designer/photographer. The new website has this bit of Flash [ will be much smaller when put on the website ] just above the navigation bar on all pages – it gives that bit of differentiation argument and also lists what all I do.
This was a wonderful exercise and I thoroughly appreciate your feedback!“
Popularity: unranked [?]
October 12, 2005 at 10:34 am · Filed under AMERICAS, LinkedIn, Logo & Corporate Identity, Projects, Redhu
Recently, Greg Acuna and Vincent Wright started the LinkedIn India YahooGroup and I am doing the design for the group’s logo.
So far, I have kept the concept fairly simple – since the logo must represent two things clearly:
– it represent’s Indian business – so it has to speak of India
– it represent’s LinkedIn members so it must also represent LinkedIn.
Deceptively simple designs usually come up when one fulfills the basic objectives of the logo. Also helps in the process of evolving the design further. The simpler, the better. Keeping this in mind, I have come up with the following variations [ take the mouse-pointer over each image to read more ]:
UPDATE I: October 13, 2005
Received feedback from Greg and number one above has generated interest. Suggestion is to combine the “in” and “dia” further because in the above it isn’t easy to make out that it’s supposed to be a complete word “India”. Something like this I suppose:
The following is how the above two variations will look at the LinkedIn specified small sizes – when the Group becomes an official LinkedIn Group.
UPDATE II: 15 October 2005
Greg asked for a couple of further simple tweaks [ check the comments on this post ] and the tweaked logos are as follows with the smaller versions attached:
UPDATE III: 16th October 2005
The LinkedIn India Group logo has been finalized! The final images are below and don’t forget to read the comments that Greg has made to this post. It’s been a wonderful design experience! Oh! And do visit the LinkedIn India Yahoo Group and if you’re someone interested in doing business in India and are also a member of LinkedIn, please join the group!
Popularity: 1% [?]
October 4, 2005 at 1:41 pm · Filed under ASIA, Icons & Web Design, Personal, Projects, Redhu
Have you seen the “Error: 404″ page that I designed for this blog?
I wanted to do something with an image – its simple and elegant and one of the links, which will take you to the error page is this.
What do you think?
Not only does it say that it’s an error/can’t be found, it also gives some more options about what the visitor might want to do next.
Also used the image below when you get positive search results:
Used this one for negative search results – when nothing matching is found [ this page also gives options like the Error: 404 page ]:
UPDATE: 11th November 2005
The links in this post will not work since I have changed the theme of my blog and have also changed the categories [ the client-work category does not exist ] and have also changed the graphics related to the Error page ].
Popularity: unranked [?]
