Web Design & Graphic Design Hints and Tips - New Age Directories::View Blog

Web Design & Graphic Design Hints and Tips

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Creating a brochure, flyer or ad

The Team

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Here are some quick tips on producing a flyer, brochure, ad or article.

Firstly KISS - Keep it simple, stupid!.

Less words, use point form, you don't have to tell the people everything all at once about what you are advertising - just enough to get them interested. The rest you tell them in person when they book on the telephone, email, etc. Design differs depending on what type of literature you are producing, but let’s assume it is a brochure - the same system works for magazine ads, newspapers, websites, etc. You need a heading such as "Reiki Healing", a sub heading such as "Heal Your Pain, Open to Life" and then a few points or a paragraph to explain what you are about. Such as: 1. Reiki is a form of healing, etc, etc2. Better health, more happiness, freedom, etc, etc3. Hands on, fully clothed, blah blah djihcf iwduhc viuwh cwecvwe4. Blah blah iwjfuh wieuhc iuweh ciuhwv

Colours. The New Age industry has a terrible habit of using every conceivable colour, all at once, all the time. Well you can’t do that – it looks terrible. You have to settle on a colour scheme. Take this Blog for example – the colour scheme is purple with shades of purple and a hint of yellow and orange (which are all part of the red colour spectrum). Choose a colour, use shades of that colour (maximum of 3) and then add a hint (%3 coverage or area – no more) of a brighter colour in the same spectrum to highlight important areas of your brochure. The rule with colour spectrum is this – stare at a colour for 2 minutes then stare at a blank white wall. You will see a “ghost image” of the opposite colour on the wall – don’t use these two colours together. For example if you stare at red, you will see a green “ghost image”. Red and green together – no no no.

Photos do wonders. Images are very important, as we are visual creatures. We love photos and a picture literally says a 1000 words. Plus, no one wants to look at a page full of letters. But pictures instantly create a feeling, so wether you are producing a black and white photocopied flyer or a $2000 print run, you'll need a snappy photo (large) that portrays the [i]feeling[/i] of what you are trying to say. I always use a family shot or a young couple in love - because it promotes the feelings of love, companionship and it makes the reader feel safe and comfortable. Use a professional photo if you can or buy some professional stock photos on a CD ($10-$20).

As you move down the brochure you can add more letters. This gives the brochure "weight". So after title, sub title, and points you could add a few paragraphs about you. But keep it brief and absolutely necessary. People ONLY EVER SKIM articles and ads. Assume you have 10 seconds to grab your reader or a brochure and 30 secs for a magazine article.

Heres some tips for your page copy (paragraphs) or maybe a magazine article. When you write, be yourself. Write as if you are talking to a friend. Don’t try and write, don't use words you would normally not use and don't try to impress people by using a whole lot of big words - you'll loose them quickly. And most importantly don't use "Spirit Speak". Be careful of the terminology you use - in fact try and avoid it completely. Just because you understand your field and the terminology used doesn't mean others do. And the people you most need to attract to your profession, have probably never heard of Reiki or healing or enegery balancing etc.

And finally don't forget to add ALL your details. It's amazing how many people forget to add the following (if needed): 1. Time2. Dates3. Event Name4. Address5. Contact Names6. Contact Numbers (Mobile, AH, FAX, etc if needed)7. A map or instructions to get there8. Website & email

02/07/2008

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SEO tip #1

The Team

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Don't use more than 38 keywords in your head tags or meta tags. Search engines don't like it and they may avoid your website or even ban it. Why is the number 38, that's what my website submission software recommends and it's updated with the latest SEO trends every week.

But you can place keywords all over the front page of your website and throughout the website as part of your normal text. If you were selling crystals, you could list all your crystals you sell on the front page of your website and link them to actual product pages. Keep the list fairly small and tidy though and just include the more key words.

You can also hide keywords at the bottom of your website by making the text the same colour as your background. Keep the number of keywords to a minium though - no more than 50-100. And repeat them at will. If your website sells incense then place the owrd incense several times in your "hidden keywords" (not in meta tags).

If you don't know what keywords to use, then look at what the top 10 websites (at Google) in your category and what keywords they are using. You can use other websites such as adsense and Google and other search engines to find keywords for you. Just visit the sites

10/05/2008

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Design Your Own Website

The Team

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Here are some simple tips for web design.

You can build the website yourself and save thousands, but only if your budget doesn’t allow a professionally built site. If you do have the budget, then for God’s sake get a professional to do it. There is just too many things that professional web designers do “behind the scenes” that most people don’t do. Things such as layout, targeted content, search engine optimization, ALT and image tags, image optimization, heading tags, etc. All these things make your site run faster, cleaner, and get you noticed.

But if you are going to do it yourself:

Stick to the facts - that’s all people want to see. They don’t want to be impressed by lots of colors, pictures and dynamic HTML graphics. This doesn’t impress people. In fact, it annoys people. If people cannot get what they want from your web site within 10-20 seconds, they will disappear and never return. Think of your website as an online a business card. Get straight to the point. What do you do/sell, how much does it cost, how can we get one, how can we contact you, etc. if somebody handed you a business card we’ve 2500 words and pictures on it, would you read it? Could you read it?

And only use point form layouts such as bullets such as this.
If people want more information offer them a “more info” link.
Let them decide if they need to read more, otherwise just stick to the facts.
Get them on the phone, then you can talk to them about how great you and your products are.
You don’t need to put all that info on the web site. People simply won’t read it!

Photos Slow Things Down. Photos straight from a digital camera are huge files. They take ages to load on a web site. If you don’t know how to edit and change photos to web compliant jpeg or gif, then don’t use photos. They will slow your website down and you will lose customers. Once again, if people can get what they want within ten to twenty seconds, you lose them and they’ll never come back. Although images and good photos make good websites. Most web designers can take all of your photos and quickly set them up for any web site, for a low cost.

Choose a colour scheme. Using every conceivable colour in the spectrum makes for BAD DESIGN. First choose a colour scheme – let use purple as an example. Purple is now you’re Colour template. So firstly just choose shades of purple - light and dark. There is actually no need to use other colors. If you do choose to use other colors then choose only one or two and also look at the color purple and only choose other colors that fit into that spectrum. Purple is part of their red color spectrum so use colors that are also in that spectrum such as orange, yellow and red - choose colours that compliment purple. I suggest using shades of purple first - you can always and extra colors later.

Keep design simple. The New Age Spiritual industry always tries to put too much into their design. Angels, fairies, rainbows, the universe, the world, 600 different colours – BAD DESIGN. Keep it simple, keep its stylish, keep it plain. Your business logo could just be text based. In fact if you look at most of the large professional companies, many of the logos are just that-text based. For example, Westpac bank, McDonald’s, etc. if you choose to use our logo and keep it simple. Remember that your logo has to work on a business card as well as the side of a delivery van or building. Complicated logos don’t shrink well and can look terrible on a business card.

A Once again, if your budget allows it always get a professional graphic designer to design your logo and layouts. You can spot professional design from a thousand miles away. It’s always clean, to the point, uses space well, is scalable (transfers well whether on a business card or the side of a delivery van).

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION (SEO). What’s the point of building a great website all about crystals away if you are ranked 129786^th on Google or Yahoo. Having a great web site doesn’t mean you’ll be found on the web. You need to employ some sort of search engine optimization (SEO). This is the “boring stuff” that most web designers don’t do. But SEO can mean the difference between your website never being found, or it appearing in the top ten in Google or Yahoo, no matter what people type in to find you. This is a specialized field, the SEO industry is complicated and changes on a weekly basis, and I can only suggest getting a professional web designer to do this for you. So you can still build your own website, save some money, but get a professional to do there really complicated stuff such as SEO.

07/05/2008

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