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By Neil Skirrow

As web technologies constantly advance, the skills a developer is expected to have are constantly increasing. Web users are beginning to expect Ajax interfaces, charts and graphs and a whole host of other tricks and features. This means web developers not only have to be skilled with HTML and a server-side programming language such as PHP or Perl, but they now also need to be JavaScript gurus, Flash experts, and skilled graphic designers.

When developing your applications, you simply can’t create every element yourself. A graph or mapping solution is an application in itself, so no single developer or small team can create such components while continuing development of the primary application. This means programmers have to use third-party solutions — and thankfully there are thousands of such solutions to make our lives as developers that little bit easier.

In an effort to save you a few hours crawling the web in search of the perfect third-party solution, we have compiled this list of essential development resources.

1. Functions and Classes

You can find a whole array of pre-made classes and functions to help save development time. A great resource directory for finding the perfect PHP classes is PHPClasses.org. For those of you who use Perl, you should be familiar with CPAN.

CAPTCHA

CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing to tell Computers and Humans Apart) is the term used to describe the use of images which humans can identify, in order to ensure an automated bot/computer program isn’t accessing your application. The ideal use for this is in contact forms to ensure only humans can send messages — therefore eliminating automated spam and junk messages.

The following CAPTCHA systems can be easily integrated with your applications:

• reCAPTCHA
  One of the most popular CAPTCHA systems that helps to digitize books, newspapers and old time radio shows by using CAPTCHA inputs to help translate. There is also a Perl module available for reCAPTCHA.



• Securimage
  Securimage is a free open-source PHP CAPTCHA script for generating complex images and CAPTCHA codes.



• freeCap
  A GPL CAPTCHA script to stop spam.
• HN CAPTCHA
  A CAPTCHA script written in PHP, licensed under LGPL.

Date Manipulation

Manipulating dates in your applications can be a time-consuming process. PHP and Perl include numerous functions for automating the process, but often don’t offer all the required functions.

The following date manipulation functions can be easily integrated with your applications:

• PEAR Date
  Generic PHP classes for representation and manipulation of dates, times, and time zones without the need for timestamps.
• Date Class
  This PHP class allows you to add or subtract periods from dates, and calculate the difference between two dates.
• Date manipulation in PHP
  A PHP tutorial on PHPBuilder.com, guiding you through a number of common date manipulation processes.
• Date::Calc Perl Module
  A powerful Perl module for date calculations based on the Gregorian calendar.

Image Manipulation

Manipulating images is a common requirement. Whether you want to resize your images while maintaining aspect ratios, or add watermarks, the process can be entirely automated using a server-side language like PHP or Perl.

• Image Manipulation Class
  Resize, flip and rotate images in PHP.
• PHP Thumbnailer
  A lightweight image thumbnail tool.
• PHP GD
  GD is a powerful image manipulation library.
• Perl GD
  GD image manipulation module for Perl.

Form Validation

Form validation is critical to ensure users enter form information in a suitable format, and is especially important to protect your application against attacks.

• validaForms
  A PHP form validation class.
• User Input Validation Class
  A basic PHP validation class for user input.
• Validate Form Fields Script
  A basic PHP script for form validation.
• WWW::FieldValidator
  A simple Perl form validation module.

Password Validation

Password validation is important to ensure your users choose passwords that offer an adequate level of security to prevent their accounts from being compromised.

• Strength Test
  A useful PHP function for password strength testing.



• Password Checker
  A PHP class for generating and testing the strength of passwords.
• Data::Password::Check
  A useful Perl module for password checking.

2. Ajax and JavaScript

Ajax is a web methodology that uses JavaScript to make HTTP connections to retrieve and process data for the purpose of dynamically updating the content of a static web page. Ajax enables you to update content within a web page without reloading the entire page, thus reducing load times and server loads, making your web pages more interactive and intuitive. A great resource for Ajax tools is MiniAjax.

Auto Suggest

Auto suggest or autocomplete tools are usually applied to text inputs like search fields. When a user begins their input, the input field shows a list of options that match what they have entered so far. This enables users to enter their input more quickly, and can also help them enter terms that match search data that are more likely to return relevant results.

• Facebook-Style Autosuggest
  A great Facebook-style auto suggest tool which supports multiple selections.



• Autosuggest / Autocomplete with Ajax
  A great auto suggestion tool which can use XML or JSON data sources.



• Ajax.Autocompleter
  A very flexible autocomplete powered by script.aculo.us.
• Adobe Labs Spry Auto Suggest
  A useful autosuggest tool provided by Adobe Labs.
• Google Suggest Style Filter
  An autocomplete data filtering tool.

Calendars

Ajax calendars are extremely useful when you need your users to enter a date. They reduce confusion over date formats, and enable users to easily find the date they are looking for rather than typing a date format string.

• Vista-Like Ajax Calendar
  A great Ajax calendar that uses Mootools.



• JS Calendar in DHTML Suite
  A powerful calendar tool that supports features like multiple connected calendars.



• AJAX Calendar with PHP and MySQL
  An open source Ajax calendar tool.
• Super AJAX Calendar
  A PHP and mySQL Ajax calendar.
• dhtmlxScheduler
  A powerful events calendar and scheduler.

Sliders

Ajax sliders enable users to use an interactive draggable element to select values. These are very useful for features like colour pickers as they enable users to ’slide’ through a range of colours to select the one they want.

• Accessible Slider
  A well-coded and nicely-designed slider tool that features range sliders.



• Phatfusion Slider
  An Ajax slider tool with a “snap to steps” feature.



• AJAXEngine Sliders
  Sliders that are part of the AJAXEngine project.
• Slider Using PHP, Ajax And Javascript
  A basic, but useful, Ajax slider tool.
• WebFX Slider
  A simple slider tool licensed under Apache Software License 2.0.

Data Grids

Ajax data grids enable you to display data in a table, but with the benefit of features like column sorting and pages without the need to reload the entire page.

• Grid3
  A useful data grid tool which is part of the Ext JS library.



• dhtmlxGrid
  A powerful data grid tool that includes column sorting and search functionality.



• Unobtrusive Table Sort Script
  A data grid tool that includes multiple column sorting.
• AJAX Data Listings Engine
  A powerful open source PHP data grid tool for use with mySQL.
• TableKit
  A data grid tool based on the Prototype JavaScript framework that features field editing.

Draggable Content

Ajax-based draggable content features can be very useful when used appropriately. Such tools enable users to reorganize a page to suit their needs, and can also serve as a basis for an interactive feature like a shopping basket.

• Draggable Content Scripts
  dhtmlgoodies.com provides numerous draggable content scripts, including an image cropping tool and a sortable list script.



• DragResize
  A great tool for draggable content with resize functionality.



• Drag & Drop Sortable Lists
  A simple tool for creating sortable lists.
• Scriptaculous Draggable
  A powerful draggable content tool which is part of the script.aculo.us framework.

Image Enlarging

Image enlarging scripts, similar to JavaScript light boxes, enable the user to enlarge or zoom in on an image chosen from a set of thumbnail images.

• Highslide JS
  A great tool for managing image enlarging and modal windows.



• FancyZoom
  A useful JavaScript image zoom tool.



• TJPzoom 3
  A great image magnifying tool.
• Ajax Script To Scale Images
  A basic script for showing enlarged versions of thumbnails.

Galleries and Slideshows

Image galleries are very useful when you have a collection of images to show, they allow users to easily browse your images, and features like slideshows allow users to sit back and enjoy watching your images.

• minishowcase
  A simple Ajax/JSON image gallery.



• Animated JavaScript Slideshow
  A very lightweight JavaScript slideshow with animated captions.



• Hoverbox Image Gallery
  A simple gallery with mouse-over image viewing.
• TripTracker
  A lightweight image viewer with slideshow.
• Agile Gallery (Ajax Version)
  A simple image gallery tool.

Star Ratings

Star rating scripts allow users to rate items through an intuitive and attractive interface, which is an improvement over typical drop-down menus or radio buttons.

• Starbox
  A flexible star rating system using Prototype.



• Unobtrusive AJAX Star Rating Bar
  A useful PHP star rating tool.



• CSS: Star Rater Ajax Version
  A simple Ajax star rating tool.

Colour Pickers

If you want to let users choose colours in your application, it’s better to present them with an interface rather than asking them to enter a HEX code. Colour pickers allow users to choose colours from a colour palette which then generates a HEX code for use in your HTML.

• jscolor
  A simple pop-up colour picker.



• JavaScript Color Picker
  A colour picker that handles RGB, HSL, and Hexadecimal values.



• Tigra Color Picker
  A very basic colour picker.
• Photoshop-like JavaScript Color Picker
  A colour picker that includes hue and saturation options.
• ColorPicker – jQuery Plugin
  A jQuery colour picker plugin with multiple display options.
• DHTML Color Picker
  A well designed colour picker.

Progress Bars

Progress bars are very useful when handling user uploads or pages which can be slow to load; they keep the user informed that progress is being made and that the page is loading.

• jsProgressBarHandler
  A flexible and well designed progress bar tool.



• YUI Loading Panel Widget
  An attractive loading bar tool.



• Simple Javascript Progress Bar with CSS
  A simple, but useful, progress bar tool.
• Uploadify
  A jQuery-based file upload tool with progress bar.

3. APIs

An API (Application Programming Interface) is a set of program functions which can be accessed by another application. One example is a currency conversion API that retrieves currency conversion data by allowing the user to enter a base currency, an amount, and the desired result currency, which returns a result via the API.

• Alexa Top Sites
  This API provides access to lists of web sites ordered by Alexa Traffic Rank.
• bit.ly API
  A useful API for the bit.ly URL shortening service.
• Blinksale API
  Enables you to access Blinksale data such as invoices and customer data.
• FoXRate
  A basic currency conversion API.
• eBay API
  eBay’s API which allows you to submit items to be listed and obtain listing data.
• Twitter API
  The Twitter API allows you to have access to Twitter data, including user and status information.

4. IP Locations

Finding out where your visitors are located can be valuable from a development standpoint. It can help you understand your visitors so you can design your site to better suit their needs. IP location information can help you determine where a user is located, enabling you to display content in the their language. You can also optionally customize other information such as currencies and shipping costs.

• OpenCrypt IP Location API
  A hosted API service for determining user location by country.



• IP Details
  A PHP class for determining geographical locations based on IP address.
• GEO-IP
  A free IP to country database.

5. Charts and Graphs

Charts and graphs enable you to display complex data visually. This is useful for example when trying to determine information like daily pageview counts from detailed statistical logs, enabling the user to immediately see how the data varies over a period of time.

• amCharts
  A powerful Flash charts tool which supports 3D charts and the ability to combine different graphs.



• FusionCharts
  A well designed and stylish 3D charts tool.



• XML/SWF Charts
  A highly customizable Flash charts tool.
• JFreeChart
  A free Java-based charting tool.
• pChart
  A powerful PHP class for building attractive charts.

6. Maps

Once you are using IP location tools like those listed above, you will have a collection of user location data. What better way to display it than with an interactive map. Interactive maps are also useful for understanding user location data such as sales information, for example, when you receive delivery and billing address info from a user.

• amMap
  An interactive mapping tool which includes drill-down functionality.



• Google Charts API
  A great mapping tool, though limited to a small map size.



• Flashmaps
  A great collection of different Flash mapping tools.

7. Audio Players

When used well, playing audio on your web site can be a great way of setting a mood or getting a message across.

• XSPF Web Music Player
  A Flash-based open source audio player which includes playlist support.



• Flash MP3 Player
  A free PHP and Flash MP3 player.



• TSPlayer
  A Flash-based skinnable MP3 audio player.
• E-Phonic MP3 Player
  A lightweight skinnable MP3 audio player with real-time visualization effects.

8. Video Players

Video content is now becoming a standard, but getting the right video player is very important. Video content is the ideal, and often expected tool for promotion, so getting a player which suits your site and needs is now a critical design and development choice.

• OS FLV
  An open source and well featured Flash video player.



• Flowplayer
  A full-featured and highly customizable Flash video player.



• JW FLV Media Player
  A very powerful and flexible Flash video player.
• FLV Player
  A stylish and customizable Flash video player.

9. Video Conversion

Video conversion/encoding can be a tricky business. Videos can be in a wide range of formats but most players only support a handful of those. If you don’t have a server which supports ffmpeg, converting videos to a format suitable for your player is usually an offline and manual task.

• OpenCrypt Video Conversion API
  A powerful video conversion API for generating FLV video files.
• Hey!Watch
  An online video encoding platform.
• Online FLV Converter
  An online FLV video converter.
• FlashVideo Module API
  A Flash video encoding API targeted to the Drupal community.

10. WYSIWYG Editors

WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editors enable you to offer an HTML editor when users enter information, for example, in content management systems, or for entering comments or reviews. These editors enable users to style and format data without the need to understand HTML.

• TinyMCE
  A lightweight yet powerful JavaScript WYSIWYG editor.



• XINHA
  A fully featured and open source WYSIWYG editor.



• NicEdit
  A simple and lightweight WYSIWYG editor.
• openWYSIWYG
  An open source, cross-browser WYSIWYG editor.
• CKEditor
  A well designed and feature-rich WYSIWYG editor.

About the author

Neil Skirrow is a professional web developer with over 14 years programming experience and is the Managing Director of ionix Limited, a UK software development company that develops the OpenCrypt Membership Software.

(ll)

It’s important to promote your design business. This is especially true when economic times are challenging, you’ve got news to announce, or you’re simply hungry for growth. Many forms of promotion are available to the modern designer – with banner ads and Google AdWords among the most popular. In this digital age, it’s easy for web and graphic designers to overlook one of the most effective and fun forms of promotion: the mail campaign. In an era when people are accustomed to communicating electronically, the value and meaning of something you can hold in your hands is greater than ever before.

The promo mailer is perhaps most popular among illustrators and graphic designers working for editorial clients, which means that it is a powerful, untapped resource for some web designers. Likewise, it was probably a much more common practice ten years ago than it is today due to the rise of online promotion techniques – but those who ignore its potential are missing out on a tool with the power to gain new clients, increase web traffic, and attract publicity for your business and events.

This promotional mailer for Ultra Design Co. includes 3-D posters (complete with 3-D glasses!). Designed by Humberto Howard/UDC

Common types of mailers include postcards and brochures, but designers featured in this article have produced everything from faux newspapers to toys and even promotional eyepatches.

In other words, this can and should be much more than just another opportunity to promote your work. It is also an opportunity to have a heap of fun, think outside the rectangle, and even present former and potential clients with a unique objet d’art. If you give them a piece of art and design that they’re unlikely to forget, then they’ll be unlikely to forget you.

[Offtopic: by the way, did you know that Smashing Magazine has one of the most influential and popular Twitter accounts? Join our discussions and get updates about useful tools and resources — follow us on Twitter!]

How to Create a Postcard

Promo postcard by author and designer Dan Redding at Magnetic State

The type of mailer that you send is limited only by your imagination, but the most common form is the postcard (we’ll look at other forms momentarily). Postcards come in a variety of sizes (standard is 4.25” by 6”) and are available on cardstocks in a variety of weights and finishes. There is no right or wrong way to create a postcard design, but one steadfast rule is that your greatest talents and skills should be in the spotlight. You’ll probably only have a moment to connect with the recipient of your card, so be bold and communicative.

Your design work should go on the front – perhaps your strongest portfolio piece, or a small selection of them – along with your name, URL, and a list of services provided: ‘Illustration and Design,’ ‘Graphic Design and Web Design,’ etc. The back of the postcard usually includes a designer’s logo along with contact information. Some designers will print a huge logo or alternate design back here, while others will leave enough space for a personal, handwritten note. No matter what your design, make sure to consult USPS guidelines to ensure that your design is acceptable for mailing (any quality printing company can assist you with this).

Avoid the Trash Can

If your postcard looks like every other advertisement out there, it will probably end up in the recycling bin. In fact, it might not even make it past the intern that sorts the mail at that publication you sent to. Then it will get recycled, and in a week, your beautiful work will be five percent of a toilet paper roll on a shelf in a Wal-Mart in New Jersey. You don’t want that.

This beautiful, hand-silkscreened promo mailer by Jay Vollmar has a personal touch.

If your card makes it past the perils of the wastebasket and reaches the hands of your addressee – perhaps an Art Director at a record label or the CEO of a startup company – then you’ve done well. If he or she reads both sides and likes it enough to tack it onto the bulletin board for future reference, then you’re in great shape. And if you get a phone call the next time that Art Director has a freelance job, then you’re golden.

Your design work is not junk – it’s your passion – so your promo shouldn’t be junk mail. Make your promo memorable and personal. When it lands in the hands of Steven Q. Client, present Mr. Client with a design that is compelling and appropriate to his industry. Write him a note that is friendly and courteous while reminding him that you hope to hear from him the next time an appropriate freelance project arises. An even better way to make a great impression and stay out of the rubbish bin is to make an unusual or useful product instead of a postcard.

Print Your Design

If you’re very industrious (and you’ve got a good printer), you might print your postcard yourself. But for most designers, it makes the most sense to pay a professional printer to print a few hundred copies of your design.

Choose a print company that will provide accurate colors, high-quality printing, and accessible customer service. There are many of these available on the web; one fine example is Modern Postcard (author’s note: I am not affiliated, just a satisfied customer).

Don’t be wasteful. Check your printer’s environmental policy (a responsible printing service will make this available). Investigate their commitment to sustainability, recycling, and environmentally friendly products. Make your mailers count. Send to recipients who will be interested in your services.

Think Outside the Rectangle

Some designers eschew the pedestrian postcard in favor of a more adventurous option. Here are some creative promotional items that defy expectations.

This lovingly crafted mail package from Labzeus/Brian Neumann includes his portfolio on a flash drive. According to Mr. Neumann’s website, “The project involved package design (custom folder with die cuts), letterpress & foil stamping (letterset & folder), giclée printing (fold-out poster, 2-sided), chemical etching (flash drives) and hand embossments (sticker seal and poster front). I also sourced mailer boxes, custom labels and had branded packing tape created to round out the piece.”

Promotional ‘business card’ eyepatch designed by Paul Coors for the now-defunct art gallery Publico

These small buttons are emblazoned the famous logos of design hero Paul Rand. Why not make small gifts or accessories featuring your own work?

Promotional paddleball toy by Jay Vollmar

Philadelphia illustrator Hawk Krall sends out ‘mega-packs’ of colorful food-themed goodies. “I get the best response from these,” says Hawk. “I send out about 150-200 of these to my best/newest contacts, made up of 3 or 4 postcards, stickers, tearsheets, hot dog magnets, etc.”

This newspaper-style promotional brochure from Hugo & Marie garnered the consultancy lots of attention both online and off.

A word of advice: if you design an unusual item, says designer Derek Sussner, “take a mockup to the design consultants at the USPS before you show up with 700 things to mail, especially if they are dimensional, fragile, or out of the ordinary. That early consult can save some time, energy – and often, postage costs.”

All About Mailing Lists

So now you’ve got a few hundred copies of your beautifully designed postcard/portfolio brochure/novelty treasure map. Where do you send them? You need a mailing list. A good mailing list is something that you can purchase or develop on your own.

Your mailing list should consist of both former clients and potential clients. You’re contacting former clients to say hello and to reinforce your presence in their minds. You’re contacting potential clients to introduce your work and convince them to visit your site, call you, and ultimately, hire you. With any luck, some of those potential clients will be transformed into enthusiastic former clients list by next year.

Postcard by Weiman Design LLC

How to Buy a Mailing List

Just like printing companies, a simple web search will turn up many companies that sell mailing lists. In fact, many printing companies are ‘one-stop shops’ that will not only print your mailers, but can also sell you a mailing list and even stamp, address, and send your items for you. If you choose this route, make sure the company you buy from is a reputable one. Get their representative on the phone and ask them what they can offer that’s suitable to your target audience. Make sure their lists were compiled recently and contain accurate information. If the list is over a year old, how many of those contacts have changed employers or positions? If one name is spelled wrong or one office incorrect, your mailer will end up at the bottom of the wastebasket – along with the money you spent developing and printing it.

This postcard by Sam Kuo represents the theme of Halloween in New York City. Mr. Kuo has designed many clever mailers that acknowledge pop-culture phenomena and current events.

How to Build your Own Mailing List

For many designers, D.I.Y. (do it yourself) is an ethos to live by. Researching and compiling your own mailing list can be a highly effective and personal way to customize a list to the specific needs of your business. Sending to former clients and contacts is the easy part. But who else can you send to?

In order to build your own mailing list, you’ll need to identify a target audience. If you’re an editorial illustrator working for magazines, you might go to a bookstore and copy down the names and office addresses of art directors listed in the masthead of magazines you’d like to see your work in. If you’re a web designer, you might identify a target market (perhaps you specialize in promotional websites for filmmakers and videographers). Start Googling relevant companies and checking Contact pages for address listings. Don’t be afraid to get on the phone, introduce yourself, and politely inquire about an appropriate contact person who you might send to.

Postcard by Hawk Krall

High and Low

When selecting targets for your mailing list, choose a wide range of recipients. You should choose people and organizations similar to those you’ve worked with before. These potential clients are likely to be suitable to your size, price range, and services. You should also contact your ideal clients – look for your ‘dream job.’ If there are any companies you’ve always wanted to work with, now’s the time to do some research and get in touch. Be resourceful and be professional.

Snail Mail is Your Friend

Whatever you decide to send, calculate accurate postage for each item and buy correctly valued stamps. When in doubt, take your item to the post office and ask questions.

If you’re sending postcards, buy postcard stamps from the postal service. In the U.S., these stamps are cheaper than standard first class stamps and will save you a good deal of money on a bulk mailing.

Send your mail so that it will arrive on a Tuesday or Wednesday (this rule also applies to your email newsletter). Not only is mail volume lighter after Monday, but work volume is lighter, too. Your recipient is likely to have a smaller amount of mail competing with yours for his or her attention on these days. He or she is also more to have a few more moments of attention to devote to something besides the day’s pressing work tasks.

Examples from Sussner Designer Co.

Sussner Design Company (aka SDCo) is a design firm that’s been doing superb (and award-winning) work in Minneapolis, Minnesota for over ten years. Derek Sussner – the company’s “proud owner guy,” according to their website – was kind enough to answer some questions about SDCo’s inventive promotional materials for this article.

Sussner Design Company Promotional Brochure

“We printed about a 1,000,” Derek says of these newspaper-like brochures of the firm’s design work. “Of those, we mailed out 700. We use the rest as our portfolio when we meet with new clients, or to send to new people we come in contact with. Reflections printed them for us. We have a great, long-standing relationship with them. We create all of Reflections’ promotional materials – so we print our own self-promo materials for trade. These brochures/mailers have been pretty successful for us. And they are a great way to stay in front of people we haven’t talked to in awhile.”

Sussner Design Co. Ten-Year Anniversary Poster

When Derek is asked whether he purchases his mailing lists or generates them in-house, he responds, “Both. The mailing list that works the best is the one we keep in-house. We add people we work with, have worked with in the past, people we’ve met and/or submitted proposals for, colleagues, industry partners, and a few networking friends. We also purchased a list (and we’ve renewed it several times). From what I can tell, we’ve never generated a face to face meeting from the purchased list.”

Sussner Design Company Happy Hour Spinner

The Sussner ‘happy hour spinner’ is a whimsical, functional, and extremely clever item that allows the user to put his or her happy hour destination in the hands of fate. The item was the follow-up to a Lunch Spinner, which Derek hopes to re-create soon. “We’re also looking to create a version the can be customized by the recipient – so they can be used by our out-of-town clients and friends.”

Derek’s says the company’s goal for promo mailers “is always that people keep them – and even better – display them on or around their desk. And the best scenario is that it causes them to write you an email or call you with a new project. I also like it when the leftover promos have a life span so you can continue to use them, hand them out, or send them with other capabilities presentations.”

Moving announcements and event notifications are other common types of promotional mailers.

Derek’s advice on the most important attribute of a successful mailer is simple: “It has to grab someone’s attention. Hopefully, it slows the motion of the arm down – if someone notices it on their way to throwing it in the garbage.” The truth of the matter is that all printed promotional matter – no matter how clever – is ultimately disposable. That’s why promo items need to create a mental and emotional impact on the audience’s mind as quickly and deeply as possible.

In Conclusion

Exceptional design work is promotion in itself. Keep your clients happy and follow your own path as an artist and craftsperson. Word of mouth will keep clients and fans of your work coming back to hire you or check in on the evolution of your creative talent. In fact, a designer at one popular screenprinting and graphic design studio contacted for this article said, “You’ll be interested to discover that we actually do not have any promotional material! Our posters have worked as an effective promotional material for us for years. Don’t ask me how, but they do.” The truth is that this award-winning studio stays on top because its designs are exceptional and original each and every time. It has also been in business for many years – accruing clients, awards, and publication in popular design magazines all the while.

However, for designers that work at new or growing businesses – some of which launched during a daunting economic downturn – promotion is a valuable tool. It can also be a great way to express your personal creative energy between jobs for professional clients.

Besides, Thomas Edison once said “Everything comes to him who hustles while he waits,” and Jay-Z said “You can’t knock the hustle.”

So promote, promote, promote!

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© Dan Redding for Smashing Magazine, 2010. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this | Stumble on StumbleUpon! | Tweet it! | Submit to Reddit | Forum Smashing Magazine
Post tags: campaign, mail, promo

It’s important to promote your design business. This is especially true when economic times are challenging, you’ve got news to announce, or you’re simply hungry for growth. Many forms of promotion are available to the modern designer – with banner ads and Google AdWords among the most popular. In this digital age, it’s easy for web and graphic designers to overlook one of the most effective and fun forms of promotion: the mail campaign. In an era when people are accustomed to communicating electronically, the value and meaning of something you can hold in your hands is greater than ever before.

The promo mailer is perhaps most popular among illustrators and graphic designers working for editorial clients, which means that it is a powerful, untapped resource for some web designers. Likewise, it was probably a much more common practice ten years ago than it is today due to the rise of online promotion techniques – but those who ignore its potential are missing out on a tool with the power to gain new clients, increase web traffic, and attract publicity for your business and events.

This promotional mailer for Ultra Design Co. includes 3-D posters (complete with 3-D glasses!). Designed by Humberto Howard/UDC

Common types of mailers include postcards and brochures, but designers featured in this article have produced everything from faux newspapers to toys and even promotional eyepatches.

In other words, this can and should be much more than just another opportunity to promote your work. It is also an opportunity to have a heap of fun, think outside the rectangle, and even present former and potential clients with a unique objet d’art. If you give them a piece of art and design that they’re unlikely to forget, then they’ll be unlikely to forget you.

[Offtopic: by the way, did you know that Smashing Magazine has one of the most influential and popular Twitter accounts? Join our discussions and get updates about useful tools and resources — follow us on Twitter!]

How to Create a Postcard

Promo postcard by author and designer Dan Redding at Magnetic State

The type of mailer that you send is limited only by your imagination, but the most common form is the postcard (we’ll look at other forms momentarily). Postcards come in a variety of sizes (standard is 4.25” by 6”) and are available on cardstocks in a variety of weights and finishes. There is no right or wrong way to create a postcard design, but one steadfast rule is that your greatest talents and skills should be in the spotlight. You’ll probably only have a moment to connect with the recipient of your card, so be bold and communicative.

Your design work should go on the front – perhaps your strongest portfolio piece, or a small selection of them – along with your name, URL, and a list of services provided: ‘Illustration and Design,’ ‘Graphic Design and Web Design,’ etc. The back of the postcard usually includes a designer’s logo along with contact information. Some designers will print a huge logo or alternate design back here, while others will leave enough space for a personal, handwritten note. No matter what your design, make sure to consult USPS guidelines to ensure that your design is acceptable for mailing (any quality printing company can assist you with this).

Avoid the Trash Can

If your postcard looks like every other advertisement out there, it will probably end up in the recycling bin. In fact, it might not even make it past the intern that sorts the mail at that publication you sent to. Then it will get recycled, and in a week, your beautiful work will be five percent of a toilet paper roll on a shelf in a Wal-Mart in New Jersey. You don’t want that.

This beautiful, hand-silkscreened promo mailer by Jay Vollmar has a personal touch.

If your card makes it past the perils of the wastebasket and reaches the hands of your addressee – perhaps an Art Director at a record label or the CEO of a startup company – then you’ve done well. If he or she reads both sides and likes it enough to tack it onto the bulletin board for future reference, then you’re in great shape. And if you get a phone call the next time that Art Director has a freelance job, then you’re golden.

Your design work is not junk – it’s your passion – so your promo shouldn’t be junk mail. Make your promo memorable and personal. When it lands in the hands of Steven Q. Client, present Mr. Client with a design that is compelling and appropriate to his industry. Write him a note that is friendly and courteous while reminding him that you hope to hear from him the next time an appropriate freelance project arises. An even better way to make a great impression and stay out of the rubbish bin is to make an unusual or useful product instead of a postcard.

Print Your Design

If you’re very industrious (and you’ve got a good printer), you might print your postcard yourself. But for most designers, it makes the most sense to pay a professional printer to print a few hundred copies of your design.

Choose a print company that will provide accurate colors, high-quality printing, and accessible customer service. There are many of these available on the web; one fine example is Modern Postcard (author’s note: I am not affiliated, just a satisfied customer).

Don’t be wasteful. Check your printer’s environmental policy (a responsible printing service will make this available). Investigate their commitment to sustainability, recycling, and environmentally friendly products. Make your mailers count. Send to recipients who will be interested in your services.

Think Outside the Rectangle

Some designers eschew the pedestrian postcard in favor of a more adventurous option. Here are some creative promotional items that defy expectations.

This lovingly crafted mail package from Labzeus/Brian Neumann includes his portfolio on a flash drive. According to Mr. Neumann’s website, “The project involved package design (custom folder with die cuts), letterpress & foil stamping (letterset & folder), giclée printing (fold-out poster, 2-sided), chemical etching (flash drives) and hand embossments (sticker seal and poster front). I also sourced mailer boxes, custom labels and had branded packing tape created to round out the piece.”

Promotional ‘business card’ eyepatch designed by Paul Coors for the now-defunct art gallery Publico

These small buttons are emblazoned the famous logos of design hero Paul Rand. Why not make small gifts or accessories featuring your own work?

Promotional paddleball toy by Jay Vollmar

Philadelphia illustrator Hawk Krall sends out ‘mega-packs’ of colorful food-themed goodies. “I get the best response from these,” says Hawk. “I send out about 150-200 of these to my best/newest contacts, made up of 3 or 4 postcards, stickers, tearsheets, hot dog magnets, etc.”

This newspaper-style promotional brochure from Hugo & Marie garnered the consultancy lots of attention both online and off.

A word of advice: if you design an unusual item, says designer Derek Sussner, “take a mockup to the design consultants at the USPS before you show up with 700 things to mail, especially if they are dimensional, fragile, or out of the ordinary. That early consult can save some time, energy – and often, postage costs.”

All About Mailing Lists

So now you’ve got a few hundred copies of your beautifully designed postcard/portfolio brochure/novelty treasure map. Where do you send them? You need a mailing list. A good mailing list is something that you can purchase or develop on your own.

Your mailing list should consist of both former clients and potential clients. You’re contacting former clients to say hello and to reinforce your presence in their minds. You’re contacting potential clients to introduce your work and convince them to visit your site, call you, and ultimately, hire you. With any luck, some of those potential clients will be transformed into enthusiastic former clients list by next year.

Postcard by Weiman Design LLC

How to Buy a Mailing List

Just like printing companies, a simple web search will turn up many companies that sell mailing lists. In fact, many printing companies are ‘one-stop shops’ that will not only print your mailers, but can also sell you a mailing list and even stamp, address, and send your items for you. If you choose this route, make sure the company you buy from is a reputable one. Get their representative on the phone and ask them what they can offer that’s suitable to your target audience. Make sure their lists were compiled recently and contain accurate information. If the list is over a year old, how many of those contacts have changed employers or positions? If one name is spelled wrong or one office incorrect, your mailer will end up at the bottom of the wastebasket – along with the money you spent developing and printing it.

This postcard by Sam Kuo represents the theme of Halloween in New York City. Mr. Kuo has designed many clever mailers that acknowledge pop-culture phenomena and current events.

How to Build your Own Mailing List

For many designers, D.I.Y. (do it yourself) is an ethos to live by. Researching and compiling your own mailing list can be a highly effective and personal way to customize a list to the specific needs of your business. Sending to former clients and contacts is the easy part. But who else can you send to?

In order to build your own mailing list, you’ll need to identify a target audience. If you’re an editorial illustrator working for magazines, you might go to a bookstore and copy down the names and office addresses of art directors listed in the masthead of magazines you’d like to see your work in. If you’re a web designer, you might identify a target market (perhaps you specialize in promotional websites for filmmakers and videographers). Start Googling relevant companies and checking Contact pages for address listings. Don’t be afraid to get on the phone, introduce yourself, and politely inquire about an appropriate contact person who you might send to.

Postcard by Hawk Krall

High and Low

When selecting targets for your mailing list, choose a wide range of recipients. You should choose people and organizations similar to those you’ve worked with before. These potential clients are likely to be suitable to your size, price range, and services. You should also contact your ideal clients – look for your ‘dream job.’ If there are any companies you’ve always wanted to work with, now’s the time to do some research and get in touch. Be resourceful and be professional.

Snail Mail is Your Friend

Whatever you decide to send, calculate accurate postage for each item and buy correctly valued stamps. When in doubt, take your item to the post office and ask questions.

If you’re sending postcards, buy postcard stamps from the postal service. In the U.S., these stamps are cheaper than standard first class stamps and will save you a good deal of money on a bulk mailing.

Send your mail so that it will arrive on a Tuesday or Wednesday (this rule also applies to your email newsletter). Not only is mail volume lighter after Monday, but work volume is lighter, too. Your recipient is likely to have a smaller amount of mail competing with yours for his or her attention on these days. He or she is also more to have a few more moments of attention to devote to something besides the day’s pressing work tasks.

Examples from Sussner Designer Co.

Sussner Design Company (aka SDCo) is a design firm that’s been doing superb (and award-winning) work in Minneapolis, Minnesota for over ten years. Derek Sussner – the company’s “proud owner guy,” according to their website – was kind enough to answer some questions about SDCo’s inventive promotional materials for this article.

Sussner Design Company Promotional Brochure

“We printed about a 1,000,” Derek says of these newspaper-like brochures of the firm’s design work. “Of those, we mailed out 700. We use the rest as our portfolio when we meet with new clients, or to send to new people we come in contact with. Reflections printed them for us. We have a great, long-standing relationship with them. We create all of Reflections’ promotional materials – so we print our own self-promo materials for trade. These brochures/mailers have been pretty successful for us. And they are a great way to stay in front of people we haven’t talked to in awhile.”

Sussner Design Co. Ten-Year Anniversary Poster

When Derek is asked whether he purchases his mailing lists or generates them in-house, he responds, “Both. The mailing list that works the best is the one we keep in-house. We add people we work with, have worked with in the past, people we’ve met and/or submitted proposals for, colleagues, industry partners, and a few networking friends. We also purchased a list (and we’ve renewed it several times). From what I can tell, we’ve never generated a face to face meeting from the purchased list.”

Sussner Design Company Happy Hour Spinner

The Sussner ‘happy hour spinner’ is a whimsical, functional, and extremely clever item that allows the user to put his or her happy hour destination in the hands of fate. The item was the follow-up to a Lunch Spinner, which Derek hopes to re-create soon. “We’re also looking to create a version the can be customized by the recipient – so they can be used by our out-of-town clients and friends.”

Derek’s says the company’s goal for promo mailers “is always that people keep them – and even better – display them on or around their desk. And the best scenario is that it causes them to write you an email or call you with a new project. I also like it when the leftover promos have a life span so you can continue to use them, hand them out, or send them with other capabilities presentations.”

Moving announcements and event notifications are other common types of promotional mailers.

Derek’s advice on the most important attribute of a successful mailer is simple: “It has to grab someone’s attention. Hopefully, it slows the motion of the arm down – if someone notices it on their way to throwing it in the garbage.” The truth of the matter is that all printed promotional matter – no matter how clever – is ultimately disposable. That’s why promo items need to create a mental and emotional impact on the audience’s mind as quickly and deeply as possible.

In Conclusion

Exceptional design work is promotion in itself. Keep your clients happy and follow your own path as an artist and craftsperson. Word of mouth will keep clients and fans of your work coming back to hire you or check in on the evolution of your creative talent. In fact, a designer at one popular screenprinting and graphic design studio contacted for this article said, “You’ll be interested to discover that we actually do not have any promotional material! Our posters have worked as an effective promotional material for us for years. Don’t ask me how, but they do.” The truth is that this award-winning studio stays on top because its designs are exceptional and original each and every time. It has also been in business for many years – accruing clients, awards, and publication in popular design magazines all the while.

However, for designers that work at new or growing businesses – some of which launched during a daunting economic downturn – promotion is a valuable tool. It can also be a great way to express your personal creative energy between jobs for professional clients.

Besides, Thomas Edison once said “Everything comes to him who hustles while he waits,” and Jay-Z said “You can’t knock the hustle.”

So promote, promote, promote!

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© Dan Redding for Smashing Magazine, 2010. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this | Stumble on StumbleUpon! | Tweet it! | Submit to Reddit | Forum Smashing Magazine
Post tags: campaign, mail, promo

This is a guest blog post by Sherman Nicodemus. This is my third post in a series this week on “Moving at the Speed of Creativity.” If you have questions about this post I’ll be glad to answer them via comments here.

The word hackintosh (or Hackint0sh) is:

…a portmanteau of the word “hack” and the name of Apple’s main brand of computers, Macintosh.

A search on the English WikiPedia for “hackintosh” redirects to the article, “OSx86,” defined as:

… a collaborative “hacking” project to run the Mac OS X computer operating system on non-Apple personal computers with x86 architecture and x86-64 compatible processors. The effort started soon after the June 2005 Worldwide Developers Conference announcement that Apple would be transitioning their personal computers from PowerPC to Intel microprocessors.

Interest in creating hackintosh computers has ostensibly risen thanks to the proliferation of inexpensive netbook computers. If a person purchases a netbook computer with hardware supporting required hackintosh installation software, it is possible to now have a functioning laptop computer running the Macintosh OS X operating system on hardware costing just $200 – $300 U.S. As I’ll discuss in greater detail in this post, it’s important to note while this is TECHNICALLY possible, it is currently not LEGAL.

photo credit: charliekwalker

As an obliquely related aside, I found it interesting reading the Wiktionary definition of “portmanteau” one etymology of the word is traced back to 1872, when it was invented by Lewis Carrol in “Through The Looking Glass” to describe the words he coined in Jabberwocky:

Well, “slithy” means “lithe and slimy.” “Lithe” is the same as “active”. You see it’s like a portmanteau–there are two meanings packed up into one word.

This reference to the Jabberwock has more significance to me after recently seeing Tim Burton’s cinematic rendition of “Alice in Wonderland” and reading Kevin Hodgson’s post, “Losing the Jabberwock.”

Investigating the world of “hackintoshes” may naturally invite comparisons to Alice and rabbit holes. The OSx86 Project homepage (www.osx86project.org) provides two different destination options, referencing Morpheus’ choices for Neo in “The Matrix:”

1. Take the blue pill and return to the classic OSx86 Project wiki. Wake in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe.
2. Take the red pill and discover our new news and forum portal, InsanelyMac. Stay in Wonderland and see how deep the rabbit-hole goes.

If you’d like to peer a bit down the rabbit hole of “hackintoshes,” you’ve come to the right place– at least for the next couple of days as I continue to guest-blog here.

photo credit: jpockele

The fact that it’s been possible and remains possible to create a “hackintosh” computer is controversial because Apple has made the process illegal. According to the “Legal issues and Apple objections” section of the OSx86 article in the English WikiPedia:

Apple does not authorize the use of the Mac OS on any x86 PC other than the ones it has developed itself. The company used a Trusted Platform Module, or TPM, to tie Mac OS to the systems it distributed to developers after announcing its switch to Intel’s chips.

The Mac OS X EULA forbids installations of Mac OS X on “non Apple-labeled computers”. On July 3, 2008, Apple filed a lawsuit against Psystar Corporation for violating this restriction, among other claims. Apple claimed Psystar “violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) by dodging copy-protection technologies Apple uses to protect Mac OS X. “Apple employs technological protection measures that effectively control access to Apple’s copyrighted works [...] Defendant has illegally circumvented Apple’s technological copyright-protection measures.” Specifically, Apple charged Psystar with acquiring or creating code that “avoids, bypasses, removes, descrambles, decrypts, deactivates or impairs a technological protection measure without Apple’s authority for the purpose of gaining unauthorized access to Apple’s copyrighted works.” This brief revealed that Apple considers the methods that it uses to prevent Mac OS X from being installed on non-Apple hardware to be protected by the DMCA.

In yesterday’s post, “Ripping Personally Owned DVDs for iPhone or iPod Viewing: Legal and Technical Perspectives,” I reflected on the irony that “legality” when it comes to creating backups or compressed versions of legally purchased DVD movies continues to be defined by geography, rather than the inherent ethics of the act. As far as I know, it is not “legal” to create a hackintosh in any country or territory on our planet. Through their operating system EULA, Apple has decreed it taboo worldwide.

One sign of the sensitivity which surrounds the topic of “hackintoshes” was visible over a year ago in January 2009, when Brian Chen (a writer for Wired’s Gadget Lab blog) had his video taken down on the advice of Wired’s legal team after they were confronted about it by Apple representatives. In his article for CNET, “Wired takes down Hackintosh video,” Tom Krazit noted:

Apple has appeared to gently tolerate the “Hackintosh” community that sprung up after the company decided to adopt Intel’s x86 processors for the Mac, so long as the project didn’t advance much beyond science fair mode. But it has shown a clear interest in protecting its licensing agreements for Mac OS X this year, through its legal battle against Psystar, a clone maker selling generic desktop PCs with Mac OS X preinstalled.
In its article, Wired admitted that the practice is illegal, requiring the installation of hacked software, linking to well-known torrent site The Pirate Bay to provide a source for the software. It also offered the following disclaimer: “Disclaimer: The following process potentially violates Apple’s End User License Agreement for Mac OS X. Please ensure you own a copy of Mac OS X Leopard, if you wish to follow the procedure.”

Apple does continue to sell 5-user “family packs” of its latest Mac OS X operating system, but officially a hackintosh installation cannot be made legal through the purchase of a software license. Apple’s EULA makes no exceptions for non-Apple hardware running OS X.

If, despite the legal realities, you’re still interested in creating your own hackintosh, a number of websites are available with helpful information. Hackintosh.com offers:

…links to everything you need to build your own Hackintosh and get Mac OS X 10.5 “Leopard” or Mac OS X 10.6 “Snow Leopard” running on an unsupported computer — instructions, step-by-step “how to” guides, and tutorials — as well as installation videos, lists of compatible computers and parts, and communities for support.

Your laptop hardware manufacturer may even provide user forums with helpful tips. The Dell Mini 9 and 10 netbooks support Hackintosh software, and the Dell-sponsored mydellmini.com site includes forum groups specific to hackintoshing, like its Mac OS X forum. Total posts in that forum to date (49,051) far outnumber the total number of posts in all the other forums on the entire site combined. It is fascinating to see how some college students are supplementing their income with periodic hackintosh code development.

The hackintosh rabbit hole is deep indeed.

Technorati Tags:
apple, howto, install, tutorial, hackintosh, netbook, hack, osx, eula, legal, illegal, mac

This is a guest blog post by Sherman Nicodemus. This is my third post in a series this week on “Moving at the Speed of Creativity.” If you have questions about this post I’ll be glad to answer them via comments here.

The word hackintosh (or Hackint0sh) is:

…a portmanteau of the word “hack” and the name of Apple’s main brand of computers, Macintosh.

A search on the English WikiPedia for “hackintosh” redirects to the article, “OSx86,” defined as:

… a collaborative “hacking” project to run the Mac OS X computer operating system on non-Apple personal computers with x86 architecture and x86-64 compatible processors. The effort started soon after the June 2005 Worldwide Developers Conference announcement that Apple would be transitioning their personal computers from PowerPC to Intel microprocessors.

Interest in creating hackintosh computers has ostensibly risen thanks to the proliferation of inexpensive netbook computers. If a person purchases a netbook computer with hardware supporting required hackintosh installation software, it is possible to now have a functioning laptop computer running the Macintosh OS X operating system on hardware costing just $200 – $300 U.S. As I’ll discuss in greater detail in this post, it’s important to note while this is TECHNICALLY possible, it is currently not LEGAL.

photo credit: charliekwalker

As an obliquely related aside, I found it interesting reading the Wiktionary definition of “portmanteau” one etymology of the word is traced back to 1872, when it was invented by Lewis Carrol in “Through The Looking Glass” to describe the words he coined in Jabberwocky:

Well, “slithy” means “lithe and slimy.” “Lithe” is the same as “active”. You see it’s like a portmanteau–there are two meanings packed up into one word.

This reference to the Jabberwock has more significance to me after recently seeing Tim Burton’s cinematic rendition of “Alice in Wonderland” and reading Kevin Hodgson’s post, “Losing the Jabberwock.”

Investigating the world of “hackintoshes” may naturally invite comparisons to Alice and rabbit holes. The OSx86 Project homepage (www.osx86project.org) provides two different destination options, referencing Morpheus’ choices for Neo in “The Matrix:”

1. Take the blue pill and return to the classic OSx86 Project wiki. Wake in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe.
2. Take the red pill and discover our new news and forum portal, InsanelyMac. Stay in Wonderland and see how deep the rabbit-hole goes.

If you’d like to peer a bit down the rabbit hole of “hackintoshes,” you’ve come to the right place– at least for the next couple of days as I continue to guest-blog here.

photo credit: jpockele

The fact that it’s been possible and remains possible to create a “hackintosh” computer is controversial because Apple has made the process illegal. According to the “Legal issues and Apple objections” section of the OSx86 article in the English WikiPedia:

Apple does not authorize the use of the Mac OS on any x86 PC other than the ones it has developed itself. The company used a Trusted Platform Module, or TPM, to tie Mac OS to the systems it distributed to developers after announcing its switch to Intel’s chips.

The Mac OS X EULA forbids installations of Mac OS X on “non Apple-labeled computers”. On July 3, 2008, Apple filed a lawsuit against Psystar Corporation for violating this restriction, among other claims. Apple claimed Psystar “violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) by dodging copy-protection technologies Apple uses to protect Mac OS X. “Apple employs technological protection measures that effectively control access to Apple’s copyrighted works [...] Defendant has illegally circumvented Apple’s technological copyright-protection measures.” Specifically, Apple charged Psystar with acquiring or creating code that “avoids, bypasses, removes, descrambles, decrypts, deactivates or impairs a technological protection measure without Apple’s authority for the purpose of gaining unauthorized access to Apple’s copyrighted works.” This brief revealed that Apple considers the methods that it uses to prevent Mac OS X from being installed on non-Apple hardware to be protected by the DMCA.

In yesterday’s post, “Ripping Personally Owned DVDs for iPhone or iPod Viewing: Legal and Technical Perspectives,” I reflected on the irony that “legality” when it comes to creating backups or compressed versions of legally purchased DVD movies continues to be defined by geography, rather than the inherent ethics of the act. As far as I know, it is not “legal” to create a hackintosh in any country or territory on our planet. Through their operating system EULA, Apple has decreed it taboo worldwide.

One sign of the sensitivity which surrounds the topic of “hackintoshes” was visible over a year ago in January 2009, when Brian Chen (a writer for Wired’s Gadget Lab blog) had his video taken down on the advice of Wired’s legal team after they were confronted about it by Apple representatives. In his article for CNET, “Wired takes down Hackintosh video,” Tom Krazit noted:

Apple has appeared to gently tolerate the “Hackintosh” community that sprung up after the company decided to adopt Intel’s x86 processors for the Mac, so long as the project didn’t advance much beyond science fair mode. But it has shown a clear interest in protecting its licensing agreements for Mac OS X this year, through its legal battle against Psystar, a clone maker selling generic desktop PCs with Mac OS X preinstalled.
In its article, Wired admitted that the practice is illegal, requiring the installation of hacked software, linking to well-known torrent site The Pirate Bay to provide a source for the software. It also offered the following disclaimer: “Disclaimer: The following process potentially violates Apple’s End User License Agreement for Mac OS X. Please ensure you own a copy of Mac OS X Leopard, if you wish to follow the procedure.”

Apple does continue to sell 5-user “family packs” of its latest Mac OS X operating system, but officially a hackintosh installation cannot be made legal through the purchase of a software license. Apple’s EULA makes no exceptions for non-Apple hardware running OS X.

If, despite the legal realities, you’re still interested in creating your own hackintosh, a number of websites are available with helpful information. Hackintosh.com offers:

…links to everything you need to build your own Hackintosh and get Mac OS X 10.5 “Leopard” or Mac OS X 10.6 “Snow Leopard” running on an unsupported computer — instructions, step-by-step “how to” guides, and tutorials — as well as installation videos, lists of compatible computers and parts, and communities for support.

Your laptop hardware manufacturer may even provide user forums with helpful tips. The Dell Mini 9 and 10 netbooks support Hackintosh software, and the Dell-sponsored mydellmini.com site includes forum groups specific to hackintoshing, like its Mac OS X forum. Total posts in that forum to date (49,051) far outnumber the total number of posts in all the other forums on the entire site combined. It is fascinating to see how some college students are supplementing their income with periodic hackintosh code development.

The hackintosh rabbit hole is deep indeed.

Technorati Tags:
apple, howto, install, tutorial, hackintosh, netbook, hack, osx, eula, legal, illegal, mac

This is a guest blog post by Sherman Nicodemus. This is my third post in a series this week on “Moving at the Speed of Creativity.” If you have questions about this post I’ll be glad to answer them via comments here.

The word hackintosh (or Hackint0sh) is:

…a portmanteau of the word “hack” and the name of Apple’s main brand of computers, Macintosh.

A search on the English WikiPedia for “hackintosh” redirects to the article, “OSx86,” defined as:

… a collaborative “hacking” project to run the Mac OS X computer operating system on non-Apple personal computers with x86 architecture and x86-64 compatible processors. The effort started soon after the June 2005 Worldwide Developers Conference announcement that Apple would be transitioning their personal computers from PowerPC to Intel microprocessors.

Interest in creating hackintosh computers has ostensibly risen thanks to the proliferation of inexpensive netbook computers. If a person purchases a netbook computer with hardware supporting required hackintosh installation software, it is possible to now have a functioning laptop computer running the Macintosh OS X operating system on hardware costing just $200 – $300 U.S. As I’ll discuss in greater detail in this post, it’s important to note while this is TECHNICALLY possible, it is currently not LEGAL.

photo credit: charliekwalker

As an obliquely related aside, I found it interesting reading the Wiktionary definition of “portmanteau” one etymology of the word is traced back to 1872, when it was invented by Lewis Carrol in “Through The Looking Glass” to describe the words he coined in Jabberwocky:

Well, “slithy” means “lithe and slimy.” “Lithe” is the same as “active”. You see it’s like a portmanteau–there are two meanings packed up into one word.

This reference to the Jabberwock has more significance to me after recently seeing Tim Burton’s cinematic rendition of “Alice in Wonderland” and reading Kevin Hodgson’s post, “Losing the Jabberwock.”

Investigating the world of “hackintoshes” may naturally invite comparisons to Alice and rabbit holes. The OSx86 Project homepage (www.osx86project.org) provides two different destination options, referencing Morpheus’ choices for Neo in “The Matrix:”

1. Take the blue pill and return to the classic OSx86 Project wiki. Wake in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe.
2. Take the red pill and discover our new news and forum portal, InsanelyMac. Stay in Wonderland and see how deep the rabbit-hole goes.

If you’d like to peer a bit down the rabbit hole of “hackintoshes,” you’ve come to the right place– at least for the next couple of days as I continue to guest-blog here.

photo credit: jpockele

The fact that it’s been possible and remains possible to create a “hackintosh” computer is controversial because Apple has made the process illegal. According to the “Legal issues and Apple objections” section of the OSx86 article in the English WikiPedia:

Apple does not authorize the use of the Mac OS on any x86 PC other than the ones it has developed itself. The company used a Trusted Platform Module, or TPM, to tie Mac OS to the systems it distributed to developers after announcing its switch to Intel’s chips.

The Mac OS X EULA forbids installations of Mac OS X on “non Apple-labeled computers”. On July 3, 2008, Apple filed a lawsuit against Psystar Corporation for violating this restriction, among other claims. Apple claimed Psystar “violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) by dodging copy-protection technologies Apple uses to protect Mac OS X. “Apple employs technological protection measures that effectively control access to Apple’s copyrighted works [...] Defendant has illegally circumvented Apple’s technological copyright-protection measures.” Specifically, Apple charged Psystar with acquiring or creating code that “avoids, bypasses, removes, descrambles, decrypts, deactivates or impairs a technological protection measure without Apple’s authority for the purpose of gaining unauthorized access to Apple’s copyrighted works.” This brief revealed that Apple considers the methods that it uses to prevent Mac OS X from being installed on non-Apple hardware to be protected by the DMCA.

In yesterday’s post, “Ripping Personally Owned DVDs for iPhone or iPod Viewing: Legal and Technical Perspectives,” I reflected on the irony that “legality” when it comes to creating backups or compressed versions of legally purchased DVD movies continues to be defined by geography, rather than the inherent ethics of the act. As far as I know, it is not “legal” to create a hackintosh in any country or territory on our planet. Through their operating system EULA, Apple has decreed it taboo worldwide.

One sign of the sensitivity which surrounds the topic of “hackintoshes” was visible over a year ago in January 2009, when Brian Chen (a writer for Wired’s Gadget Lab blog) had his video taken down on the advice of Wired’s legal team after they were confronted about it by Apple representatives. In his article for CNET, “Wired takes down Hackintosh video,” Tom Krazit noted:

Apple has appeared to gently tolerate the “Hackintosh” community that sprung up after the company decided to adopt Intel’s x86 processors for the Mac, so long as the project didn’t advance much beyond science fair mode. But it has shown a clear interest in protecting its licensing agreements for Mac OS X this year, through its legal battle against Psystar, a clone maker selling generic desktop PCs with Mac OS X preinstalled.
In its article, Wired admitted that the practice is illegal, requiring the installation of hacked software, linking to well-known torrent site The Pirate Bay to provide a source for the software. It also offered the following disclaimer: “Disclaimer: The following process potentially violates Apple’s End User License Agreement for Mac OS X. Please ensure you own a copy of Mac OS X Leopard, if you wish to follow the procedure.”

Apple does continue to sell 5-user “family packs” of its latest Mac OS X operating system, but officially a hackintosh installation cannot be made legal through the purchase of a software license. Apple’s EULA makes no exceptions for non-Apple hardware running OS X.

If, despite the legal realities, you’re still interested in creating your own hackintosh, a number of websites are available with helpful information. Hackintosh.com offers:

…links to everything you need to build your own Hackintosh and get Mac OS X 10.5 “Leopard” or Mac OS X 10.6 “Snow Leopard” running on an unsupported computer — instructions, step-by-step “how to” guides, and tutorials — as well as installation videos, lists of compatible computers and parts, and communities for support.

Your laptop hardware manufacturer may even provide user forums with helpful tips. The Dell Mini 9 and 10 netbooks support Hackintosh software, and the Dell-sponsored mydellmini.com site includes forum groups specific to hackintoshing, like its Mac OS X forum. Total posts in that forum to date (49,051) far outnumber the total number of posts in all the other forums on the entire site combined. It is fascinating to see how some college students are supplementing their income with periodic hackintosh code development.

The hackintosh rabbit hole is deep indeed.

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Over the last years Adobe Photoshop’s developers have been integrating some powerful 3D tools. Many of them require you to import a model from a 3D software or to gain profound knowledge of the software and its terminology. If you wish to move forward a little faster, then take a look at the following plugins.

Swift 3D PS

Manufacturer: Electric Rain
Web: www.erain.com
Price: $149.00
Target group: Pros
Compatibility: Photoshop CS4 Extended 11.0.1
File size: 46.5MB

After installation of Swift 3D you will probably go to the filters item and look for the plug-in. But in this new version, everything is different: You have to open the Swift 3D PS plug-in by clicking on Windows > Extensions >Swift 3D PS. A window will pop up that can be moved to the other palettes at the right-hand side of your desktop in order to allow a seamless integration with Photoshop.

The basic functionalities include both text input and the creation and modification of basic shapes, such as spheres, dice or pyramids. If you go down, you can also select a material, such as a bitmap graphic or a certain glossy color. In this place you have the option to modify the light atmosphere or you simply open a finished object from the model libraries. The plug-in features numerous helpful settings and preferences. You will even be able to create simple animations. The import of Illustrator or Flash helps you to benefit from a fluid workflow even between different software components.

AV Bros. Page Curl Pro 2.2

Manufacturer: AV Bros.
Web: www.avbros.com
Price: $79.00
Target group: Newbies
Compatibility: Photoshop as of CS3
File size: 3.1MB

The Page Curl Pro plug-in helps you to create page curling and folding effects. At the first glance this does not seem to be of any interest, but this plug-in is the leading filter plug-in in its area of activity. This becomes evident when you see the results: You can turn pages, create folded flyers, or slightly bend a sheet of paper. Thanks to the various possibilities offered by this plug-in, you will be able to achieve your goal quickly.

First of all, select either Curl (to obtain a curling page effect) or Fold (to obtain a folding page effect). Then, use the controllers to adjust the position, orientation, strength and distortion. You can even modify the back of the sheet (color or photo) as well as the opacity and the limitation according to your own requirements. You can separately open further palettes in order to change the light atmosphere, to adjust the position within the 3D space or to texturize the surfaces of the pages using a Bump Map.

3D Invigorator

Manufacturer: digital anarchy
Web: www.digitalanarchy.com
Price: $199.00
Target group: Pros
Compatibility: Photoshop as of CS
File size: 11.5MB

The 3D Invigorator plug-in for Photoshop allows you to create 3D objects from an Illustrator file, a text or a basic shape. In order to ensure a smooth workflow, the plug-in takes advantage from non-destructive features such as smart objects and smart filters. When you’re finished designing the 3D object you can select from different rendering styles. You are thus able to create many different styles.

Once you’ve finished your 3D objects, you can rotate them and move them to any point in the 3D space. Another highlight of this plug-in is the option to create different lights and textures or to select them from the material swatches. The user interface has been designed highly intuitive and user-friendly. It allows moving the camera and the light source with the mouse. You will thus not need to enter any numeric data anymore.

3D Maker and 3D Shadow

Manufacturer: Lokas Software
Web: www.artistic-effects.com
Price: $19.95 / Freeware
Target group: Newbies
Compatibility: Photoshop as of CS
File size: 510KB/450KB

3D Maker allows you to create 3D graphical elements out of 2D drawings. The 3D effect is created using pixels from other parts of the graphic. The X and Y axle controls are fully configurable and allow you to turn the object according to your needs. If it’s too big, the zoom function helps you to adjust the size. If the border should be thicker, you can adjust this via the Depth value. And if you prefer to create a comic-style instead of a photorealistic graphic you can simply deactivate the Lightning button. Furthermore, the add-on allows you to move the light source, to reduce the strength or to modify the colors of shadows and lights.

3D Shadow is the perfect tool to create drop shadows that are difficult to create with Photoshop. Although there’s Drop Shadow in the Photoshop layer styles, you will be deceived by the limited possibilities offered therein. Not so with the 3D Shadow plug-in: Apart from the blurring effects, the visibility and the distances, you can also determine the X, Y and Z axles as well as the perspectives and two offset values.

3D Sphere Pro

Manufacturer: Richard Rosenman
Web: www.richardrosenman.com
Price: $29.99
Target group: Pros
Compatibility: Photoshop as of CS
File size: 497KB

The 3D Sphere Pro plug-in by Richard Rosenman allows you to create 3D spheres, such as planets, offering fully customizable form, rendering, transparency, masking and lighting properties. Once you have created your 3D object you can cover it with a color or a texture. But first of all, you have to use the ellipse button in order to transform the sphere into an ellipsoid or to modify its height using the Cone/Flat option.

Using the rendering option you can apply 60 methods in order to assign two colors to the object. Doing this, you can slightly adjust, move or rotate the size of your texture. You can also select a background color. The plug in provides you with 30 preset lighting options which makes this app even more complex

Craquelure 3D and Jama 3D

Manufacturer: Redfield Plugins
Web: www.redfieldplugins.com
Price: Freeware
Target group: Newbies
Compatibility: Photoshop as of CS
File size: 473KB

Craquelure 3D allows you to apply craquelure effects to 2D surfaces, thus creating a unique 3D effect. Two independent craquelure layers can be combined in order to achieve amazing effects. For each layer, a settings generator is provided that allows you to control the number, size, the angle and the shape. Each layer has its own Bump Map. You can perspectively distort the image using the Angle option. This even enhances the 3D effect. A Refraction as well as a Frequency option with a direct influence on the craquelures are available. And let me give you a word of advice: If you want to achieve a realistic outcome, adjust the Brightness control to a low setting.

Jama 3D also creates folding effects. These effects, however, are different from those created with Page Curl Pro or other plug ins. First of all, you adjust the direction and the strength of distortion using the hash. A controller allows you to perspectively distort a layer and to influence the light, saturation and brightness. The height of the folds is largely dependent on the direction of the shadow.

Further Resources

Google’s 3D gallery

Manufacturer: Google
Web: http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse

The Google 3D gallery, better known as Google 3D warehouse, is a free online repository for 3D models. Here you can share your model with other users and you can collaborate on other models, such as buildings, plants or everyday objects.

DAZ 3D

Manufacturer: DAZ
Web: http://www.daz3d.com/I/3d-models

DAZ 3D does not only provide you with a lively community and a 3D software, but also with some free or very cheap 3D models and add-ons which help you to achieve even better results. The different models also include hair, motions and poses, themes and many more…

Beauty Plugins and Software

Smoothing skin, making a nose smaller, brightening teeth – anyone who already had the opportunity to retouch photos in Photoshop knows that this can take up a lot of time. This software and plug-ins can help and save a lot of time.

Kodak Digital GEM Airbrush

Manufacturer: Kodak
Web: www.asf.com
Price: $79.60
Compatibility: Photoshop 5 up to CS4, Elements 1 to 4
File size: 6.6MB

No need for time-consuming masking and manual softening: The Gem Airbrush plug-in provided by Kodak automatically reduces small wrinkles and slightly smoothens the skin. The application recognizes harsh shadows and highlights and at the same time fully preserves details like fine hair. Therefore, it can also be used to reduce freckles and spots. Several control sliders allow you to customize the smoothing effects and intensity amounts at three levels of detail: fine, medium, and coarse. An interesting feature is the detail view located right next to the Before and After options.

CleanSkinFX

Manufacturer: Media Chance
Web: www.mediachance.com
Price: Freeware
Compatibility: – (stand alone)
File size: 523KB

CleanSkinFX is another application which can be operated without Photoshop. It automatically smoothes the skin of the object while preserving all the details and crispness of hair or the background. The Double Clean option creates a heavy retouched portrait and the Enhance pink option gently improves skin tones and also makes red spots on the skin less visible. Before and after images allow you to compare your reworked photo with the original. Although the interface is really simplistic and does not offer any options for adjustments the results obtained with this freeware are quite acceptable.

Portraiture

Manufacturer: Imagenomic
Web: www.imagenomic.com
Price: $199.95
Compatibility: Photoshop CS2 to CS4, Elements 4 to 7
File size: 3.6MB

Portraiture provides a powerful skin tone masking tool which allows you to smooth the skin tones without affecting any other areas of the image. All other structures maintain their sharpness. And if you are in a great hurry, then use the auto-mask feature. Numerous settings with auspicious names such as enhance: glamour or smoothing: medium invite you to try the functions and improve your images. If you want to further fine-tune the results, you can create the most optimal skin tones and smoothness manually. You can save your own settings and use them later on for similar photos. Portraiture is not only available for Photoshop and Photoshop Elements but also for Aperture.

ImageDoctor

Manufacturer: Alien Skin
Web: www.alienskin.com
Price: $199.00
Compatibility: Photoshop CS2 to CS4, Elements 5 or later
File size: 5.9MB

ImageDoctor by Alien Skin is another Photoshop plug-in that smoothes the skin. Select an area of the photo and use the Blemish Concealer to remove pimples and other blemishes. Although you can only change the strength and size of your selection, you will definitely obtain a smoother skin: The skin softener allows you to reduce pores. Smart Fill helps you to replaces undesired areas of a photo with an intelligent sampling of the nearby background pattern. Furthermore, the app offers you the option to remove dust and scratches and to repair JPEGs.

iCorrect

Manufacturer: PictoColor Software
Web: www.pictocolor.com
Price: $99.95
Compatibility: Photoshop CS2 to CS4, Elements 4 to 6
File size: 2.6MB

iCorrect allows you to instantly correct the white balance, exposure, and skin tone of any portrait. First of all, click on the black and white areas of the photos in order to set the white balance. Afterwards, control the brightness and contrast and last but not least adjust the colors. Skin tones play a crucial role for these steps as they should be natural and balanced. Once you have determined the perfect settings you have the opportunity to save them as Custom Settings in iCorrect. This is especially important if you want to edit a whole series of photos, such as wedding photos. The traditional problems caused by the heavy contrast of the bride’s white dress can thus easily be solved. The point-and-click interface is self-explanatory.

FaceFilter Studio

Manufacturer: Reallusion
Web: www.reallusion.com
Price: $59.95
Compatibility: Photoshop CS to CS4,
File size: 6.5MB

FaceFilter makes people smile. In Photoshop you can create the same effect using the Liquify filter or the Warp transformation. FaceFilter goes one step further. You can change and enhance whole facial expressions, open and widen eyes or adjust head proportions. Furthermore, the app provides you with the option to adjust skin tones and remove oily reflections. If you want to change the shape of the face you will have to set some markers onto the face, adjust the skin tone, if necessary, and select an expression such as Smile, Slim or Cool. If you want to create an unusual image, then apply some fun tricks to your photo. This category also provides you with unrealistic shapes such as Alien.

Face Control

Manufacturer: Redfield Plugins
Web: www.redfieldplugins.com
Price: Freeware
Compatibility: Photoshop 7 to CS4,
File size: 9.3MB

The Face Control is another plug-in that allows you to change facial expressions of people in digital photos. As you can read on the website, human, animal, alien, or any other faces are welcome to test the advantages of this software. This very easy-to-use freeware program provides one single slider control: If you move the slider to the left, the eyes become smaller and the face becomes bigger. If it is moved to the right the result evokes the image of a small child with huge eyes and a special head shape. Despite this simple control unit, the plug-in offers a very high quality.

PortraitProfessional 9

More than just a simple enhancing software

Portrait Professional by Anthropics Technology is a real specialist application that has been trained in human beauty. It allows you to easily remove red eyes, brighten teeth and eyes or reduce wrinkles. You might think that Photoshop offers you the same opportunities. Well, this is true, but if you wish to remove grease, sweat or unsightly shine from the skin or to adjust the lighting on the face in order to optimize the skin tone, you will be happy about the options offered by PortraitProfessional. These features also include options to remove pimples and other skin blemishes, to smooth and color hair and to change the eye color.

Manufacturer: Anthropics Technology Ltd.
Web: www.portraitprofessional.com
Price: $69.95
Compatibility: Photoshop as of CS (and stand alone)
File size: 29.3MB

Having all these features in mind, you could think this piece of software is an almighty application. And in fact, it is. But the above mentioned features are not enough: You also have different options to re-sculpt the subject’s face. You may think that it is a bit too much to change the whole character of the model. But, please, feel reassured: If you only enhance subtle features of the image, you just slightly enhance the appearance. Once you are satisfied with your settings, you can save and them for other images.

01 Load the image
Once you’ve opened the PortraitProfessional software, you simply click at the big start button and select a portrait you want to enhance. In order to assist the software, you will have to determine whether the model in the photo is male or female. To do this, you will only need to click at one of the two examples. Additionally, you can modify the orientation of the image and rotate it. Afterwards, the next stop will appear automatically.

02 Set markers
As PortraitProfessional is not able to automatically determine the most important characteristics of the face, you will have to set some markers around the eyes, the tip of the nose and the mouth. Once you’ve finished this rough selection, you will have to set more precise markers by contouring eyes, eyebrows, nose, and mouth. Furthermore, you contour the pupils and the shape of the face. As the software provides you with step-by-step instructions, this is much easier and faster as you might think.

03 Adaptation
The sliders on the right-hand side allow you to adjust the image according to your requirements. Try one or more saved slider instructions, such as remove wrinkles, or chose one of the preset eye colors in order to obtain a serious expression. You will achieve more targeted results using the face optimization controls. If you do not want to change the character of the model please adjust the shape of the face very carefully only. To widen the eyes, simply click at the eyes button.

04 Adjusting details
The skin control allows you to remove pores, shadows and wrinkles. You can also slightly tan the skin or reduce the oily appearance. The retouch and skin selection brushes help you to obtain maximum results. Eyes are a very important feature for portraits. In order to obtain more intensive eyes you should brighten the eye color, sharpen the eyes and adjust the colors. You can virtually apply lipstick and create shiny hair by marking these areas using a brush.

China is a country with five thousand years of civilization. It is a multi-national entity extending over a large area of East Asia. China’s cultural influence extends across the continent, with customs and writing systems adopted by neighboring countries including Japan, Korea and Vietnam.

China has gone through numerous ups and downs and twists and turns, from wealthy and prosperous (as during the Tang Dynasty back in 618–907 AD) to powerless and colonized (as during the Qing Dynasty, just around 100 years ago). Now China is reopening its door to the world again, embracing the latest trends, concepts and technologies, the World Wide Web being one of them.

In our interviews with six well-known designers in China, each of whom wears different hats, the recurring theme was that China’s Web design industry is rising like a spiral from imitation to innovation and user-centered design.

Chinese Web Design: Dongpai

By the way, what was the last time you visited our sister site Noupe? Subscribe to Noupe’s feed for more inspirational and design-related articles.

State Of Affairs

The designers we interviewed had much to say about the direction of Web design in China, the status quo and trends. The individuals are spread out across four major cities in China, and they are:

• Yu Guo
  Former chief designer at Baidu, China’s largest search engine.
  Current city: Beijing.
• Whitecrow Zhu
  Co-founder of UCDChina, and principal product experience designer at Alipay, a subsidiary of Alibaba.
  Current city: Hangzhou.
• Junchen Wu
  Co-founder of UCDChina, and director of products at Tuniu Travel.
  Current city: Nanjing.
• Lytous Zhou
  Visual designer, UI lead at CK Telecom and author of the book UI Evolutionism.
  Current city: Shenzhen.
• John Woo
  Lead of the user-experience team at Google China.
  Current city: Beijing.
• Rex Song
  Freelance information architect; co-founder of UCDChina.
  Current city: Beijing.

The interviews were conducted via phone, Skype and Google Talk. Questions were sent to the designers before the interviews to give them context, but the actual interviews were semi-structured. Being interested in the scope of their thoughts, we asked them not to limit their answers to just “Web design.” The designers were told that Web design here refers not only to visuals, CSS and the front end, but also the back end, infrastructure, design rationale, cultural elements, user-experience design and research and so on. We wanted the designers to express their thoughts as openly and as creatively as they wanted to.

MFM Moliyo, a game website.

Question: How do you see the status quo of Web design in China?

Yu Guo: Almost 70% of Chinese Internet users are under 30 years of age. They are young, open, and they adapt to new things quickly. They like to play games online and enjoy looking for ways to entertain themselves online. So, you may see visually attractive elements on many Chinese websites, the purpose of which is to cater to this group of users.

Whitecrow Zhu: About two years ago, we witnessed a huge trend where designers in China were imitating Korean websites in their use of Flash. Flashy and colorful design was once the trend. However, with the introduction of Web 2.0, websites in China are improving. Users are exploring the content as opposed to exploring solely the visuals. Visuals alone do not satisfy Chinese users any more. They are looking for useful and helpful content, and they want to contribute to the websites as well.

Junchen Wu: It’s on an upward trend, getting better and better, but like a spiral. In terms of Web knowledge and techniques, Chinese designers are on par with designers in Western countries, but they have not reached the point of fully utilizing that body of knowledge. An excellent example of this is user research. Many designers know the concept, but they hardly include it in their design practices. They know of usability testing, but they rarely do it.

Lytous Zhou: Well, two points. One, limited budgets are very common in China’s Web design market. As a result, Web design ends up with overwhelming visuals to attract attention. It might be flashy and pretty at first sight, but the information architecture might not be well planned, and usability can be poor. Regarding the second point, Chinese Web design tends to be very localized, as it should be.

Chinese web design: Midea Microwave Oven

For example, Alipay, a byproduct of Taobao, became a successful standalone product because it took into consideration the purchasing behavior and psychology of Chinese users. China is a big country, and some websites are successful because they cater to particular geographical locations. The other side of the coin is that Chinese Web design is not quite international yet. It’s such a huge market and can sustain itself without even reaching out to the international market. You will see that UCDChina.com and a lot of other Chinese websites don’t have English versions, even in their navigation.

John Woo: China has not formed one distinctive Web design style yet, because the country is big, and Chinese users are complicated in many ways. The impression of foreigners of Chinese Web design might be that it is busy and flashy, but I take it as practical. When Flash design was the fashion, many designers (or their bosses) wanted to use Flash to make their Web pages attractive. When SNS was booming in the US, it was soon introduced in China, together with the Facebook and Twitter design styles. When it’s practical and useful, many Chinese people will just borrow the concept and develop it further. Baidu, QQ and Taobao won business and respect this way.

Rex Song: China has a large population, and the saying “the more, the merrier” applies to its Web design. You will see some Web pages that are busy and cluttered, with designers or stakeholders trying to put everything on the page. The other thing is that, currently, the primary motivation to go online for the average web surfer in China is entertainment. So, Web designers in China tend to make their websites play-ish, SNS-ish and visually attractive, as we saw with the popular trend back in 2004 to imitate Korean Flash websites.

Shoebox

Chinese Web Design In A Nutshell

So, do you now have a rough idea of the status quo in Chinese Web design? Although our interviewees tended not to reduce Web design in China to certain patterns, we summarized a few bullet points based on the topics most frequently mentioned in our interviews.

1. Flash-Heaviness: Born of Imitation

Flash design has been a source of constant debates for years. The fact that optimizing Flash objects for search engines can be difficult is a major turn-off for some designers.

However, Flash was called out, and it’s the most frequently mentioned keyword in our interviews. Back in 2004, when Korean websites were all in Flash, Chinese designers and business owners considered Flash the “fashion.” Rex Song mentioned that when this trend was extremely popular a few years ago, you could even download ready-made Korean-style Flash ZIP files from online stores for little money, so that you could do it quick without spending a lot of effort.

Google is renowned for its focus on simplicity. But take a peek at the nuances that distinguish Google China and Google US:

The design of Google China is a bit more vivid than that of Google US, with a hint of animation added to the former to enhance the richness of Google search. By the way, this concept was first implemented on Google Korea and Japan, although both of them have since reverted to a more static interface.

Although Flash implementation began as imitation, it is now increasingly featured in the portfolios of design studios and freelancers, on websites to launch new products and for products geared to the younger generation.

Shanghai Vive is an old Shanghai cosmetics company that is trying to rebrand and attract high-end consumers. Its branding uses Flash heavily, depicting an elegant and high-class life.

Cool Bear Hi, one of the product lines of Great Wall Motor, has a Flash website to promote its new car release.

To accommodate low-speed Internet connections, Cool Bear Hi does a good job of showing the progress of the loading Flash.

The text below the car on Cool Bear Hi changes as more Flash loads. With the chipper text there to assuage visitors, the loading Flash doesn’t seem that boring to watch. Above are a few screenshots we took, and below is what it says at various points in the loading process:

• At 4%: “Choose Cool Bear Hi. Share your happiness.”
• At 22%: “Wear a smiling face every day, and say Hi to everybody.”
• At 41%: “Cool Bear is impatient, ‘Why hasn’t anybody taken me home!’”
• At 70%: “Book a test-drive appoint. Get your special gift and reward points.”

Mian Dian Fang, a ready-to-serve breakfast company, also uses heavily Flash on its corporate website. The animation gives the steam bread and “baozi” a human touch, having them do morning exercises and other activities. The metaphor persuades customers that the company serves a healthy breakfast.

Let’s look at how Mian Dian Fang shows its loading progress:

The loading animation parodies the yeast process: the flour gets bigger and bigger, until you can see a full-blown website.

Shoebox, a shoe brand for the younger generation in China, uses Flash across the whole website to show its grasp of fashion. In addition, the sketched art on the home page and old brown newspaper color for the background set up Shoebox’s philosophy: taste is an attitude of life; start with the simple; fashion is a kind of sport; start with Shoebox.

Lenovo Mobile O1 takes advantage of personalities and embeds their stories in Flash to present the features, functionality and usefulness of its new product, Lenovo O1.

Artlans, an interactive design studio, also uses Flash, especially for its menu buttons, the call to action and the language switcher. Design studios may not want to use Flash all over their portfolios, but rather in a few key places to show their skill at using Flash for clients.

Idea Design, a design studio that uses Flash in full swing.

2. Designing for Entertainment

We really liked our one-on-one interviews because not only did we hear different stories from different people, but we also heard certain other stories from everyone. For example, Whitecrow, Lytous, Yu, and Rex all talked about the “entertainmentalization” of Chinese Web design. “When a social networking website comes to China, it must become a game website,” said Whitecrow.

A case in point is a feature provided by Kaixin.com (Kaixin means “happy”), which recently spurred a social phenomenon in China: “Stealing vegetables.” Kaixin pretty much copied Facebook’s navigation and user interaction. But it’s different in what it allows you to do: set up your “Happy Farm,” build your house, grow your own vegetables and then steal your friends’ vegetables when they are ready to be harvested. Some dedicated players even made Excel spreadsheets to track their friends’ harvest season in order to expedite stealing. It’s like any other video game but embedded on a social networking website, allowing you to play with a wider variety of users. “Stealing vegetables” became so popular that it drew the attention of censors from China’s Ministry of Culture. Under pressure from the Ministry, the game is now called “Picking vegetables,” a less offensive euphemism for mainstream Chinese culture. Online players still prefer the more accurate name.

Happy Farm

Happy Ranch

Happy Orchard

The application was recently added to Facebook, but it is only for Chinese-speaking users at this time.

Lipton Milk Tea features a “Hug Relay” game that you can play right on the website. Hug your friends by validating your account on Renren, another social networking website in China, and gain hug points.

Once you accumulate enough hug points, you can shop on the online store and purchase gifts, an incentive to maintain momentum in the game:

Like Lipton, M&M China also uses an online “relay” game to engage visitors to its website.

I Love G3, a website from China Mobile to promote the 3G network and 3G cell phones, presents an animated Flash questionnaire for users to play around with.

After you have answered a series of questions such as, “How would you kill time on a train?” and “How would you cross the ocean?” the system analyzes your personality and recommends 3G cell phones to match you:

3. Designing for Clicks

Unlike Latin and Germanic languages, Chinese is rooted in hieroglyphic characters. Typing in Chinese on an alphabet-based keyboard can be slow, especially for middle-aged and older users. So, you will see that some website user interfaces are extremely busy: text and image links everywhere—”the more, the merrier,” as Rex Song points out. These websites are designed for clicking, as opposed to searching (although keyword search is an essential component of any information-rich website).

Yoho, an online shopping platform for the younger generation, takes advantage of every sliver of real estate on the page to promote its products. Yes, a search box is in the top-right for you to search, but with all of these images and hyperlinks, it’s more enticing to just click, click, click.

It’s the same with China Visual, a visual design resource portal. The home page presents all sections of the website as text and image links, giving you a quick peek of the content.

NetEase (aka 163.com), one of the largest news portals in China, takes full advantage of the Web reading pattern of Chinese users: i.e. clicking.

Above is a screenshot of NetEase’s home page. The Chinese lunar New Year was approaching when we were writing this article, and you can see that this website uses red, a color symbolic of festivals, for the background. The page is filled with headlines of news and featured articles as well as ad spots. You can perform a search at the top of the page, but by scanning the entire page, you get a sense of what’s happening today. And if you’re interested in any of the headlines, just click—that easy.

All that said, many websites are working to unclutter their UI, increase the font size and line spacing and enhance readability. “Sina.com, if you have been paying attention to its redesigns all the way back to the late 1990s, is doing better and better at information design,” said John Woo, lead of the Google China UX team.

4. Designing for Culture

When asked, “Can the world learn anything from Chinese web design?” Lytous Zhou answered without hesitation: “Culture. The Chinese respect Dao, and we have our own set of values and mores. Websites targeted to the Chinese market should follow the online habits and aesthetics of Chinese users. For example, cultural symbols, calligraphic elements and festivities: all of these could be integrated into a Web design if applicable. A lake may just be a lake, but associating a fairy tale with a lake makes it prettier.”

True, if you add a fairy tale and human touch to a lake, the user’s perception of it would change.

Pizza Hut China, which is an example I like to use every time I explain cultural differences, uses Chinese elements heavily all over its website: in the color scheme and family theme. Warm reds and yellows are colors symbolic of festivity in China, and the family dinner is highly regarded in Chinese society.

By comparison, Pizza Hut US highlights fast food and online ordering on its home page. Red is also Pizza Hut US’ theme color, but it’s more solid, darker and cooler than the warm red on the Chinese website.

Same with McDonald’s China website, where one main menu is dedicated to the “Happy Family Party.”

Tong2 Studio has a unique look and feel with this traditional Chinese floral pattern on its background.

Six Station, whose home page is a Chinese ink and watercolor painting in Flash, opens its creative and innovative mind to clients.

Dongpai Design, an interactive design studio, has an interesting mini-website that borrows from the “Three Kingdom” story (a period of Chinese history) to communicate its design philosophy and values.

While John Woo points out that incorporating national and cultural elements into design is not limited to the Web, he acknowledges the practicality of Chinese Web design—that designers will borrow anything that might be useful to them or their users.

Want An Even Bigger Showcase?

Not enough visuals for you? Here is a whole bunch of more websites to give you a better sense of design in China.

UI Seven
A design studio.

IDT
A personal showcase that records the designer’s 12-year love affair with his girlfriend (now wife) and his own professional growth as the Web evolved during those years.

Youguan Cookies
Also uses Flash animation to promote its product line.

Xin Hongru
An interactive design agency that uses both Chinese elements and Flash to showcase its work.

Thinkpad Edge
A new product line of the Thinkpad laptop.

Moliyo MFM
An online video game website, designed for clicks.

361 Sports
Borrows the theme of the 2010 Guangzhou Asian Games for its home page.

Dove Chocolate China
Uses Chinese elements and the lunar New Year to decorate its home page.

BangbangWa
A snack company whose website is rich in games and Flash.

Brain Town
A personal portfolio website.

ShuXia
A platform to showcase the creations of members.

Jossy Jo
A clothing brand.

Apsou
An interactive consulting agency.

Mole Lele
A cartoonist’s personal website.

WEBE7 Enterprise Network Interactive
A portfolio website.

Sanshen Toscana
A real-estate website that relies heavily on Flash.

Wotoon Design
A design agency.

Shaopan Film Studio

X’mas Tree Workshop
A mini games website where you can create your own Christmas tree and send it as an e-card to your friends.

The GF Space
A design agency.

HAHA DIY
A neat website for DIY home ornaments.

Yimei Cross Stitch

Happy Basket
Designed for clicks.

WuHansoufang
A pretty cool Flash website.

Chateau Junding
A domestic wine brand.

TIIDA
Incorporates a family theme into its Flash design.

Magic Workshop
A kids clothing company, using Flash-animated cartoons to capture the company’s culture.

JJ Ying
A neat personal portfolio website.

Beijing Orange Advertising
A creative showcase website.

Nescafe
Another website rich in both games and Flash.

Yee Chino
A restaurant.

Gold Chino
The sister restaurant of Yee Chino.

Guoguo Diary
A fairly simple but creative personal website.

Rancho Santa Fe
A real-estate developer in Shanghai.

Challenges, Opportunities, Trends

Challenges

When it comes to challenges in the Internet industry, one of the frustrations mentioned by Whitecrow, Junchen, Rex and Lytous is government censorship. YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and Flickr are all blocked in China because some of their content is considered “inappropriate.” And for compliance purposes, “Sina Microblogging has a team of humans whose job is to censor content, in addition to machine filtering,” says Whitecrow.

The international debate on how free and open the Internet should be is ongoing (see Nussbaum, 2010), and there is still no universal “policy” for the Internet. But without an open environment, China could be impeded from learning from and catching up to other countries.

Still, every coin has two sides. “It limits your freedom,” says Whitecrow Zhu, “but meanwhile, it has a positive effect on UI design and content presentation. There is less room for gimmicks. It forces you to concentrate on useful content and how to present your content.”

The other challenge mentioned by Junchen Wu and Rex Song was the lack of quality educational programs: “Vocational schools might teach you how to use Photoshop and Dreamweaver and how to code in HTML, CSS and JavaScript, but they may not teach you design thinking and the logic behind design. The World Wide Web is still young, and at higher-education institutions we have not seen any Information Architecture or User Experience Design degrees yet.”

Our interviews did point to the fact that designers in China have not yet taken full advantage of rigorous research methodologies. Take what Junchen Wu said about the status quo of Chinese Web design: “Many designers know the concept, but they hardly include it in their design practices. They know of usability testing, but they rarely do it.”

And in response to the question, “How do you convince stakeholders that a design is right?” Rex Song brought up the notion of “guanxi” and trust, and he thought the concept A/B and multivariate testing was “Western” and might yield a “low ROI.”

This is understandable on the one hand, because China has a long history of interpretive reasoning, be it Confucianism or Daoism. On the other hand, Chinese Web designers in general have a long way to go in using hard data to back up their design choices.

One might argue that the designer’s job is simply to design, the fact is that you need reasons to support your decisions that affect layout, color scheme, positioning of elements, user interaction and so on. Only “25% of the designers who relied on their personal opinion were right. A research study conducted by the Neilsen Norman Group (2009) concluded that “you’d be better off tossing a coin than asking advice of these people.” This cannot, of course, be said of everyone, but it speaks to the importance of data.

Opportunities and Trends

We were inspired in all six interviews by the discussion of the opportunities and trends in Chinese Web design.

Question: What trends do you foresee in Chinese Web design?

Yu Guo: E-commerce, I would say. Do you know Taobao? Some of my female colleagues have bought soy sauce, pickles and snacks that I’ve never heard of at Taobao. They love it. This is the market in China, and there is demand. I think every company should take advantage of it.

[Authors' note: Taobao is one of the largest shopping platforms in China to connect buyers and sellers of "baobei" (treasures). Out of curiosity, we searched for chocolate on Taobao and found those seasonal truffles that are sold around Thanksgiving and Christmas exclusively at Costco, the largest warehouse membership club in the US.]

Whitecrow Zhu: I think Web design in China is moving towards integrating more and more user-generated content. Douban, an online book and movie club, is a good example. Like YouTube, the majority of the website’s content is user-generated, and it has been pretty successful. Douban existed before YouTube, by the way.

Several years down the line, e-commerce in China will be in full bloom. E-commerce is not tied to any ideology other than simple economics and consumer interest. It has less of a chance of being censored, and people demand it.

Junchen Wu: Creating more value for customers. Listen to what they say, look at what they do, do what they do and think what they think. My belief is that Chinese Web design is getting better and better, in an upward-spiral trend.

Lytous Zhou: Focus on users and your service. I don’t think we’ll see anything unnecessarily extravagant, like crammed content and excessive visuals. Features, functionality, industry standards and meeting customer needs are the trends, I believe. And you’ve got to think outside of the box.

John Woo: Functional, useful and usable. Making websites flashy, with lots of reds and greens, is absolutely unnecessary. Focus on user essentials and user needs. Though not a website, the Tianyu (KTouch) cell phone is very popular in China these days, and I bought six for my family: four with big font display and handwriting input for my parents and parents-in-law, one with 3x optical zoom and an 800 MP camera, and one that looks like lady’s powder case (see picture below). Tianyu was a “Shaizhai” manufacturer but is now a registered company with a pretty good share of China’s cell phone market. Why? It focuses on user essentials and basic needs. Websites are no different.

[Authors' note: "Shanzhai" literally means "villages in the mountain with stockade houses." The use of shanzhai became popular with the outstanding sales of shanzhai cell phones. Although shanzhai companies do not use branding as a marketing strategy, they are known for their flexibility in design to meet specific market needs. Shanzhai cell phones can be sold at prices much lower than normal cell phones. (Wikipedia, 2010)]

Rex Song: In terms of online trends, we will develop our own Web design style using the backdrop of Chinese culture. Formatting-wise, we will be in line with the mainstream world, creating more user-centered designs and offering a better user experience.

Wrapping Up

The Web in China is young, and Chinese designers are playing catch-up. Despite the challenges, we see even more opportunities: smart people, a big market, increasing demand, flexibility and innovative and user-centered design thinking.

On many Chinese websites, we’ve already seen the “upward-spiral trend from imitation to innovation and user-centered design”. Innovation in China is a constant goal. It is being pushed in President Hu Jingtao’s State speech all the way down to classroom curricula. Says Bruce Nussbaum (2009), “To its credit, China has made design a national priority and is pouring billions of yuan into design education.”

Through our interviews, we also collected some resources that our designers would like to share with Smashing Magazine readers (including those in languages other than Chinese).

Events

• UCDChina Book Club Meetups
  These monthly meet-ups occur on the third Sunday of every month in China’s eight major cities: Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Xiamen and Chengdu. They set a topic for each month, and club members can borrow the books from UCDChina library and return them at the next meet-up.
• UCDChina Annual Conference
  The first conference was held in Guangzhou in 2009. It’s free to attend.
• UPA China Annual Conference
  The UPA China Chapter conference, different from UPA International. The conference is usually held on “Usability Day” every year.
• Designer and Developer Front End Technology Forum
  A biannual forum for designers and front-end developers in China.

Books, Blogs and Online Resources

• UI Evolutionism
  About HCI design on mobile devices, written by local designer Lytous Zhou.
• Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things
  A classic must-read about design and emotion.
• Designing Web Interfaces: Principles and Patterns for Rich Interactions
  A book about design patterns for building Web interfaces with rich interaction.
• Yahoo! Design Pattern Library
  This website was credited by our interviewees as “one of Yahoo’s most important contributions to the design industry.”
• Douban
  An online book and movie club, mostly user-generated comments and criticism.
• iFeng
  Phoenix News Media, a new portal.
• Since 1984
  About design and beautiful things in the world.
• Metroer
  About reading, including “design reading.”
• Mooogu
  About industrial and interior design. A good website to find inspiration.
• Apple4us
  Community blog for tech demos, reviews and ideas.
• Ffffound!
  An image bookmarking website.
• Notcot
  For your ideas, aesthetics and amusement.
• We Heart It
  A website that lets you create an online album from your favorite images and videos.
• Core77
  Design magazine and resource.
• Engadget
  A Web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics.
• The Design Inspiration
  Like its name suggests…
• Dbcut
  A Korean design community portal.

Your Voice Is Important to Us

What do you think about the Web design in China? We couldn’t cover everything in one post, and we are sure we have missed some perspectives. We look forward to hearing your feedback!

Related Posts

You may be interested in the following related posts:

• Shalom! A Showcase of Web Design in Israel
• Showcase of Web Design in Russia
• Showcase of Web Design in Germany
• Showcase of Web Design in Mexico
• Showcase of Web Design in Ireland

About the Authors

This guest post was written by Kejun Xu and Hendry Lee.

Kejun Xu, an information architect devoted to user experience research; a user researcher dedicated to user-centered design; a usability engineer engaged in making the Web easier to use; and a translator and interpreter who loves inter-cultural communication and bridging people together. She designs for her users, making their lives easier and hassle-free. She blogs once a while, about UXRnD, to record the auto parts and loose diamonds, in case she forgets.

Henry Lee helps people overcome strategic and technical challenges in starting and growing their blogs. Read more of his blog tips, including website building with blog software, strategies, hosting, social media, Web writing, design and more. You can also hire his team at Marketing Loop to build a Web presence for your business or personal website. Stay in touch with Hendry by following him on Twitter.

(al)

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Post tags: china, showcases

There are millions of websites out there. Many of them are unique, either in small ways or in large ones. But the individual impact of any particular site on the overall Internet is generally negligible, if there’s any impact at all.

Not so with the fifteen sites here. These sites changed the Internet, mostly for good, in substantial ways. Included here is everything from Geocities (which could probably be blamed entirely, either directly or indirectly, for every ugly web design “trend” that’s ever been) to Wikipedia (which has made information almost universally accessible) to Google (which has changed or influenced virtually everything online).

1. Wikipedia

Changed the way we find information. Before Wikipedia, most online encyclopedias were either sorely lacking in information, or required you to have a paid subscription to access their content. Wikipedia changed all that by not only allowing anyone to view the content for free, but also by allowing individual users to review and update content, making it more complete and accurate overall. Wikipedia also brought crowdsourcing and user-generated content to the mainstream online, making both much more viable and valuable.

2. Amazon.com

Changed the way we shop. Prior to Amazon.com, online shopping wasn’t much different than shopping out of a mail-order catalog, except it wasn’t nearly as popular. While Amazon started out selling just books and related items, it has expanded to sell virtually anything you can think of, either directly or through partner sites large and small. Amazon also made free shipping a standard on orders over a certain dollar value, which has impacted the shipping rates and policies of many other online retailers.

3. Hotmail

Changed the way we use email. Before Hotmail came along, email was basically tethered to a single computer. When you checked your email, it was pulled and deleted from the remote server, meaning the only place you could view it was at your computer. Need an email at home that you received at work? Too bad. There was no way to access it unless you went back to the office. Hotmail changed all that by providing webmail that could be accessed from any computer with an Internet connection. Now, web-based email is widely used and provided by a huge variety of providers. Even though Hotmail is no longer the primary provider of webmail (and is now owned by Microsoft), they were still pioneers in the technology.

4. Facebook

Changed the way friends connected. While Facebook wasn’t the first social network, it has definitely become the most popular and has really changed the way friends interact with one another. Sure, people use FB to talk online, but they’re also increasingly using it as a way to plan get-togethers offline. They’re using it to follow and interact with their favorite bands, actors, and other personalities. People use it to keep in touch with business contacts, friends, family, and acquaintances. Facebook has made social networking mainstream, across a variety of demographics and virtually worldwide.

5. Project Gutenberg

Changed the way we read. Project Gutenberg has a much longer history than most people realize. They created the first ebooks, and gave them away for free. You can now read virtually every major book in the public domain, sometimes in multiple languages on their site. Without the pioneering steps the founders of Project Gutenberg took, ebooks would not be where they are today.

6. Twitter

Changed the way we communicate. Twitter has made one of the biggest impacts on the Internet in recent memory. The idea that 140-character messages, broadcast publicly (for the most part), would change the way people communicate with one another would have been hard to believe ten years ago. But Twitter has become not just a powerhouse in the way individual communicate with one another, but also in the way businesses communicate with their customers. Complaining about poor customer service on Twitter can often result in almost instant messages from the company in question, and often results in a satisfactory resolution. Twitter has also made celebrities more accessible, with hundreds of celebs now using the service to interact with their fans.

7. Pandora

Changed the way we find new music. Before Pandora, if you wanted to listen to music online, you usually turned to a streaming radio station with pre-programmed content. Sure, you might get lucky and find a station that had mostly music you liked, but maybe it wasn’t diverse enough, or it still kept playing that one song you HATED. Pandora changed all that. Now, you can program your own radio station by just entering the name or a song or artist and then giving the thumbs up or down to music played. With a minimal amount of user input, Pandora has gotten surprisingly good at creating playlists that reflect one’s musical taste. The bonus is that songs or artists you might not have heard of are often thrown into the mix, based on what you already like.

8. Apple

Made minimalist web design cool. Apple had one of the first corporate websites designed with a minimalist aesthetic. As far back as the late 90s, Apple was starting to show a more minimalist take on web design than many other corporate sites, and by early 2000, they’d adopted the white and gray color scheme and top navigation they still employ today.

9. YouTube

Changed entertainment. Before YouTube, there weren’t many options if you wanted to watch a video online. You could sometimes find a video here or there, but with bandwidth costs, they were few and far between. Website owners just didn’t want to pay the extra costs associated with video content. Then YouTube came along and made it free to post any video you wanted (as long as it wasn’t copyrighted or over ten minutes long). Web users now had a centralized place to go to watch video online. And because of YouTube’s pioneering effort, online video is now enjoyed by millions every day.

10. Craigslist

Changed classifieds. Online classified sites used to be nearly unusable. Between the huge number of spam postings and the fact there were few if any local listings in most areas, there wasn’t much point in using them. But then Craigslist caught on and suddenly there was an online classifieds site that rivaled most local newspaper classifieds. Now you can use Craigslist to find almost anything, no matter where you live.

11. The Drudge Report

Changed the stature of online news. When the Monica Lewinsky/President Clinton story broke in 1998, it wasn’t a mainstream news source that first reported it. Instead, The Drudge Report held those honors, forever changing the standing of online news sources. Now, online news sources break stories on a regular basis, and are considered by most to be just as reliable as television or print news sources.

12. GeoCities

Made the web more accessible. In the early days of the Internet, the only people online (for the most part) were scientists, academics, and those involved in technology. It wasn’t a very exciting place. Then came GeoCities, and suddenly anyone could set up their own webpage for free. Sure, GeoCities spawned a legion of horrifically ugly websites, but it also got a lot of regular people involved in the Internet for the first time and was likely the first design experience of many early web designers.

13. Digg

Changed the way we find and share news. Digg was originally set up as an experiment, but it has completely changed the way many people find news online. The idea of users determining which news was important, relevant, and interesting rather than editors or executives at big news organizations was revolutionary. Now, user-generated news sites are all over the place, both for mainstream news and for individual industries and niches.

14. LiveJournal

Hooked millions on blogging. Blogging wasn’t invented by LiveJournal, but they were the first site to offer free blogs to their members. Millions now use LiveJournal, and tens of millions more blog elsewhere, either through other blog hosts or on their own websites. If it weren’t for LiveJournal and similar free blogs hosts that came later, blogging might not have caught on as the global phenomenon it has become.

15. Google

Changed everything. This one might seem a bit dramatic, but it really is true. Google has invaded virtually every aspect of the Internet. No matter what you do online, you probably interact with one Google service or another multiple times every day. And most people use at least one Google product or service one a regular basis personally. Whether it’s a Blogger blog, a Picasa photo album, a Google search, or even a YouTube video (or any of the dozens of other services Google owns), Google-controlled sites are everywhere.

About Author – Cameron Chapman is a professional Web and graphic designer with over 7 years of experience. She writes for a number of blogs, including her own, Cameron Chapman On Writing. She’s also the author of Internet Famous: A Practical Guide to Becoming an Online Celebrity.