Archive for July, 2007

The artwork in this custom door tag photo edit tutorial was created using Xara Xtreme, and illustrates how combining techniques allows designers to get some interesting special effects for printed marketing materials.

For this client a plain photograph of their truck and trailer was received after I designed their custom logo, and before the new logo was added to their fleet.

The vehicle is typical for their business which is lawn service, power washing, and landscaping. They were anxious to order a custom door tag immediately, and I suggested using this photo and letting me add the logo digitally.

Here’s how the finished photo for the ad was designed with the final look displayed in the photo of the last step.

Step 1 – Original photo received from the client. A duplicate clone was created so I had two copies in Xara Xtreme.

Step 2 – Using one copy of the photo I precisely traced the truck and trailer to create a clipping mask, and removed all the background leaving the truck/trailer only.

Step 3 – Using the second original photo I applied a 20% blur so it would fade into the background when the clipped truck and trailer were added later.

Step 4 – Next, the logo vector art was imported and placed on the clipped art along with the phone number in several areas, and then the Xara handles were used to warp the perspective to match the photo for a more realistic look.

Step 5 – A 55 pixel wide portion of the entire left side of the blurred version of the photograph was removed to create an illusion and add a 3D effect when the final step was completed.

Step 6 – The clipped truck and trailer were placed precisely over the blurred version of the truck/trailer in the photo so the truck front protruded off the photo to the left and appears to be driving out of the photograph and onto the page.

The effect was a success and used immediately for the printed custom door tag, and will be incorporated into the custom website design next for a consistent look in print and online. Designing with Xara vector graphics software makes creating professional results so easy that I’ve been using their programs for almost 4 years.

Novice designers looking for a cost effective alternative to the $500 to $1000 software packages will appreciate the price of Xara Xtreme starting at just under $100USD. Download and try Xara Xtreme free for 30 days, and you’re welcome to send me samples of your work, too!

You may want to view the complete custom door tag here to see how the photo was integrated into the advertising piece.

Small business website owners unfamiliar with the terms cybersquatting and typosquatting should take a moment to learn a little about these subjects.

Registration of domain names for deceptive or unscrupulous reasons such as unfair trade practices or misuse of an established website based on a famous name may be covered by US federal law. If you feel that a person has in fact taken a domain name similar to your name in violation of this law, you may want to investigate the possible legal recourse available to you.

For website owners in the USA, the Truth in Domain Names Act, also called the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, is explained eloquently at Wikipedia. Visit their site to learn about cybersquatting here, and while you’re there check out typosquatting here.

Some cases with familiar famous names are presented. This is a good starting point for website owners to learn about the subtle difference between offensive practices and illegal activity before engaging in the services of legal counsel. The intent and content of the similar site is the real test that may affect your rights.

Wal-mart first registered their domain as walmart.com not realizing that dashes could be used in their domain name to match the formal corporate spelling. They immediately added wal-mart.com and eventually the misspelled version wallmart.com to redirect visitors to their official and correctly spelled commercial site.

These cybersquatting and typosquatting tips may not apply to your small business website, but it doesn’t hurt to be aware of the activity just in case it eventually affects you.

New websites should begin as an outline in a word processor, or try the good old fashioned pencil and paper. Planning the layout, navigation, and content of your site is really step one in the design process. I still encourage clients to consider their expectations for the performance of their websites, so this should be in the back of your mind as you create the outline.

Website design is a creative process and as such the look, feel, and content of any website will evolve. Adding content later will be easier if you plan ahead. You can document what you want in outline form. Here’s an example of the initial redesign of my advice site for novice website design and graphic design students:

Main Menu

- Introduction
- Qualifications
- Examples
- Future Plans

Design

- Design Overview
- – - Website Design
- – - – - Basic Website Standards
- – - – - Features to Avoid
- – - – - Design Rules for SEO
- – - – - Your Website Visitors
- – - Graphic Design
- – - – - Artwork for Websites
- – - – - Artwork for Print

- Design Toolbox
- – - Software for Code
- – - – - GridinSoft NotePad Word Processor
- – - Software for Graphics
- – - – - Xara Xtreme for Custom Art
- – - Software for PDFs
- – - – - pdfFactory Pro to Create PDF Files

This includes the original content prior to the redesign, planned fresh content, and leaves the design flexible to add more in the future. As a designer, or client specifying a design, the whole website project will be easier to develop and complete on time by using this planning advice and design strategy.

Graphic artists are welcome to download this custom door tag template created in Xara Xtreme (4Kb zip folder, right click and save target as). This is another in the series and it’s the large standard half page size of 4.25 inch by 11.0 inch. No registration, email capture, or signup required. This download is another in my series of free resources to help individuals or small business owners with do-it-yourself custom artwork.

Short tutorial: The template is color coded to identify the safe area for text, the bleed area, and margins. Standard guidelines are in place for easier layout. You may use the entire area for the background, but limit text within the green safe area.

The red box in the template is the doorknob hole section and nothing significant like text or important photos should be placed here because they will be hidden once the door tag is placed on the customer’s door knob. The dotted outline is the centered placement of the die cut for the hole, and most printers will slit the tag at a 45 degree angle to the edge.

Once you understand the safe area for text and other limitations you may want to remove all the reference colored blocks from the template to begin your design. Email me with any questions or requests for any special templates.

The above illustration is a reduced size low resolution version of a 2-sided full color door hanger artwork done for a landscaping, lawn care, and pressure washing service company in Orlando. The large blank area near the top is to accommodate the die cut 1.5 inch hole for the door knob and the 45 degree angle slit after printing.

The portion lost in the die cut explains why the top of the front and back do not have real content. One third will be cut out, but I chose to add color in what will be left in the finished door hanger.

Note: You may want to view the photo edit tutorial here to see how the truck and trailer effect was created.

The team at AT&T; have put up a test site for the iPhone at iPhoneTester.com for the benefit of web developers to sample test their designs to simulate how well they display on the new Apple gizmo. For sites done in XHTML with CSS, which is my standard technique and the recommended method according to Apple, “the look” on the iPhone should be just fine.

The page features a graphic simulation of the iPhone with an open space for displaying content, and then an input box to enter your www domain name. After testing several sites, I’m satisfied the designs I’ve created don’t fall apart. They do, however, require horizontal scrolling which is not the case for laptop or desktop models. The XHTML with CSS sites I have designed are flexible and stretch to fill the screen regardless of screen size without any horizontal scrolling.

The recommended browser on the AT&T; site is Safari which some perceive as a distant 5th behind the other 4 major browsers, so it was a curious exercise and recommended standard. Sites in XHTML with CSS that do not use tables for layout tend to display very well on cell phone screens without scrolling, and I can’t help but be disappointed by any design that has a “displays best on…” disclaimer.

Have fun and try your www domain on the iPhone Display Test Website here.

Two calls this week from clients prompted me to expand on previous advice about new domain names for small business owners. Here’s an excerpt from my published article Choosing Small Business Website Names:

The real value in the name you choose from a search perspective is how easy it is to spell and remember. Of the two types of visitors to your site, the human visitors and search engines, the ability of a person to remember your domain name and spell it correctly to pass it on to others outweighs any SEO value. Search engines are robots and don’t care.

Using words like “greatest”, “best”, or other exaggerated terms in your domain name is thought by some to be a disadvantage and penalized by search engines. Search algorithms change often and likewise that theory, and although you may not be penalized for using such words, consider the reaction of your human visitors. They may not stick around if they feel you boast without the content to back it up. For a serious small business commercial enterprise, my advice is avoiding adjectives in the domain name entirely.

You may want to read the full domain name advice article here. In addition to domain name selection, points are made about SEO, or search engine optimization, also.

This lesson in photo edits and creating custom graphics using Xara Xtreme includes a bonus item. First let me explain how the first photo below was created from two photographs. The zoom function and tracing allows graphic artists to create some pretty cool effects.

The wooden seagull in our front yard was purchased by my wife because it was on sale for $1.00, and once it was planted I took the photo shown minus the real seagull. Using the photograph closeup (below) that I took on the Maine coast several years ago, I clipped and resized just the gull.

Tutorial: I outlined the seagull with the pen tool by zooming in 5x and using a contrasting line before converting it to the dotted red line shown. Once outlined I clipped the gull from the original photo and resized it to fit the fake graphic version. The background has transparency added to better illustrate the cropped portion.

What’s the bonus? My wife wanted the top photo saying it would be a cool wallpaper for the computer desktop, so I created a high resolution version. The free wallpaper includes more of the foreground for better proportions to stretch on your desktop. You may download the free seagull wallpaper here (right click and save target) to add this to your collection. The wallpaper is in a zipped folder, 677Kb.

Experiment in Xara Xtreme with a free 30 day trial and try clipping portions of photos as shown in this lesson. The technique works great for business cards, and most other printed marketing material.

I successfully used the cms program Joomla to convert one of my older websites, www.coderepair.com. CMS software, which stands for contact management system, allows website owners to easily add content from a master control panel. The material at Code Repair was originally advice for fixing poorly coded websites, but it has now expanded to cover website design and graphic art design for novice beginners. The purpose is helping newcomers to design business or personal websites or custom graphic art with learn as you go resources.

CMS may not be the best choice for your first website if you’re in a hurry to get online because of the technical aspects. For converting existing sites, salvaging your search engine ranking should be a priority. Each html file on my old site was renamed in the new design, so 301 redirects were implemented so any outstanding backlinks from other sites would forward automatically to the newly named pages. The suffix of the home page was (dot)html and changed to php, yet the page retained the Google pagerank, so the redirects worked.

The new look, color scheme, and layout are done. However the content still has a long way to go. Future additions may include lessons as well as an e-store with related information products for sale. If you, or someone you know, wants the opportunity to learn website design or advice for creating matching custom artwork please visit and bookmark the site.

Update: This site was taken over by my son, Roger Degerstrom. He converted it to a custom cms with a matching custom WordPress blog for his web design business.

Take a moment to learn why I recommend Article Post Robot for submitting original articles to article directories. It’s no secret that backlinks from other sites to your website are like votes when found by search engines, and writing articles for syndication is an easy way to create these votes.

The next free pdf report in my series of search engine optimization techniques covers this subject with My Article Writing Top Resources. Planned for release in July 2007 this report includes my Top 50 Article Directory list which was already published on my blog last month.

Article Post Robot will be featured in the new report, and after using this software for 2 months, I highly recommend this program to streamline submitting your articles for syndication. At the time this was written in 2007 they have over 450 sites preloaded in their software.

Select this graphic image to visit their sales page.

The problem with most programs used for automatically submitting articles is the potential for rejection due to being placed in the wrong category by the script running the program. Article Post Robot allows you to select up to 5 categories to help offset this approval issue. It’s not perfect, but close to it by comparison to other programs evaluated.

Note: Some article sites require prior registration and activation from a link in a confirming email to be registered as an author. Others require that you create a pen name on their website after registration. You may visit each site from within the list of over 450 article sites displayed in Article Post Robot with one click on each site name. The registration process takes time, but do that first, and expect to spend 1-2 days just setting up user names with passwords for the sites you select.

The option in Article Post Robot to manually submit articles is the ideal solution for me. Before buying this software the process of submitting new articles to over 50 websites was tedious. You visit each site, enter your username and password and then enter the submit articles area. Next, and with your article content open in NotePad, you copy and paste your article title, return to your file, copy and paste the intro, and continue back and forth for the article body, resource box, and key words. Argh! After an hour your wrist is ready to fall off and you’re cross eyed from bouncing back and forth between screens.

With Article Post Robot you complete these same steps, except you copy and paste just once because you enter these same blocks of text into fields within the program! Automatic mode will visit each directory site and post your article in an appropriate category based on what you input earlier. The software posts and submits, and then automatically goes to the next until it’s done. From experience the category selection is less than perfect, at least for my niche.

In manual mode you input your article details just once into the program to begin, and then it logs on each article directory, selects the category, inputs your article details in each appropriate box for title, intro, body, resource box, and key words, and then pauses for you to manually select the “submit” button. I prefer manual submission because I can verify fields are properly completed, and then change the category if I feel another is more suitable before I hit “submit”. In automatic mode you click start and walk away.

Note: The layout and requirements to submit may vary by article directory, and some have additional manual only fields to enter, or correct. You can only see these if you use manual mode. Almost all articles are reviewed before approval by a human editor. Manual mode may result in more article editor approvals.

In manual mode you pause at each, so you must monitor progress, yet the autofill feature means you no longer have to copy and paste 5-6 blocks of text individually on each site. This time saving function allows you to post to more sites in a much shorter period of time with very few clicks for each. You can do in 30 seconds what used to take 3-5 minutes, so the process of submitting is much easier on you, and especially your wrist.

Important Note: In either mode you may notice an error or page not found if the target directory is temporarily offline. There may be a significant pause as if the software locked up. It probably didn’t. Wait several minutes if necessary because as I found out it is still working and will advance to the next site.

Article Post Robot was less than $130 at the time this review was written. I feel that the cost savings in time from submitting just 2 articles more than offset the price in time savings and convenience. The documentation is written in less than perfect English grammar which is easily dismissed because the basics are there and sufficient to effectively use the software to your advantage.

Pros: Reliable, fast, cost effective, great time saver, value for money
Cons: Category selection for some niches and documentation less than ideal

Overall I highly recommend this software. You may purchase Article Post Robot here.