“…attempting to describe the idea of becoming a better designer by dissecting, analyzing, and ‘copying’ the works of other designers.”

In his follow-up article, he talks about how Tony Williams, a drummer, would practice playing in the style of other drummers in order to become a better drummer himself. Cameron’s point was:

“…you become a good designer by familiarizing yourself with the methods and techniques used by those who are already good designers.”

As I read that, I thought about 2 ideas that I came across from other designers that were similar to what Tony Williams did.

1. In his book, Sexy Web Design, Elliot Jay Stocks recommended looking at the work of other Web designers and then doing a wireframe of their design in order to study layout. I had a similar idea back in December when I bought the book, The Web Designer’s Idea Book.
2. On the same day I read Cameron’s post, Chris Coyier wrote a post, Exercise to Get Better at Web Design. This article is even more in line with Tony William’s idea. Chris suggests finding a Web design you really like and then try to copy it identically. He even suggests looking for ways to put your own spin on it while you are recreating the design. Chris is not advocating design theft here but it is a similar idea to how Tony Williams would practice in the style of other drummers. Check out Chris’ article for all the steps of his suggested exercise.

I am currently working on a new design for Campus Crusade’s Summer Mission Projects site. It is an exciting project because it is the first to be a total package. Our team is working on the promotional videos, print brochure, sticker and Web site. The video has been the lead player in determining the common design thread that will weave through all the pieces in the package.

For the Web site, I am using “real-life” elements of a desk and it’s contents and combining it with illustrations that create a fantasy world within the video.

As I have progressed with the design, the headings typography was begging to be a scripted style that fit into the theme of a sketchbook on a desk. Now I was faced with the problem of how to create those headings in a scripted font. I decided to use image replacement for navigational elements. But as I thought about it, sIFR seemed to be a good solution for the content headings instead of image replacement.

I have never used sIFR before and this seemed like the perfect opportunity to give it a try. I found a tutorial, This is How I Got sIFR to Work. The author’s intent was to distill the “official” documentation into a simplier form. I give him kudos on accomplishing that intention.

I was very excited tonight when I finally got it to work. I had been working with it for a couple of hours last week but never had success. Now I am not always the best at following instructions so tonight, I decided to go back and go through each step. (I never follow the owner’s manual of a new electronic toy. I would rather play with it and figure it out myself.)

One of the first things I found was the swf file I created last week did not work correctly so I went back and created one according to the tutorial. Also the first time I was working through the tutorial, I did not download the latest sIFR from the place the author suggested. So as I had worked through his tutorial, several things were not matching up. That had really been frustrating. It was so much easier to have the right version and be seeing the same things the tutorial was describing.

I am so glad I stuck with learning. I think this is an appropriate and smart solution. I will not have to create images for every heading and it was also cut the download time.

ASCAP Internet Music License Agreement

• Let your layout breathe — CNN.com is a great example
• Consistency of spacing or use multiple scale
• Use range kerning in headlines (with larger font size)
• No hanging widows — Shaun Inman’s Widot plugin
• Alignment — aligning elements can make a huge difference
• Black is not black and white is not white — consider using #333 or #CCC instead of default black and white
• Flat is boring — create some depth
• Adding a pixel to add interest — as one border (they used example of Mint’s dashboard)
• Know when to quit

Today I got a phone call from someone asking me this question. Since my previous post, I have switched to a Mac and I have read several articles on the subject. I am also now a regular subscriber to a couple of podcasts and have seen some good and bad points.

So what do you need to do to pull off a podcast?

Plan your program and content — what is your podcast going to be about? What issues do you want to address? What is your plan for having fresh content?

Record and encode your podcast — The second step is to record your content and encode that audio file as an MP3. If you are using a PC, Audacity is a good freeware program that accomplish both of those tasks. For Mac users (lie myself), GarageBand is the program of choice. You will need to purchase one piece of equipment, a microphone to record your voice. A noise canceling microphone would be your best bet. You might also need a portable digital voice recorder. This would give you the freedom to not be stuck inside or give you the ability to “interview” others in the field.

Publish — you are going to need server space in order to publish your audio file on the Internet. Most likely you already have a Web site that will tie in with the podcast. Next, you need to create a podcast feed. A content feed will automatically update the content on your subscriber’s computer. The feed is really makes make a podcast a “podcast” and not just a MP3 file uploaded on a server. FeedForAll is a software program for both Windows and Mac that can assist you in writing a feed for your podcast.

Promote — let’s face it, unless you promote your podcast, you are not going to build an audience for it. So how do you promote it. There are several different podcast directories that you can submit to, including iTunes. I have included a list of some of the directories below.

Podcast Directories

• iTunes — go to the Podcast page. Find the “Learn More” box at the bottom left corner. There is a link entitled, “Submit a Podcast.” The next screen will ask for the URL of your podcast.
• indiepodder
• Podcast.com
• Podcast Alley
• Yahoo

Other Helpful Articles

• You Want to Make Me Shout from Dynamic Graphics — this article provided the basic framework for this post
• My first post on podcasting

I successfully set up a podcast today.

Here are the steps involved:

• I downloaded a freeware recording program called “Audacity”
• I also downloaded from their website a plugin to convert audio to mp3 format which is what is used in podcasting. There are instructions on how to install the plugin on Audacity’s site
• I used my headset microphone to record the podcast using Audacity. I saved the file as an mp3.
• I used software called Feed For All to create a RSS feed. I bought this software last spring.
• I uploaded the mp3 file and XML document which contains the RSS feed to our production server
• You can “subscribe” to the feed with iTunes (I’m sure there are other ways to do it but this was the easiest). Select “Subscribe to Podcast” from the Advanced option on the toolbar.

Resources I looked at or was told about:

• http://www.sitepronews.com/archives/2005/aug/12prt.html
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podcasting
• Google “How to Do a Podcast”