However, for good or bad, things are changing. We are at the threshold of witnessing a rare trend where designers are starting with less and then enriching the experience, adding more elements and surprises as the design starts adopting bigger and more sophisticated devices. This idea may sound highly interesting and encouraging but this trend has its share of advantages and disadvantages. Wondering what are they. Well, here they go.

Don’t Call it a Trend Mate, You are disrespecting Mobile Web Design

People still tend to believe that mobile website design is a niche industry and therefore, it should not be treated at par with the regular things like developing a website for desktops that as they say have a universal appeal.

But wait. Mobile web is not the future and it is definitely not the new kid on the block. It is the present. Okay seems like you are in no mood to accept this. Then allow me explain you a few things.

- 25% of people in the United States along use their mobile to browse the web and they do not use any desktop devices for the same.

- Until now 10.9 billion times mobile apps have been downloaded and the number is on the rise.

- There are more than 1.3 billion mobile users and the figure is going to have a shot in the arm soon.

It appears that almost two third of the mobile phones that are being sold recently have the basic facilities to access the internet.

So that clearly means that a significant percentage of your targeted audience will browse mobile version of their website and chances are that they may never ever visit the desktop version of your website.

People are no longer tied to the desktop. They now virtually have the power of the web right in their hands in the form of Smartphone and the good thing about this Smartphone is that they can carry it anywhere they want. It is a global trend and there is not much you can do about it. All you have to do is to develop your skills so that you can face the challenges of coming decades.

Why you need to focus on Building Mobile Friendly Website First

Well, when we say that 25% of users use mobile devices to browse the web, we are invariably accepting the fact that there are as much as 75% of users left who trust their good old desktops to browse the web. So, that means, it makes perfect sense to have both the versions unless you do not mind losing out these precious 2/3 section of your targeted audience. So, putting the desktop version of the website to rest does not make any sense here.

Web designers are aware of this fact, but still they are rooting for ‘mobile first’ approach. Probably they have drawn inspiration from minimalist web design trend.

Mobile First or Mobile Friendly

Well, there is a huge difference between these two approaches ‘mobile first’ and ‘mobile friendly’. In ‘mobile friendly’ approach, fluffy designing elements are trimmed down and content is scaled down to a great extent to make it easier for the website to render precisely in small devices. So, you may agree or not, but you do make compromises on a wide range of factors while you try to design a mobile friendly site by taking out elements from the main desktop version.

But this is not the case with ‘Mobile First’ approach. Here designers start with designing mobile version first. This is a unique designing approach where the designer develops a website with bare essentials. A super simple yet sophisticated design tailored for mobile devices that do not have huge processing power and do not offer any kind of support to the plugins. The outcome would be impressive and cool. And as the demand arises, you would be adding more elements in it to make it appear more interesting, engaging and appealing. It will cater to those devices that have immense processing power and have fewer restrictions.

And the Big Downside

I know you feel energetic to follow the trend of Mobile First. But my friend, it is not that easy. There are some fundamental differences between the concept of ‘Mobile First’ and ‘mobile friendly’ or ‘responsive web design’. In minimalist approach, you would not necessarily have to constrain your creative impulse. What you rather have to do is to get rid of those elements that do not serve any useful purpose. And when you are designing something for all the available devices, you have got some cool tools to play with. In short, ‘responsive web design’ does not make your toolbox smaller, rather it makes it larger.

But this is not the case with ‘Mobile First’ approach. Here you get struck at the very first stage. You will be struggling with a smaller screen and a bunch of weird issues. You will have to concentrate on how users are going to use the touch screen and the template should have provisions for that like using bigger buttons, fewer use of text links and so on. You could be in this domain for a year or two but you will find it tough to be creative with when the resources are few and far between. If this is not enough, you will find the screen too small to make space for your creation. The problem does not stop here. When you will be asked to design a desktop version from that mobile website, you will again struggle to make the most of the bigger screen and fewer restrictions because you simply do not have the freedom to make deviation from the original mobile friendly version of the website.

Here are just unconventional ideas on increasing your blog audience and creating a community that will increase organically.

1 – Create (or co-opt) your target community

If you have created a cookery blog, then the most fool proof way of directing visitors to your site is participating in the online cookery community. Find websites, blogs, forums and chat rooms where people who love cookery like to visit, and start networking. There is a whole lot of subtly to the art of networking: do not be that annoying spammer who tries and fails to casually name-drop their blog twenty times over. Instead, make actual friends. Get to know your target audience on a personal level. It takes time, but if you make a name for yourself then people will naturally start checking you out and looking at your own blog. This is a time investment, but it is the best way to get visitors who will keep on coming back.

2 – Bribe some love: free downloads, giveaways and content

Ideally you should be getting visitors because your primary content is awesome, but in the meantime you can always bribe some love for your website. By creating fresh content for downloading such as a short Kindle e-book, graphics or how-to videos, you can encourage people to return to your website (and share it with your friends) because of the material gains.

3 – Going social

Going social isn’t as easy as it sounds, but in general it is easier to get someone to like you on Facebook or follow you on Twitter than it is to make a dedicated website visitor. Trying building a dedicated social network following is tough, but it is a great step to take if you want to get a following for your website. By following the right people and getting them to follow you back, you can share your most SEO friendly content and hopefully get it retweeted or shared to a new audience.

4 – Make the right connections

One high-profile visitor from your particular blogosphere is better than one hundred visitors are not. Getting just one other high-profile blog to notice you can drive an intense amount of traffic to your blog. If you know that a high-profile blogger likes your website, then try arrange a guest post or a shout-out. It’s not what you know, it is who you know.

5 – Get your white-hat on!

Making sure that you are ranking high for the right search terms is visitor gold, so get your white-hat on and make sure your SEO tactics are up to scratch. Make sure your blog is properly optimised and get some organic link-building done. You’ll soon be ranking high and pulling in visitors in no time!

There are so many sources for combination of colors for a specific project. For starters, you can just look out of your window and see which colors look good in your eyes and which ones look revolting when combined; nature can be a good source of inspiration. However, there are more sophisticated tools in choosing the right color combinations, like the products offered by Pantone, where you can easily see which colors look good when juxtaposed. But if you are looking for other places to look for color schemes, here are some tips.

A poker day out

Visiting a casino or a poker joint doesn’t only offer a good time. Other than sweeping poker tables and hoarding chips from unfortunate players, a casino can also provide you with some of the most interesting colors around. This is because they are designed to be eye-catching to entice people to go inside, exchange cash for chips, and sweep tables. If you have a casino or poker-related project that requires the gaming “vibe”, then look no further than a poker table. For your base color, you can use felt green (#578F05), saffron (#DE4E31), pebble (#E6E1E1), and burl (#302927). If you want to add a darker shade by of green, reduce felt green to 13% lightness and you’ll get (#2A4502). While partypoker.com has already used this color scheme, a fitting scheme that reminds people of poker tables and card games, you can still use these or modify them a bit to suit your project.

Kubrick’s dystopia

If you’ve seen the Stanley Kubrick classic A Clockwork Orange, then you will probably be familiar with the different shades of oranges found in the film. In this scheme, there are four shades of orange used, starting with a variant of orange almost identical to dark orange (#FF9900), followed by a shade with 65.1% lightness (#FFB84D), and another shade with 55.1% lightness (#FFA31A). Aside from these monochromatic shades of orange, this scheme also uses a shade of nude (#FFBA76) and black (#000000). You can use this scheme for projects like retro posters drawing inspiration from Russian Avant-Garde.

Pac-Man’s nemesis

Sometimes, the colors associated with our childhood can be good sources of color schemes, like those from vivid books with wild colors and shapes, movies of cats and mice chasing each other, and video games that are so simple yet mind-blowing. Pac-Man, our favorite chomping buddy, can give catchy colors for your next project. Pac-Man (#FFFE03), Inky (#1BB1E6), Blinky (#ED1B22), Pinky (#F599B2), and Clyde (#FF9F00) will breathe life to your project as you remind people of their joyous childhoods.

]]> http://supercolortuts.com/tips-on-selecting-the-best-color-scheme-for-your-project/feed/ 0 http://supercolortuts.com/why-a-non-profit-organisation-should-hire-a-professional-designer-for-its-infographics/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=why-a-non-profit-organisation-should-hire-a-professional-designer-for-its-infographics http://supercolortuts.com/why-a-non-profit-organisation-should-hire-a-professional-designer-for-its-infographics/#comments Tue, 26 Feb 2013 12:32:04 +0000 Sarah James http://supercolortuts.com/?p=1112 Web designing is going through a constantly changing phase, where new styles and graphics have been incorporated everytime to gain more visibility. Infographic in this concern has gathered immense popularity. The story telling ability of such websites allowed the visitors to understand everything in a lucid manner. Therefore, for businesses, which are looking for more profit can add infograhic features onto their site. However, the non-profit organizations can equally enjoy considerable amount of advantages even if their motive is not related to profit.

Infographics can be defined as visual representation of information. It has the capability to make the visitors curious about your site. The appealing nature of the graphics used in the site along with the bars, graphs, pictures can build up trust factor encouraging the visitors to be a part of the NGO.

Where to use?

In case, you are not sure about the nature of custom infographics that can be included in your website, ask a professional designer for guidance. The motto of these graphics is to make your site more interactive and convey data in a simplified manner. It even tries to please the viewers and encourage them to share the information in various networking sites. Writing thousands of words may not appeal, until and unless the readers go through it. But infographics can easily do this task with its visual representation.

Graphics can be implemented in various ways; thereby sharing organization’s message to the online visitors in a fun-filled manner.

- Reports

Even though you are a nonprofit organization, but your members or workers ought to know every aspect of the institution. It can be reports on the steps, which you have taken for the month or development for the year. But usually, these are confusing and at times long as well. Now, if you put the entire report in a textual format, there will be a few people who will read it, because of its dull and dry nature. But, if you use infographics and convey your message using colorful graphics, the approach of your annual or monthly report will be more interesting and easy to understand as well. Summarizing complex reports has never been so easy, since the intrusion of infographics.

- History

Every organization, irrespective of its nature, has a history. You definitely like to share it with your visitors and let them know the milestones you have crossed. What about a pictorial description of your proud moment? You can add pictures of your organization and how it changed with passage of time. Achievements are also a part of your history, which you can definitely share in your website and get recognized for the success. These add trust on your company, which is vital especially in a virtual world.

- Awareness

NGO is all about creating awareness about various social issues, like HIV, Cancer, Deforestation, Child molestation and so on. If you want to leave an impact in the mind of the viewers, infographics is the best tool. You can promote your program with the creative graphics touch and gather support for the reason of your fight.

Infographics is an excellent solution for drawing more traffic towards any website. A professional designer can implement the right design, highlighting the reason of its existence in the World Wide Web.