David Airey, graphic designer » Web development

10 tips to improve your about page

David Airey — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 11:02:03 +0000

Almost as important as your website’s home page is the about page. This is your opportunity to build rapport with your guests — a chance to introduce yourself and to explain the aim of your website. Here are 10 tips that’ll have your own page in excellent shape.

Offer your name. It’s a blatantly obvious addition, yet so many about pages don’t get personal.
Include a photo. People like to see who they’re dealing with. A smile can work wonders, too. If there’s a team behind the website, include them all (even the cleaner plays an important role).
If it’s just you, write in the first-person. If someone asks what I do for a living, I don’t say, “David’s a graphic designer.” Use “I,” not “he/she.” It’ll help make you seem more personable.
Think about your visitor’s needs. Sure, you’re talking about yourself, but imagine you’re a potential client reading about you. What does the client get from contacting you?
Keep it current. Check the content every few weeks or every month to ensure it’s up-to-date. Perhaps you’ve moved home/office, or perhaps you offer a new product or service.
Show your location. By including a photo of your office, your town or city, you let people get that little bit closer, helping build rapport.
Short and sweet beats long and sour. Ask someone to have a look at your page. It shouldn’t take any longer than a minute to read, and the reader should learn something new about you.
Keep it professional. Smiley faces won’t help you clinch that £10,000 deal.
Experiment with video. Letting your visitors see and hear you can have a hugely beneficial effect when it comes to building trust online. (If you’re too self-conscious, why not start with an audio podcast?)
Add a call to action. Where should visitors go after they’ve read about you? Your design portfolio? Your contact page? Make it easy — include a link within the text.

One more thing, don’t take yourself too seriously.

Examples to follow

iA — lacks photos of the team, but makes up for it with excellent copywriting.
I Love Typography — very personable, with a nice photo, too (slightly cracking a smile).
Elliot Jay Stocks — short and sweet, with a time-saving FAQ section.
swissmiss — the hand-written signature at the bottom is a great little touch.
Subtraction — an example of the biographical approach combined with a gorgeously shot photo.

New portfolio complete

David Airey — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 15:21:43 +0000

A month ago I told you I was experimenting with a new portfolio design.

Since then, and in between client work, I’ve been doing what I can to beef-up the case studies with larger contextual images, sketches, and mind-maps. The aim was to finally point the portfolio buttons here on my blog over to the new portfolio site.

Today it’s ready to go.

You’ll probably be familiar with most of the projects, so I made sure to include detailed scans from my notebook, and new shots of the design work in context (on clothing, cars, surf boards, etc.).

Here’s hoping the notes give a little extra insight into my thought process.

Please do head across, let me know what you think, and thanks very much to everyone who offered feedback last month. You were a great help.

My new design portfolio.

Published on David Airey, graphic designer

Experimenting with a new portfolio design

David Airey — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 16:04:55 +0000

I spent last night and today experimenting with a new portfolio design — one I think is better suited to my personal design tastes.

The starting point for the coding was this two-column CSS template courtesy of Roger Johannson, and the goal of my design is to place emphasis on the portfolio work (at the time of writing, contextual imagery for design projects hasn’t been added).

The eventual plan is to incorporate the new design into my blog here, and I might need to hire someone more proficient with coding. Either that, or simply link my portfolio tab on the blog over to my .co.uk.

The new logotype may very well change, too. I’m undecided.

I’m always interested to know what you think, so if you have any thoughts, negative or positive, please do leave a comment.

You can see what I’ve come up with on the .co.uk extension of my domain name: davidairey.co.uk.

Published on David Airey, graphic designer

URL ABC

David Airey — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 10:58:58 +0000

An old-school meme for Friday, and the first I’ve taken part in since back in the days of the face behind the blog. URL ABC was started by Tim Van Damme—just type a letter in your browser’s address bar, then list the first URL that appears.

A: acejet170.typepad.com (design blog from fellow resident of Northern Ireland, Richard Weston)
B: bbc.co.uk/football (I was hoping this might show the BBC news URL, but alas, it’s football)
C: cgstudionyc.com (that’s more respectable)
D: davidairey.com (to be expected)
E: easyjet.co.uk (I caught a flight to Edinburgh last Sunday to sort out my new home office come January)
F: football365.com (a theme is developing)
G: edinburgh.gumtree.com (I used Gumtree to search for homes in Edinburgh—the notable result was a time-wasting email chat with a scammer)
H: hellosubsist.com (Michael Kosmicki—one of my book contributors)
I: informationarchitects.jp (architects of online information)
J: jasonsantamaria.com (respected graphic designer in Brooklyn)
K: andrewkelsall.com (friendly, down-to-earth designer)
L: liverpoolfc.tv (tough times for the Liverpool faithful)
M: malmaison-edinburgh.com (hotel I stayed in a few days back)
N: no-spec.com (design students take note)
O: omniplex.ie/cinema/cinema/bangor (my local cinema)
P: paul-rand.com (an ode to the past master)
Q: unnecessaryquotes.com (the ‘q’ for ‘quotes’ pulled this one)
R: readbetweentheleading.com (design podcast by Aaron and Matt)
S: skysports.com/football (football? again?)
T: twitter.com (I’m one of the old-school who uses Twitter on the Web—finding it easier to limit time spent tweeting)
U: uprinting.com (impending sponsor for Logo Design Love)
V: vimeo.com/user1541333 (I’m due another vlog post)
W: winwithoutpitching.com (design business advice from Blair Enns)
X: xe.com (currency converter of choice)
Y: youtube.com (the standard result)
Z: peachpit.com/podcasts/episode.aspx…. (a Jeffrey Zeldman podcast interview by my publisher Peachpit)

Does anyone get an actual Q?

A few other URL ABCs:

Feel free to link to your own URL ABC post in a comment.

Image credit: Nir Tober

Published on David Airey, graphic designer

Forget about design

David Airey — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 00:24:17 +0000

Photo by eschipul

We judge people by how they look. It’s an everyday occurrence, no matter how unfair. But what if appearances didn’t matter? What if we could just say what’s on our minds and not worry about clothes, hair, makeup?

Okay, so if I told you to turn up for your next job interview wearing pyjamas, you’d think I was nuts. Rightly so. On the Internet, however, appearances count for a lot less.

Steve Pavlina, Matt Cutts, Seth Godin. Between them they author three of the most popular blogs on the Internet, each with an Alexa rank under 10k. Now I’m sure you’ll agree that their site designs aren’t anything to write home about (although in Steve’s case, you might actually want to write something). Yet this doesn’t stop an increasing number of people flocking to read what they’ve written.

“But these guys aren’t the norm.” you might say. Or, “I don’t have the voice to attract their numbers.” Steve, Matt, and Seth are no different from either of us. Set your mind to it and you can go wherever you want to go.

The next time you’re putting off a blog post until you get your design “just right”, scratch that idea. It’s what you say that matters most.

Published on David Airey, graphic designer

7 SEO blogs and 21 useful articles

David Airey — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 23:02:47 +0000

Image copyright: Hawaii Web Pros

As a self-employed graphic designer, reliant on my website for most new business, it makes sense to learn how to improve Google rankings. Here I point you in the direction of a few helpful SEO blogs, with links to particularly relevant articles.

SEO blogs

SEOmoz

One of the big players, containing a wealth of information. I particularly enjoy the advice of Rand Fishkin.

SEOmoz articles of note:

Search Engine Land

More than 30,000 RSS subscribers can attest to this being one of the top industry blogs. It’s authored by a multitude of writers, keeping you updated on the latest news.

Search Engine Land articles of note:

Matt Cutts

Matt Cutts is employed as the head of Google’s spam team. Needless to say, he knows a thing or two about how to rank in Google. Matt likes to publish blog posts about a wide range of topics (music, games, cats etc.), so I’ve pointed the link above to his SEO-specific category.

Matt Cutts articles of note:

Michael Gray

A familiar name amongst SEO experts, and although I’ve only conversed with Michael very briefly — when I asked him for help via email — he’s quick to share great SEO tips and advice.

Michael Gray articles of note:

Lyndon Antcliff

I’m not sure how I came to know Lyndon, but we’ve been in touch quite a number of times in the past. He’s always been friendly, articulate, helpful, and knows more than a little about how to create linkbait.

Lyndon Antcliff articles of note:

Dave Naylor

From the website: “David Naylor, more commonly known as DaveN, started working in the SEO industry over 10 years ago with three major corporations releasing their database driven data, creating internal link structures and improving usability.”

Dave Naylor articles of note:

Blogstorm

A popular UK-based SEO blog. From the website: “BlogStorm is written by Patrick Altoft, Director of Search at Branded3, a Leeds based digital agency specialising in search engine optimisation, online marketing & web development.” Patrick was quick to offer help during my rollercoaster relationship with Google. Very much appreciated.

Blogstorm articles of note:

Your favourite SEO resources

Where do you go to learn about SEO? I’m always on the lookout for new resources. Do you read any of the websites mentioned above, and if so, what are your thoughts about them?

Published on David Airey, graphic designer

Google report Gmail problem as phishing

David Airey — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 23:01:44 +0000

One year after my domain name was stolen, Google’s Chris Evans has published a blog article reporting the theft as a phishing scheme, whereby the victim is tricked into sharing their email login details.

Several news stories referenced a domain theft from December 2007 that was incorrectly linked to a Gmail CSRF vulnerability. We did have a Gmail CSRF bug reported to us in September 2007 that we fixed worldwide within 24 hours of private disclosure of the bug details. Neither this bug nor any other Gmail bug was involved in the December 2007 domain theft.

I’m sure Chris meant November.

Google’s blog post came in response to the more recent theft of MakeUseOf.com. Aibek, the MakeUseOf owner, has subsequently, and thankfully, had his domain name returned.

I like to think I’m cautious enough not to open a strange .exe email attachment, nor enter my login details on a fake website, but if that’s what happened, so be it.

I do, however, find it a little odd that a thief would gain access to my Gmail account, then choose to add email forwarding filters rather than simply change my password, thus locking me out. I published what I believed happened in my previous Gmail hack article.

Regardless, I’m glad Aibek of MakeUsOf had his domain name returned, and that Google have publicly acknowledged the previous Gmail CSRF vulnerability, even if it is over a year after the incident.

Aibek and I are two of the lucky ones. Many other domain theft victims contact me asking for help. Sadly, there’s little I can do except refer them to my account of what happened.

Published on David Airey, graphic designer

Orange anyone?

David Airey — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 23:02:09 +0000

Image copyright: Photonut

As many of you know, I’ve been contemplating a site re-design for a while. After all, designers are never 100% satisfied.

Rather than a complete overhaul (if it ain’t broke…), I opted for a simple colour change, choosing more of a corporate theme (greys and white with just a hint of orange), rather than the bright blues, clouds and grass shown previously.

I was surprised by just how different my site could appear with such a simple change (top / bottom banners and heading / link colour).

Before a dose of vitamin C:

…and after:

I feel the result is both a little more professional, and more reflective of my preferred design style. If you’re reading from your feed reader or an email subscription, and want to see the latest change in my portfolio evolution, please do stop on by and have a look .

Published on David Airey, graphic designer

The real value of keyword-rich domains

David Airey — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 23:10:14 +0000

When I became self-employed, I mainly targeted the Scottish market.
Three years on, my logo design business is international, and just yesterday I began working with my first Japanese client – something I’d never have contemplated back in 2005. Throughout my short time of going it alone, I’ve learnt about online marketing, and here I share with you the importance of keywords within domain names.

I’ll use two of my websites as examples: logodesignlove.com (LDL) and davidairey.com.

logodesignlove.com has been live since January 2008
davidairey.com has been live for since May 2005

In a Google search for logo designer, here are the front page results (click the image below for a legible view):

davidairey.com is listed in the #5 spot, whereas LDL is just one place behind in #6 (results vary from day-to-day and across geographical locations). Remember, davidairey.com has been operating much longer than logodesignlove.com.

Lately I’ve been seeing some SEO tutorials explaining the benefit behind ‘keyword stuffing’ your domain names, and how search engines place more significance on websites with relevant domains.

Before you go rushing to a domain name registrar with your list of targeted keywords, these results can be deceiving, and reflect more than a simple $10 purchase.

UPDATE: 14 July 2008
Matt Cutts recently had this to say about keywords within domain names:

Generic domains that users are likely to remember, will indeed carry more weight than others. There is a real value to those FuneralHomes.com for example. Google does give keywords in the URL a certain amount of weight, but you don’t need it in order to rank.

In his Domain Name Keyword Importance article, Scott Boyd writes:

Think about it logically. If this was such an important factor – i.e. more important than any other SEO factor, as people are saying – why would Google allow this? A keyword in a domain says nothing about the quality of the content on the site – it’s something that anyone can manipulate in an instant and at very low cost.

Scott rightly places emphasis on quality content, however, there is one benefit to having keywords within your domain name, and that’s the ‘anchor text’ people use when they link to your website. Let me explain.

logodesignlove.com has significantly gained ground on davidairey.com because people use the text ‘logo design’ within their links, as opposed to ‘David Airey’.

An inbound link (one coming from another website) pointing to davidairey.com is most likely to be typed as David Airey. A similar link to logodesignlove.com is most likely to appear as Logo Design Love.

Considering the importance of anchor text on inbound links, this will have quite a bearing on web searches for ‘logo designer’.

With that in mind, the main point still reverts to your content, because if it’s not good quality, you won’t create any inbound links.

There’s another reason behind LDL’s rise to prominence. The content is more focused towards the topic of the Google search, whereas here on davidairey.com, there’s a broader spectrum of articles, from marketing to photography, and art to web development.

The real key to front-page Google rankings lies not in keyword-rich domains, but in the quality and relevance of the website content.

You can rank highly for any term you set your mind to, regardless of your domain. Short, catchy titles may help, but ultimately, you need to use your business sense to define your brand.

Search engine optimization resources

If you’re interested in boosting your search engine traffic, here are a few useful resources:

Your search ranking experiences

If you’ve had similar, or differing experiences with search engine rankings, I’d love to know about them. Perhaps you have a domain name tip of your own?

Published on David Airey, graphic designer

Why are designers never 100% satisfied?

David Airey — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 23:03:45 +0000

Image copyright: Becca Fatora

Ask any designer if they’re 100% satisfied with their work, and whether openly admitted or not, there’s a very high chance of a negative response. That’s not to say their designs aren’t successful. Far from it. The statement refers more to the bane of any designers life—being overly critical—especially where self-promotional work is concerned.

Here I share some thoughts about my online appearance. I also feature blog designs that appeal to me, and detail the most important factors to consider for your own website design.

When working with clients, they have the final decision, so it’s easier to know when a project is complete. When a designer creates for herself (a personal logo or website, for instance) it can be tempting to obsess about the details.

Website evolution

I’ve previously featured the 30 month evolution of my online graphic design portfolio, and it’s come to a point where once again, I’m searching for a more effective way to highlight my work.

As many of you know, I use WordPress to power my website, and I find the functionality just what I need. My current design is a custom-made theme that places emphasis on the content, keeping decorative features to a minimum. It’s a style I like, but there’s no variation in layout between the homepage, static pages, and article pages, which is something shown to good effect on many of my favourite blogs (e.g. a wider content area on single-post pages). WordPress Magazine style blog themes are proving increasingly popular, and I particularly like the Mimbo Pro template by Darren Hoyt and Ben Gillbanks.

For those not wanting to spend money on a WordPress theme, there’s the original Mimbo, which is free.

What appeals to me with magazine style themes, particularly from a graphic designer’s perspective, is how easily you can give prominence to recent projects. They’re right there on the homepage, as opposed to being tucked away inside a portfolio link.

Which leads to my dilemma: much of my success with logo design is due to my blog and the hundreds of posts I’ve published, so it makes sense to highlight the content. That’s where I’d appreciate your opinion.

At present, my graphic design portfolio is accessed through the top navigation bar (replicated at the bottom), and also shown below my photograph (on the top left of each page—an attention hot spot). This is good because on every page of my site, there are at least three links pointing towards my work. From the other side of the fence, my homepage (the most visited page) doesn’t show any of my identity design projects.

An option different from the current setup is to make use of my .co.uk domain, for showcasing work. I bought a separate hosting account for the .co.uk when my domain name was stolen, and have been wondering what to do with it. If you take a look at www.davidairey.co.uk (through the next link), you’ll see a single page logo design portfolio, using an accordion navigation (thanks for the tip, Cat).

The simplicity is right up my street, and I think the overall style is more professional than my current offering. I’m a little reluctant, however, to separate my portfolio from my blog, and if I do, what’s the best way to tie them together? A simple htaccess redirection?

If you’re thinking of launching a single-page portfolio, Gino, at ‘You The Designer’, recently published a nice primer: The One Page Graphic Design Portfolio Guide.

Finding info about graphic designer site redesigns isn’t easy, so if you know of one, or have been through the process yourself, I’d appreciate your input. It seems much easier to uncover commentary on blog redesigns, and I mention a few here.

Blog redesigns

Some of my favourite entrepreneurs (below) have been redesigning their blogs, and everytime I see a change of scenery on a site I enjoy, it prompts me to think about my own design.

Ben Yoskovitz of Instigator Blog
Darren Rowse of ProBlogger, designed by Ben Bleikamp
Dawud Miracle of dmiracle.com
Nate Whitehill of natewhitehill.com

I’m not looking for a major design overhaul, but rather a streamlining of what’s here, making it appealing to potential clients. You’ve probably noticed that I favour simplicity and white space. Dark backgrounds, such as those featured on Vandelay and Smashing Magazine, aren’t my thing. A few talented designers use dark web design (Veerle, Aaron and Vivien to name just three), but I’ve always preferred light backgrounds with dark text, mainly for legibility.

Design factors to consider

A year back I wrote a post titled 5 vital design tips for your website or blog. The 5 points are just as relevant now, so I’ll sum them up here:

Keep it clean
Keep it focused
Show images or photographs
Use a colour scheme
Make the text easy to read

Visit the article for a short explanation into each point.

When is a redesign called for?

This is a question that many can interpret differently. For instance, Gerry McGovern thinks web redesign is a bad strategy.

I have seen perfectly okay websites go through a redesign for all the wrong reasons. And do you know who such redesigns hurt most? Your most loyal customers. Because they use your website most.

A valid point, although in my case, many new clients visit my site for the first time before hiring me as a logo designer. I greatly value your opinion, and would appreciate your thoughts.

What do you like / dislike about my web design?

As I mentioned at the beginning, graphic designers tend to be overly-critical of their self-promotional work. What is it they say? If it’s not broken, don’t try to fix it? Hmmm.

I’m a big fan of getting readers involved, and your constructive criticism would be great. Is there anything you’d change about my current design? I’ll be featuring your suggestions and thoughts in a follow-up article, published soon.

Resources for website redesigns

In case you’re contemplating a site redesign:

Creating the perfect portfolio — by Collis Ta’eed on Digital Web
Small details of a blog design — Lauren of Creative Curio discusses the small details following her own blog redesign.
Blog Design: Does it Really Matter? — David Peralty offers his thoughts in this Blog Herald post.
Advice for online graphic design portfolios — by yours truly

David Airey, graphic designer » Web development

10 tips to improve your about page

Examples to follow

Other about page articles and examples

Published on David Airey, graphic designer

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New portfolio complete

Published on David Airey, graphic designer

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Experimenting with a new portfolio design

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URL ABC

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Forget about design

Published on David Airey, graphic designer

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7 SEO blogs and 21 useful articles

SEO blogs

Your favourite SEO resources

Published on David Airey, graphic designer

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Google report Gmail problem as phishing

Published on David Airey, graphic designer

Related posts on David Airey dot com

Orange anyone?

Published on David Airey, graphic designer

Related posts on David Airey dot com

The real value of keyword-rich domains

Search engine optimization resources

Your search ranking experiences

Published on David Airey, graphic designer

Related posts on David Airey dot com

Why are designers never 100% satisfied?

Website evolution

Blog redesigns

Design factors to consider

When is a redesign called for?

What do you like / dislike about my web design?

Resources for website redesigns

Published on David Airey, graphic designer

Related posts on David Airey dot com