Technology is going mobile, therefore the focus for a web designer  means making sure that the designs implemented are lightweight and fast loading and clearly seen and navigated on any mobile device. What looks good on your desktop pc may not necessarily impress a visitor on a mobile.  So, a theme must be flexible and responsive, across browsers and cross-platform compatible. What you see in the IE browser is not always what you see in Firefox! How a site looks on a smartphone is not the same as on an iPad.

I am still working and experimenting with the new Semiomantics features and exploring the possibilities. As the theme is tuned to CSS3 and HTML5 cutom design can make the theme more visually stimulation for a visitor. Included here is a first draft of a demo site undergoing some customisation.

With CCS3 its also possible to add new elements to create more visually stimulating  web designs.

Sunday will be another stimulating day packed full of information and workshops on creating content and design with CSS3 and HTML5. This is just the begining of an exciting year ahead at Ycademy, and more exciting, stimulating and cleaner designs for our customers. More coming soon.

With each training call one becomes more familiar with the various features and how to use them successfully.  As with any new tool that one uses there is always a big learning curve if one is to become proficient. I have never used AE before so this is quite an exciting step  forward to put motion into graphics that you create. At the training call tonite we covered  some good basics, how to create an animation, keying, scaling, positioning, transparency, rendering just to name a few of the functions, enough to create a short 3 second video clip ! Not perfect by any means but a great start to learning Adobe After effects.

Of course there will be more to follow especially after the seminar this weekend. Watch this space…

Preparations have already begun for the Ycademy Media Design Seminar which focuses entirely on working with Adobe After Effects with registered participants attending preliminary sessions. The advantage of attending the preliminary training is you become familiar with what is required at the actual seminar.

Participating in live trainings gives every participant the opportunity to ask questions, sort out any problems and acquire some background knowledge relating to the subject matter.

Using After Effects is a way to create a motion graphic or animation, from a variety of individual media objects; importing them into the software and creating a composition, adding selective effects to produce a dynamic end product. It’s a way of bringing to life the story you want to tell and visually stimulating  your audience.

Anyone familiar with Photoshop or any other Adobe related products will not find After Effects too dissimilar, just an addition to any existing workflow. Creating a clip for Christmas will be a  very festive way to end the year at Ycademy.

We are all looking forward to a very informative and productive Media Design seminar on After Effects by Adobe.

Original Photo

Part of the planning of a any website is deciding on a suitable font. There are so many beautiful fonts to choose from these days its often difficult to decide. However, one must take into consideration the subject matter of the project. In this instance the subject is a wedding album. This indicates a certain style and elegance. The font should also convey this message. The colour of the font to be used is also an important factor, as the whole must create a harmonious ambience.

Online Wedding Album Fonts

For the online wedding album I have decided to use 2 different fonts, one for the logo and headings and another for any content that I will add. For the headings I will use the Scriptina font, classic elegance with a flourish, to illustrate the style.

For content I am using the Hoefler text italic – a modern classic font.  Although I use these two fonts here on the wedding album to create impact I would not use these when designing a ‘normal’ website or blog. Where there are large portions of text to be read on the screen, a good crisp clear sans serif font provides the easiest reading experience.

This week I will be starting on a brand new project, an ‘Online Wedding Album’ to display photographs of a recent wedding. The project has been requested by the relatives who took photos and would like to present this to the young couple as a surprise. There was a professional photographer present, however family photos capture those more relaxed and non-staged moments of the day. It’s also that element of surprise!
 

Online Wedding Album Design

As with any web design project there are the different stages of planning: discussing the needs of your client, deciding on the style of presentation, collecting and preparing material for the project.  All this takes time.

Enough said now……watch this space to follow the development of this Online wedding Album.

Yesterday I wrote an article on one of my blogs about ‘Getting Mobile Ready’, not on my usual author blog as this is undergoing some drastic maintenance. Today I was curious about the posts performance on Google. You can see from the image below that this post hit no:14 out of 361,000,000 other entries. Now thats what I call a good performance on the first shot of a targeted keyword.

Semiomantics XO

 
Earlier this year I wrote a post concerning the performance of the Semiomantics XO 2011 on my author blog and that still ranks as no:3 out of 66,500,000. What can I say, results speak for themselves. On this blog I also use the XO script, with results like these why would I change. If you are looking for the best blogging script around then look no further.

As I will be writing more posts about being mobile ready and mobile website design then watch this space…. for further developments.

It seems that the whole world is going mobile! Sales of mobile devices have rocketed and everywhere you look there is someone either answering, talking or texting on their mobile devices. In this fast moving environment who wants to stay at home behind an old fashioned computer if you can sit on the beach and still perform the business tasks you want or need to do. Businesses are also fast adapting to this mobile trend.
“..ABI Research’s prediction is that mobile commerce worldwide will be almost $120 billion in 2015.  In Japan alone, the mobile commerce market was more than $10 billion in 2009.” Source: Computerworld.

Mobile Ready Websites

Business Going Mobile

If you were hesitating about putting your business online, then this really is the time to get your business upto speed, and join this growing mobile trend. It’s not always a costly affair either especially if you already have a web presence.

Connecting with mobile customers is a great leap forward for any business and the results show that the effort is certainly worthwhile with sales and profits on the increase.

Business Mobile Strategy

Any business, whether off or online know its target market, its customers and their needs to keep that business alive. As a small business owner I know that my customers and that they often have questions when ordering a specific product and what better way to  communicate with them than with a mobile device.

Now the first step of my business mobile strategy is to get my website mobile ready, not only to be visible on the web but to be also clearly visible on mobile devices. Following this weekends Ycademy Seminar ”Face­book and Mobile Web Seminar”  here is the first draft of Zo Nicholas goes Mobile to be visible not only on smartphones but also on ipads.