One of my favorite web designers that I draw inspiration from is OMSH (Oh My Stinkin Heck).  She wrote this wonderful article called “Throwing reason to the wind is..” which succinctly puts into words  what I have so often encountered when designing websites for clients.   She hits the nail on the head when she says to clients that a website “is an investment of yourself.”

Putting Time and Thought Into Your Website

A designer designs based upon the information provided by the client conveying their ideas or vision for their site.   Sometimes a client will want a website but will not have put any time or thought into the goal of the site, what they want to say about themselves,  their site content, or have any idea of what their  sense of style is.  They just know they  want one.   It’s a good start!  But, if you don’t provide the designer with any information for your desired site the designer will likely design a site that appeals to the designer and not the client.   In order for a designer to project your ideas for your site you need to pull together information and provide them with what best describes the essence of  what you want for your website.   The more information the better.  Information such as providing links to other websites that appeal to you and convey a sense of your style.   Other methods  have been conveyed to me by clients showing me imagery they created on their laptops.  Some have provided spreadsheets, others  have shown me ideas hand-drawn on paper or in written detail.   Providing the designer with a sense of direction to go in will eliminate the unenviable position of them having to become mind readers spending unnecessary and costly time guessing a clients wishes.

From Smashingmagazine.   How to permanently delete your account on popular websites such as Facebook, Twitter,  LinkedIn,  MySpace,  Google,  eBay,  Wiki, Flickr,  Windows Live,  Stumbleupon, WordPress.com,  Amazon, YouTube,  and  PayPal.

I love mechanical pencils.  At any given time you can usually find a half dozen of them strewn across  my desk.    I also have a love-hate relationship with them because I usually buy the inexpensive half-dozen to a bag variety and I end up regretting it because the lead breaks easily under pressure or I can’t advance it. Now my regrets have come to an end because I’ve recently found the most wonderful pens and mechanical pencils at the Tokyo Pen Shop. 

You probably think that Tokyo Pen Shop is located in Japan, right? Well, they are located right here on the west coast in the San Francisco bay area.  Their pens and pencils are high quality from Japan including some hard to find pens like the Hi-Tec C.   Anyway, I just got my order today and I’m ecstatic.  I got the super duper “2020 Super Grip Shaker Pencils”  in pink and blue.  I love them.  They have a nice grip and write smoothly, almost like a gel pen.  The lead doesn’t break either because of a metal sheath that protects it, and the lead advances with some kind of sophisticated shaker mechanism.  While I was ordering I grabbed some of those hard to find Hi-Tec C gel writing pens that have fine writing points and also grabbed some gel-tip Uni-ball Signo RTs for heavier writing.   I showed my pens and pencils to my husband and I now have three less than I started with but if I ever need to order more I now know where to order them from.

I don’t think a designer can ever have enough images in their repertoire. Enjoy these links.
Texture Palace:  Premium free textures.   Grunge, concrete, metal, ink, stone, textile, and others.
Bgrepeat:  Free repeating backgrounds.
Squidfingers:  Free repeating backgrounds.
Dinpattern:  A great variety of repeating backgrounds.  Be sure and read their usage policy.

Ha ha, jokes on me for not posting more often. Seems that when I stopped posting I really got sidetracked with things happening on the home front and the seemingly never ending stream of family that have been coming and going for the last 2-3 months. Husband’s large family reunion held here in October, huge family gathering for Thanksgiving, and more family coming next week. My New Years resolution for 2010 will not be hosting any large family gatherings. Someone else can do it. I’m weary.

Weather also has not been cooperating. Last week daytime highs were 10 F and -14 in the evenings. Of course, timing is everything because in the midst of the “big freeze” our 4-year-old heat pump decided to bite the dust (it should last much longer than 4 years) and then power to our house and 3000 other homes and businesses went out at 3 a.m. We didn’t have power for over 6 hours and some people longer than that. I don’t know how we were able to avoid broken pipes but we made it through thanks to our fireplace insert going full blast and faucets dripping. There are so many other things that have been happening, but really, who wants to hear about them when you know others are having a much worse time of it.

Backgrounds, textures, patterns, and seamless tiled images can really make a website come alive and compliment your site content.  Many sites offer royalty free images and have a tremendous variety to choose from but I also like to scout out images on freebie sites as well. Below you’ll find links to just a few of these sites:

Texture Vault – You want royalty free paper, paint, dirt, mud, glass, concrete textures? They have it, plus some.
BG Patterns – Create your own tiled background – fun and free!
The University of Texas at Austin – Historical maps, maps of the world, countries, cities, states and more in the Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection. Most of them are for use in the public domain.
Texture King – Grunge, dirt, plaster and more – free!
Bit Box – Lots of textures,  the site owner  calls himself a “Freebie Maker” and he likes to give away only the best quality stuff to help designers – free!
Outlaw Design Blog – Vectors, wallpapers, grunge, icons, fonts, and more – free!
Pattern Wall – Seamless patterns – free!
Wallpaper.net – Wallpapers and stock images – free!
Veer – A large selection of royalty free images, illustrations, typefaces and motion images.
Punchstock – Over 2 million royalty-free photos and illustrations from Jupiterimages, Getty Images, Corbis and over 50 other brands, all in one convenient search.
Urban Dirty – Textures and stock photography – free!
Morgue File – Large public image archive for your creative work – free!
Dreamstime – Royalty free and free stock photography
Tartan Maker – Generate seamless tartan patterns – free!
iStockphoto – One of the largest royalty free stock photo, audio, photography and motion image repositories on the web.
The Inspiration Gallery Many lovely textures including some outstanding damask images – free!
Stripe Generator – Generate seamless striped background images – free!
Stock.XCHNG – Large selection of stock photos – free!
Fotosearch – Search 5.3 Million Stock Photos, Stock Footage Video Clips, Royalty Free Images, and Illustrations
GraphicRiver – Royalty free graphics and illustrations. Launched in February 2009, the site focuses on premium design components like Layered Photoshop Graphics, Vector Illustrations, Icons, and Adobe Add-ons like Brushes, Patterns and Textures.

As a web designer I’m always looking for the right color scheme combinations to incorporate into site design. I’ve seen some beautiful color palettes that look great at first glance but when applied into a site can have a completely adverse effect. Having an “on the fly” visualization of what those colors would look like on a sample test page would be handy and save a lot of time. I happened to be reading through Mashable and while sifting through their ‘Web Design Toolbox” I came across a vast array of web design tools for graphics and color management. One particular link caught my eye and it took me to an online color creator tool called Color Scheme Designer. After playing around with it I found it relatively easy to use. Just plug in a hex code and it displays some wonderful color combinations in mono, triad, complement, tetrad, analogic, and accented analogic variations. But what I was looking for, they delivered, by incorporating “on the fly” tabbed previews of what the colors would look like on a sample site in either a light or dark variation including text.

I do see Twitter’s potential as an avenue of resourceful links, social networking, and snappy one-liners but I can’t help but wonder what to post at times given the 140 letter limitation. I can post resourceful links all day long but what if I just want to say something other than I’m sitting down to eat dinner or out walking the dog. Thinking about it brought back memories of when a group of people on a private list I subscribe to decided to write haikus pertaining to the subject matter being discussed. What poured out was some very spontaneous creative thinking. Although haikus can be oblique it would be an interesting twist to see tweets with subject matter in haiku format.