LinkArtist Multimedia - The Blog

Cindy Yen has been a dream client. She came to me through the extremely talented Ellen Petty, who designed her logo and business cards. Despite some delays on my end, Cindy showed tremendous patience, and a great understanding and appreciation for design.

This is another site powered by Wordpress, which is valid XHTML/CSS and all that good kind of stuff It also uses the fantastic NextGen Gallery, which, in my humble opinion, should be used in every single Wordpress install.

Best of luck with your new site, Cindy!

Be the first to Comment »

I have been neglecting both of my blogs a bit lately, because I have just been so busy that I haven’t had time to do anything other than work, sleep and (occasionally) parent.

I have a queue of work right now, and the very first (almost) finished project to come out of my head down, bum up couple of months is the redesign of Cahoots’ website.

Cahoots have a great product. They produce hard bound photo books from your digital (or scanned) images, and have great software that is really easy to use. They have a number of options, which depend on how involved you would like to be in the process - from downloading the software yourself, designing and sending the finished product through, to having a book maker produce the design and book for you. They also run workshops, which I think is a great idea for people who want to get started but are not really sure how. They also have some great opportunities for Mums who want to work from home and have a knack for design, so be sure to check them out!

This project was delivered in pretty much record time, and I am proud of the result (which, for me is a pretty big ask seeing as I am highly critical of my work!). I worked with Cahoots’ existing branding and style guide to create a fun, practical and clean design that utilises a lot of really cool features, including a Flash flipping book (after all, they sell real books and we needed to get that across), some neat javascript features, and some really cool work with the Joomla templating system.

There are still some of those inevitable "smoothing out" things to do after going live, but be sure to check it out here:

Click here to visit Cahoots

3 Comments »

Those of you read this blog with regularity may have realised that I have gotten rid of all of the personal blog content and archives. You may also have noticed that I have been a little quiet lately on the blog front, because I have been learning some hard lessons this last month!

I have decided to separate my blog into 2 blogs. One business, one personal. Primarily because I found myself worrying about the implications of posting one or the other most of the time: not wanting to post too much personal stuff for fear of alienating prospective clients - and not wanting to post too much business stuff for my friends. So, I have moved all the personal blog content over to teabrennan.com, and will keep this as more of a design/business/freelance etc blog.

I have not yet skinned the new blog or really done much to it at all (I have been really busy this month), but I will relaunch with a new theme as soon as I find the time

Ok, so from here on in, business as usual.

1 Comment »

Well, WordPress 2.5 is out, and I must say, this is a very, very nice upgrade.

I just upgraded this blog to use 2.5 before unleashing it on my unsuspecting clients, and from my very brief look through the dashboard and admin interface, my immediate impression is that this could well and truly take WordPress into the full-blown-CMS realm once and for all. A few designers (like me) have already been doing it for some time, obviously, but the UI of the admin panel has improved, there is an integrated image gallery, and the promise of a better WYSIWYG editor (Can we post youtube yet without hacks??)…well… what a great development this is.

As I move into the premium theme development market, I am hoping to create templates that will fully harness the power of Wordpress as a CMS, and cater for specific industries.

First up is a photography blog that utilises the built in media gallery. I am excited about this

Be the first to Comment »

Whilst on the hunt for an alternative to the shiteous built-in WordPress WYSIWYG Editor, I found this little gem. I am posting from it now, in fact! It’s available for Mac OSX and Windows, which is great, because I am running Leopard on my main machine, and XP on my laptop… so I don’t need to worry about being on a certain computer to use it.

The beauty of this app is that it allows you to queue posts, draft posts and edit everything offline.

I am terrible lately at updating my blog, mostly because the mental effort (shyeah, I know…) required to open my browser, be online, save drafts, etc, becomes too cumbersome. Yeah, my life is so hard.

Anyway, check it out!

1 Comment »

This project has been an absolute pleasure from start to finish.

I had a good feeling about Tasj from the very first time we met, and it resulted in a project that I am really, really proud of, and I hope brings Tasj more wonderful clients that appreciate her beautiful photography!

As an aside, there really is nothing that makes me happier, than having clients that just… trust me… to do what I think is right for them and their business. It is a tremendous honour, and not something I take lightly. Trust in your designer not only helps the project move a whole lot quicker and MUCH more smoothly, but it also means that your designer will walk to the ends of the earth for you Which is why its so important to find a designer that GETS you.

I learned a lot about my own creative process with this project, and realised that half of the battle is visualising the right solution. The actual designing and coding is just one part of it, but a lot of the time spent on a project is going into a sort of contemplation period, where I think about the client, look at their work, get a sense of what they’re about, and producing a site that not only differentiates them on the web, but also makes them feel genuinely invested and excited about the result. I think this is a part that many people take for granted, or somehow think that a design should be knocked together in Photoshop in 4 hours max… its much, much more than that — and I am getting much more confident in knowing that my vision, 9 times out of 10, pans out

Anyway, Tasj has been the catalyst for this realisation, that I am actually really good at what I do, and I LOVE pushing myself to do better each time. And that’s pretty awesome, coming from the laziest person on the planet!

This site is powered 100% by Wordpress (the geeks will appreciate it), with Tasj having fully updateable galleries, integration between her site content and her blog, and some nifty little tricks thrown in for good measure (refresh the home page a few times and you’ll see that the background image changes every time :))

Anyway, its been an absolute pleasure working with Tasj, and we wish her well, and look forward to her glowing testimonial

Check out the page HERE.

2 Comments »

I have been going about my usual business, working my arse off, the usual, and have discovered that my host is having intermittent issues - if you consider “intermittent” to mean “no-mail-server-emails-for-2-weeks”.

It was strange, because I usually get a lot of enquiries, but this week have not received any! SO Annoying!

So, if you have tried to email via the Enquiry form, I hope you read the blog, because you can email me direct at tea@linkartist.com.au instead. In the meantime, I have been reassured that the email server will eventually be fixed and I HOPE that the queued emails get through…

And yes, I will have a non-boring, non-business related blog post later in the week

Be the first to Comment »

I know what you are going to say. It’s very…pink!

Part of being a designer, and particularly a web designer, is compromise, but is also ultimately delivering something that fits the client’s tastes that might not necessarily be your own :). My initial reaction to the black/hot pink combo was lukewarm, but over time, I think we managed to make it work with a concept that fits Trista’s personality and photographic style. I think the result is a cute, effective and unique website!

Check it out at www.tristalerit.com

I also developed a custom WordPress blog template, fully integrated with the main site, and it includes comments on the index page. This feature will be a part of the template I will be selling next month for $90US, so you also get a sneak preview of the features of that

You can check out the blog HERE.

4 Comments »

If anyone ever tells you that you can’t get a full multimedia-based website up in a week, they’re lying. It doesn’t, however, necessarily mean that you SHOULD, and if it happens often enough, you will die of exhaustion, your family will leave you, and you will lead a hopeless shell of an existence.

I can now unveil the new Lisa Loeb site, which is still very much imperfect (we are still adding archived content, as well as more music, videos and the store), but I am nonetheless proud of. The domains are propagating as we speak, just as Lisa prepares for her appearance on my not-so-secret-crush’s show, Late Night with Conan O’Brien.

I wanted to get the site up and live to take advantage of the inevitable traffic spike after a TV Appearance, plus we have a new CD coming out next week as well… so, I am excited, I am delirious with exhaustion, and I am so out of whack with my work/life balance right now it is insane.

But, it’s worth it.

And, if anyone else asks me to deliver a WHOLE JOOMLA SITE delivered in a week or 2, please, in the nicest possible way, take that cactus over there and please shove it up your rear. Twice.

Go check out www.lisaloeb.com when the domain is working, and buy The Purple Tape on CD. And, if you don’t click on the visuals link and look at the videos and appreciate my work, I will personally come and kill you and your children and your children’s children, because that was a pain in the arse.

3 Comments »

I have found that people can be surprised when quoted our price for web design, but the simple matter is that our services are worked out at $100.00 an hour which is, more or less, an industry standard. Web design, and then redesign, can greatly increase the price when you take in the fact that a page design, by itself, can take eight hours or more to create. Add together coding and all the other bells and whistles that make up a unique site and you have your price.

In the end you get a site, tailored to you and your business, which is unique. Your site becomes your front line in marketing your business and can generate you thousands upon thousand of dollars over the life of the site. Is that not worth paying for?

Two web sites, both belonging to design companies, were sent to me this morning that really show that you get what you pay for. One is in English and the other is German but both could be one and the same. The both want your business and both are cheaper than LinkArtist Multimedia, way cheaper.

I’ll talk mostly about the one in English as I can read their site but it’s not that hard to navigate the German site for reasons I will point out.

OK, example 1. Joyvill Inc.

On first impressions, Joyvill’s site is nice and clean. It’s jam packed full of all those buzz word that you expect to find from some of our competitors. Straight away you know where they are located and that they know what Search Engine Optimizations is.

The front page then goes on to things you should already expect, like a site that will impress your competition and your clients will be able to use. Would you expect anything else?

OK so sounds pretty good huh? A cheap easy to use, pretty site from a ‘Web Design’ company! Where do I sign? Not so fast!

Example 2 Design Bits

Have you clicked on the link yet? Notice anything? I’ll make it easier.

Kinda similar huh! There is a reason for this. They use templates for their ‘design’. Both sites come from the same template then are populated with content specific to their own site. If I had a template to use, I’m pretty sure that I could knock up that site in five hours or so. Five times $100.00 equals $500.00 not ‘from $1600.00′! So it’s easy to see where the profit is.

But what if both businesses are connected and or owned by the same group? I did consider that and it could be true. Instead I took a look at their previous work. Now using what you know about internet templates, do you see any similarities?

Basically it comes down to this. You get what you pay for. If you like what these guys are selling then how about this.

1. Go to Template Monster , Free Site Templates or one of the many other thousands of template sites on the net.

2. Pay between $25 and $65 for a basic template.

3. Using Google or any other search engine to hunt out step by step information you need to upload and populate your very own site!

4. Enjoy. Just don’t worry when you see a copy of your site somewhere else.

1 Comment »