There is no need to convert your website to a WAP enabled one when you design your website for the mobile phone?

1st off, there is no need to convert your website to a WAP enabled one. It is a waste of time, unless your website's home page is too long or have too many pictures, then its ok to redeign the look to make it simpler.

Most 3G phone browsers can surf most websites that are currently online. It can sometimes be frustrating when you convert your website into a WAP version & you give your users a limited WAP version website instead of your full version website with all its bells & whistles.

For me i think the most affordable & efficient mobile phone that can be used for internet surfing in Singapore, is the Sony Ericsson K660i


Pic: K660i Comes in 2 cool colors. advert click here: www.mesh.portalcity.com.sg/mesh/mobihunt

It is just big on features, all in one.

The browser is good enough to surf most websites.

Click here for more NEW COOL products

iPhone Launch at Singtel Comcentre, Singapore

Pic: The iPhone launch at Singtel Comcentre

First an iPhone price cut left early buyers feeling foolish, and then came reports that some iPods were spitting sparks. Now the new iPhone 3G has been marred by bugs, spotty service, disappearing programs for the device and a veil of secrecy over software developers trying to broaden its appeal.

Such a string of mishaps and missteps might throw another electronics company into crisis. But of course, Apple Inc. isn't just another electronics company. Even as iPhone griping rages online, it looks like Apple's sterling reputation will emerge untarnished. "The objective reality is that Apple does plenty of wrong," said Peter Fader, a marketing professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. However, Fader said, the company's loyal fans, and even casual users, have come to identify so strongly with Apple's high-end, individualistic vibe that they're willing to look the other way. "Very few companies have this kind of iconic status where anything they do, even if it is mediocre, will automatically have a halo around it," he said. Kern Bruce, a 25-year-old Web designer in Boston, waited in line for 13 hours to buy an original iPhone. He sold it to upgrade to a 3G."

There was no going back at that point, but after I sold it, I quickly started to regret it," he said. Bruce's complaints echo countless Web forum posts: The device gets uncomfortably warm. Programs crash. And it so seldom connects to AT&T's speedier third-generation, or 3G, data network that Bruce carries the iPhone around with 3G turned off
Here in Singapore, Singtel is going to launch the iPhone.
Industry sources said Apple's iPhone will be launched in Singapore by SingTel this September, but the telco has neither confirmed nor denied this.
So on 22 Aug, 2008...

At exactly 12am, after some pyrotechnics and some fanfare, they started selling the iPhones to the customers in line. We thought we could be getting the iPhone very soon, but we still had to wait for about an hour before actually getting into the store. When we were in the store, we waited for about half an hour before we were served by the staff. The process of setting up the phone was pretty swift, and we were already ready to pay in less than 15 minutes.
It is estimated that gadget fans here have gotten about 10,000 iPhones through different avenues, with some paying over S$1,000 to be the first in Singapore to own the device.

Click here for more NEW COOL products

Online tool for how to find rss feed of a website?

Finding the RSS Feed for a Website
The websites you already read may have an RSS feed. So you want to find it. Go to BlogStreet’s RSS Discovery tool and enter in a website. It will return the feed for you.
If that doesn’t find the RSS feed, go to the website whose feed you’re looking for; if it has one, then it probably includes a link to it. Try looking on the page’s menu (usually left side or right side) and the footer. Most often RSS feeds are linked to with an small icon. The most common is an XML icon like this: , but there are a number of variations on label (RSS, RSS2, XML, RDF, Atom), colour, and size, such as and . Other times there may not be an image, but text with one of those lables, or a link labeled “Syndicate this site.” You may also see a variation on the standard XML icon such as and ; these are direct links to subscribing to an RSS feed in AmphetaDesk and Radio UserLand (both are RSS aggregators) respectively. Radio’s coffee cup icon is sometimes shown alone.

If you are running one of these news aggregators, click on the icon to subscribe, otherwise just use the usual icon. Note that not all XML icons link to RSS feeds, because there are many other XML formats. If it isn’t labeled or self-evident, just try reading the file in an aggregator; if it doesn’t work, it is probably not an RSS feed.

If you still haven’t found the RSS feed for a website you can try searching in one of the tools listed below. Failing that, write an e-mail to the webmaster and suggest that they create an RSS feed. If they don’t know what that is, you can point them over to this RSS Workshop and these RSS specifications. Lastly, you can scrape the website. MyRSS is a tool for scraping. A number of news aggregators, such as Syndirella, have the ability to “create” an RSS feed, but the feed will only be accessable to people using Syndirella.
Note: the section below was originally based (with permission) on Finding More Channels, a page made by the creator of the AmphetaDesk news aggregator.


Directories
Syndic8
Syndic8 is (mainly) a directory of RSS feeds, over 25,000 of them. You can search (also available on Fagan Finder), or browse the directory (which does not list all of the feeds).
News Is Free
News Is Free is an online news aggregator and a directory of RSS feeds, over 5,000 of them. You can search (also available on Fagan Finder), or browse the directory. News Is Free also provides scraped RSS feeds for a number of websites.
BlogStreet’s RSS Directory
BlogStreet contains a number of blog-related tools. The directory lists the RSS feeds of over 10,000 blogs, organized alphabetically.
RDF-Ticker: Find more channels
RDF-Ticker is an RSS aggregator that displays headlines as a new ticker. Their search (also available on Fagan Finder), includes over 1,800 RSS feeds.
Your Favourite Blog
Many blogs include a blogroll (links to other blogs). Many blogrolls also contain links to the RSS files of those blogs. A good way to find RSS feeds that you’re interested in is by folling links from the blogs you already read.

Search Engine Queries
A number of search engines allow you to view their search results in RSS format. This way, you can monitor the results for a subject that you are interested in.
Daypop
Daypop is a search engine (also available on Fagan Finder) for news, blogs, and RSS feeds (the last is powered by News Is Free). Perform a search, and the result has a link to its RSS feed at the top right of the page.
Feedster
Feedster is a search engine (also available on Fagan Finder) for RSS feeds. Perform a search, and the result has a link to its RSS feed at the top of the page.
BlogDigger
BlogDigger is a search engine (also available on Fagan Finder) for RSS feeds. Perform a search, and the result has a link to its RSS feed at the top right of the page.
Sherch
Sherch lists a number of tools and provides an RSS feed of the results. Unfortunately, it is an old website, and most do not work. Two significant ones that do work are the Internet Movie Database and the Open Directory Project. To use them, click on the link labeled “RSS 1.0 Channel” and add searchterm=[your search terms] to the end of the URL.
Amazon
Sean Nolan has used Amazon’s API to create RSS feeds. The URL for a feed is http://www.yaywastaken.com/amazon/amazon-rss.asp?keywords=[your search terms]
eBay
Use this tool to create a scraped feed of eBay search results. It is based on a script from waxy.org.
Topical Feeds
The Mail Archive
The Mail Archive includes about 2,500 mailing lists; you may be subscribed to one of them already. Search for a list, and click on one of the results. Add maillist.rdf to the URL, and you’ve got an RSS feed.
Yahoo! Groups
Yahoo! Groups is another source of mailing lists. Find a group by searching or browsing (only groups with public archives have feeds available). Then create the RSS feed by adding messages?rss=1 to the URL, to create a feed that looks like http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aggregators/messages?rss=1.
Moreover
Moreover provides RSS feeds for news on over 100 topics, and the news is collected from thousands of sources. This link goes to a listing of all the feeds and a link to their RSS feed.
Network54
Network54 contains forums on entertainment, sports, gaming, and society. Find forums by browsing the directory, and add ;XML=rss to the end of a forum URL to make it an RSS feed.
Blogging Headline News
Blogging Headline News aggregates the RSS feeds from many blogs, and organizes the items into dozens of topics. Each topic has an RSS feed. The topics are shown on the left of the page alphabetically, or you can also view them sorted by popularity.
The Internet Topic Exchange
The Internet Topic Exchange allows anyone to create a topic, and anyone to post items from their blog into that topic. Each topic is available in RSS. So browse the full list of topics, or the topic directory, which lists most of them. The Topic Exchange is currently small but growing every day. Spread the word!
Computing and Technology-Related Feeds
See Meerkat and Network World Fusion.



What is RSS?
RSS can actually be explained in three words, which you’ll find bolded in the second paragraph…
Before you go any further, realize this: RSS is really simple. Just because it is an acronym doesn’t mean that it’s complicated. Don’t get scared away, there’s really nothing to it. I said it was an acronym, but depending on who you ask and what version of RSS you are speaking about, it may stand for Really Simple Syndication, Rich Site Summary, RDF Site Summary, or a variation on one of those. None of that matters to you anyhow. Another thing that you don’t need to care about is the versions. There are 0.90 and 0.91 (created by Netscape), 1.0 (by RSS-DEV), and 0.9x and 2.0 (by UserLand Software) versions, but almost all applications that handle RSS feeds can read all the different versions. There’s also a similar format called Atom, explained below.
RSS is a text-based format, a type of XML. You should know that only because often RSS files are often labeled as XML. RSS version 1.0 is also RDF (whatever), which, again, is important only because an RSS file may be labeled as RDF. RSS files (which are also called RSS feeds or channels) simply contain a list of items. Usually, each item contains a title, summary, and a link to a URL (e.g. a web page). Other information, such as the date, creator’s name, etc., may also be available. The most common use for RSS files is for news and other reverse-chronologically ordered websites like blogs. For example, this particular page on Fagan Finder has a changes log, which is also available in RSS format. An item’s description may contain all of a news article, blog post, etc., or just an extract or summary. The item’s link will usually point to the full content (although it may also point to what the content itself links to).
When a website has an RSS feed, it is said to be “syndicated.” There are various other syndication formats besides RSS (such as Atom), but RSS is by far the most widely used and supported today. RSS files do not have a common file extension, although they frequently end in one of .xml, .rss, or .rdf (note that other extensions may be used also). The term “scraping” refers to creating an RSS feed for a website that doesn’t provide one itself (i.e. scraping the text off of the page). That is, scraped feeds are not created by the same people who created the content within the feed. Scraped RSS feeds may stop working if the page changes its layout.



What is Atom?
Atom is a format quite similar to RSS. It was created by people who felt that RSS could be improved upon, and some that disagreed with some of the politics regarding RSS. Some people are heavily involved in the (quite unimportant, in my opinion) argument as to which format is better. The Atom format is in development, but as of February 2004, Atom version 0.3 is stable. There are pros and cons to the format, but that’s more complex than I am going to deal with here. The basic difference is that while Atom is somewhat more complex (for producers of Atom feeds), it is also able to carry more complex information, and it is consistent across the syndication, storage, and editing of information. Just about everything on this page which discusses RSS applies equally well to Atom. You can learn more about Atom at the official website, AtomEnabled.org.


Click here for more tutorials

Hiii hopefully will get updated

Hiii hopefully will get updated.

How to Convert Flash to Animated Gif?

Well simply goto file > export as bmp sequences 256 colors.

Then open all the bmp sequence files in Adobe Fireworks. Add the files into the frames. Then export the image as a gif.

Click the animation tab to configure the settings.

Thats it, to make a clear (non pixilated) animated gif.


If you like reading this, subscribe to this blog

What can friendfeed.com do to improve itself?

I am new to the friendfeed socialnetwork aggregator site. And I am beginning to like it,as it saves me time when i want to keep up to date with my friends online.

Heard thatt there is a new competition in a site called SocialThing. Users have commented that Social Thing looks much better.

Well I have a few suggestions for friendfeed to improve itself and helped design an improvement in the user interface as can be seen below. I have even suggested a way for it to earn revenue by placing ad banners.

Enjoy:)

Click on the pic to enlarge :)

Video Editing: 30 Free Tools and Web Services To Get Things Done

Just useful

http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/video-editing-30-free-tools-and-web-services-to-get-things-done/

Innovative Ways of Attracting Traffic with Your Website Design

Ok here we are going to list some of the innovative ways that designers have used to attract traffic to their website:

http://www.iamnotfat.net/ - This kid is brilliant. Seriously, clicking on his glasses to enter the site. Yes one good way to be famous. lol.

I like the way he do the relink banner to redirect his users.

Local Singapore website Nuffnang.com's way of Attracting Traffic. Bring in the F1 Hunk

Local Singapore website Nuffnang.com is offering its readers a chance to meet Formula 1 's Lewis Hamilton from the McLaren team. This is a cool campaign.

Nuffnang traffic rank is: 92,704. Not bad for a local website

In their EDM the site states:
"In collaboration with Nescafé, Nuffnang Singapore is pleased to bring all Nuffnangers a ONCE IN A LIFETIME opportunity to catch Lewis Hamilton in the flesh!Yes, the McLaren Mercedes team's Lewis Hamilton! Yes, the current leader in this year's F1 league! And yes, the suave, hotshot rookie who nearly blew away the competition last year!We have places for two bloggers at an exclusive meet-and-greet session with Lewis come September 25th. If you have not already noticed, the folks at Nescafé are already offering this brilliant opportunity to members of the public via their website http://www.catchlewis.com/, but they have kindly allocated the Nuffnang community two spaces at this EXCLUSIVE event."

The site catchlewis.com is cool in design too. So i'l tag it in our cool design section.

Since I did this posting to help promote their campaign, may be they (nuffnang) can give me a free ticket to meet him too;)

T-Mobile sold more than 120,000 3G iPhones

Recently, T-Mobile sold more than 120,000 3G iPhones. How did they do this? How did their website help them to do this? How did the design of their website help them to attract this amount of traffic & sales?

Well here's their website. http://www.t-mobile.com
Go & study it & write in your comments on our comments list.

There are some websites used to attract traffic to T-mobile's selling of iphone campaign. One of them is http://www.iphoneontmobile.com/
It was 1st ranked on google when you type tmobile iphone. Alexa rank for this site is: 414 426. Not bad rank.

The site is done in a blog format. A reason that it has been highly ranked by google.

Protoshare: A software for developing Best practice of website development process flow

Current best practices for web development almost always follow some variation of the waterfall model. It’s known as a “waterfall” because once you cascade down to the next level, you're not supposed to need to go back to the previous level. If you have to, you usually need to start the process over. Anyone who's tried this knows it doesn't work very well. In reality, the waterfall method is more of a mad flow that feeds itself.

1) Generate Website Spec Doc - A complete, thorough and authoritative description of what you plan to build.

2) Creative/Design - Put a nicely branded look and feel on the spec. To the extent you don't understand the spec, the spec is incomplete or doesn't make sense, just add/alter the design to show the changed/completed/altered functionality.

3) Build - Based on the two authoritative sources above, work to create a third. Fill in the holes, pave over rough spots, and generally do whatever it takes to make the end result function and still appear to be based on the spec and design.

4) Deploy - Test to make sure you've satisfied the spec. Which spec? Take your pick from the various steps. The specs just kept changing. Go back to the step of your choice now that everyone's had a chance to really look at what's being built and repeat until you just have to deploy or until everyone is reasonably satisfied.

It's not that the four steps are wrong. They are a good guideline, and it makes sense to plan before attempting implementation. But the waterfall method does not map to how human creativity works. It's hard to know if your web project does what you want without having a chance to interact with it. Trial and error is a more natural mode of decision-making and creativity, and it's hard to engage with a written specification compared to a functioning website. The waterfall development method is like trying to teach a child to walk by having her read a book about walking as opposed to letting her fall, get up, and adjust until she gets it right.

What are the alternatives? There's the rapid application development paradigm. Its philosophy is: if you can develop really quickly, just start building and adjust as you go. Do as much iteration as you need to get it right. I actually like the trial and error aspects of this process, and I think it gets all stakeholders more engaged, brings out more ideas, and makes it more likely that the best choices see the light of day. However, it's just not practical or cost-effective, even with the best rapid development environments. Building functioning web applications takes too long.

What is the answer? Follow the general steps of the waterfall, but with many, many iterations along the way. Use collaborative tools to visualize and simulate the final deliverable before designers and programmers start building the website. This gives you the benefits of the rapid development paradigm, but without the costs, because iterations are fast and painless.

In 1999, we started as a web development shop; we struggled with many of these issues and know the pain points. We've now transitioned to a software company, and our latest product is a collaborative tool called ProtoShare. In my biased opinion, it can help you revolutionize your development process the same way that it helped us. And it gives marketers and other stakeholders visibility and input into the process at a much earlier stage.

What is ProtoShare? It's a web-based tool that enables real-time collaboration with clickable wire framing. After you set up a ProtoShare account, you take a first pass at architecture, create some wireframes of pages, and then invite the other teams to review and comment on it. Now you have the development team, the marketing team, the designers, executives, clients, and project managers all engaged and involved — whichever stakeholders make sense.



1) It's rapid: Instead of spending three weeks pulling together information and maybe creating a wireframe or prototype, get started in a few hours. Review and iterate on the prototype. ProtoShare has a lot of functionality that makes the process easier.

2) It's collaborative: Stakeholders and team members can view and comment on the prototype. Multiple developers can work on the same prototype. This is really empowering for all involved, and vastly improves the process and the end result.

3) Design is added to the process: Once you're satisfied with your prototype, upload design comps for side-by-side comparison. Stakeholders can comment on the design comps as well. This prevents the 'multiple authoritative document' problem that plagues the waterfall model.

4) It's iterative: Is something not working? Change it. All of the information stays in one place. Want to try a different approach? Duplicate a section of your site and rearrange it. Try new layouts, navigation, and colors. Change is good.

it's the best of both worlds. It's an easy way to minimize the work of designers and developers, while allowing both creativity and experimentation to emerge earlier in the process.

Latest: Fwix.com launches. The local social network aggregator

Fwix uses the ubiquitous-in-Silicon-Valley concept of information feeds, exemplified by sites like Facebook and FriendFeed. But somewhat differently than those sites, it takes feeds from other sites around the web, like Craigslist and Yelp, and aggregates them based on what city you’re in. Menlo Park, Calif.-based Fwix only launched on Thursday, for a few major cities. But it claims to be getting decent traffic and is rolling out to 25 more cities today.

Building Modern Web Apps? Better Have A Deep Competency in Web 2.0, Open APIs, Widgets, Social Apps & Web Strategies

To drive the right decisions in what they do product designers, marketing teams, software architects, developers, strategy officers, and other key roles in today's generation of online businesses need to have a solid handle on an extensive array of Web topics. This ranges from appreciating why plain old HTTP is so good at underpinning the Web to more sophisticated topics like modern application architecture, the latest in online user experiences, next generation computing models (grid/cloud/utility/SaaS/PaaS), cost-effective scalability, user identity, network effects, Jakob's Law, analytics, operations, user community, as well as the many compelling new distribution models that are nearly mandatory in the first release of most products.

An excellent summary of the truly massive, but largely underappreciated scale of these new Web application models was last week's TechCrunch piece on the progress of Google's OpenSocial, an increasingly successful model for creating portable social networking applications that will run on any OpenSocial-compliant site. Erick Schonfeld reported that OpenSocial now has a total reach of an astonishing 350 million users and it will soon be 500 million. There are over 4,500 OpenSocial apps today, a healthy number for the application format but a small drop in the bucket compared to the number of Web sites in the world. But the key is that these applications are integrated much deeper into the social fabric of an engaged audience, interjecting themselves into the daily personal and work habits of the "captive" users of social sites and even have access to the personal habits and data of users of these sites. Facebook's story is impressive as well with over 37,000 applications that have been installed over 700 million times.

Unfortunately, the number of capable practitioners of these new distribution models remains relatively small compared to the large body of experts in traditional Web product development. Demand is also low for these new skills as most organizations have been painfully slow to appreciate how much online product development has changed. A quick search of the job aggregator SimplyHired tells the tale: Nearly a thousand Web designer positions are available while only 36 OpenSocial and 40 open API positions are open, for example. This despite the the latter skills being able to project a product across the Web into hundreds of social sites or create an API that allows the product to be incorporated into countless other products for far less cost per customer than traditional methods.

Organisations need a Manager who can be on top of this web technology knowledge. He will need to hire the right people (programmers & designers). Who do we call such a Manager? The term Web Strategist would be approapriate.

Designer's Health

In this section we are going to discuss how to maintain the designer's health & well being to ensure that designer can perform & design at an optimum level?

TV Aggregators on the web. No more offline TV.

Television entertainment has busted out of the TV and onto computer screens. Think of it as the rebirth of television, delivered via a new, interactive medium that gives viewers more choice over what they watch--and when, where, and how they watch it.

Online TV Aggregators
Aggregator sites showcase streaming television, drawing their content from multiple sources. Typically, aggregator sites focus on building a comprehensive entertainment experience.

Read more at:

http://blairwestlake.com/community/blogs/articles/archive/2008/08/24/4346.aspx

Adobe Fireworks CS4 Beta Release

Its good to see that Adobe has released Adobe Fireworks CS4. Lots of designers will be happy everywhere.

If you all got any screenshots or tips on using the new software, feel free to post them up on the comments.

You can read more on the release at these links:

http://fireworks-adobe.blogspot.com/2008/06/fireworks-cs4-beta-features.html

http://socialplasm.com/socialplasm/adobe-fireworks-cs4-new-features/


You can try a preview download here at:
http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/downloads/2217544/adobe-fireworks-cs4

or adobe's site http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/fireworkscs4/

Before you start your design?

Have you ever felt that clients always like to impose their ideas onto your well crafted design?

Well my suggestion is to avoid arguments, its best to ask this question?

Does the client or boss want me to come up with the design or does he already have an idea in mind?

Most of the time its probably the later. And you try to ignore what the client wants and end up arguing trying to put your design to be accepted. Your design may look cool in the eyes of designers like us, but if the client or worse still your boss does not like? Better ask him, nicely, what we wants? If this happens, just go with the flow. Listen to the client/boss carefully. Ask him confirmation questions, like is this what you think is best for the site? What kind of design do you suggest you may like? Any reference website?

Then most of the thinking work has been done. And you just go with the flow, get to work and improve on thing a bit here & there. And get the cheque.

Good Design Reference Websites

Here are some good websites you can check out:

http://www.wilshireone.com/article/46/fireworks-vs-photoshop - Talks about the fact that Adobe Fireworks is easier & more productive to use than Photoshop.

Why Fireworks is simply better than Photoshop?

This is for all those Fireworks users, who had to work with a boss or dept who prefer you to work in Photoshop, do not worry, we are here to support you.

I have searched across the net, putting the keywords Fireworks vs Photoshop. What i discovered is that a lot of people are saying that Fireworks is easier & more productive to use for doing graphic work. You can do things in Fireworks in much less clicks than in Photoshop.
So why do I ask, my dept prefer to work in Photoshop. Aren't they making themselves work harder?

Even many photoshop users who have tried fireworks say that its easier & making their graphic design life easier.

Some say that Fireworks is only for Web Design. And photoshop is for print. Well, i don't think so. I use fireworks to do print jobs. I would do in fireworks first then use illustrator to produce the print output(convert to CMYK etc).

So try it for yourself, do a search Fireworks vs Photoshop in google, you too will discover that fireworks is better.

Hopefully, Adobe does not phase out fireworks. We just love fireworks. Its frustrating to work with photoshop.

If Adobe is smart, they will continue to work hard to greatly improve fireworks & add value to the product. I did not see fireworks listed on the Adobe website? Its like hidden in a drop down box. Hmmm? why is that. If they had bought macromedia, just to throw fireworks aside, and satisfy their corporate ego, i don't know what to say?

Look at the image below of Adobe's website. They are just not doing Fireworks any good. Common we love adobe fireworks. Fireworks is your own(Adobe) product, why not give it some love Adobe bro?

Funny, its like you know step brothers, where the real kid is loved by the parent & the adopted one is thrown aside. Man, if adobe ever wanted me to design & make their website even more user friendly, do consult me. A simple obvious solution & yet they are ignoring it.

If for what ever reason Adobe wishes to terminate Fireworks. Please don't, the product would be better off, being sold to another company, willing to greatly improve the product. Even if its to be sold to Microsoft, so be it. At least it will live on.

Written by,
Alex Li
designmeetTraffic.blogspot.com

Alex Li is a Web Strategist specialising
in design & PHP open source based web technologies.

Events List

24 Aug 2008 - Singapore Bay Run 2008

Event Dates : 24th Aug 2008
Time of Event : 5pm - 11am
Venue: Esplanade Bridge to the Padang
Category : Sports

The Singapore Bay Run formerly known as the SAFRA Sheares Bridge Run & Army Half Marathon, is a landmark mass run event in the local sports calender for both competitive and non-competitive runners. Since its inauguration in 1992, participation has grown significantly to over 60,000, making it the biggest mass running event in Singapore. Jointly organised by SAFRA National Service Association and The Army, its main aim is to promote cohesiveness amongst NSmen. This annual event also presents an opportunity for NSmen and the general public to adopt a healthy lifestyle, answering the Government’s call for a healthier nation.

Contact Person/Event Organiser
Ms Ashanti DeviSAFRA National Service Association
Tel: 6377 9833
Fax: 6377 9898
Email: ashanti@safra.sg

---

2008 FORMULA 1 SingTel Singapore Grand Prix

Event Dates : 26th Sep 2008 to
28th Sep 2008
Time of Event : TBA
Venue: : Marina Bay
Category : Sports

Description
The Formula 1TM 2008 World Championship race series rolls into town on 28 September 2008! The 2008 FORMULA 1TM SingTel Singapore Grand Prix is not just F1's first street race in Asia, but is also the first-ever night event in F1 history. Held on public roads around the Marina Bay precinct, the 2008 FORMULA 1TM SingTel Singapore Grand Prix is expected to draw over 80,000 spectators.

Ticketing
Ticketing details can be found via singaporegp.sg website

Getting There
City Hall MRT Station (EW13/NS25)

Website
http://www.singaporegp.sg
2008 FORMULA 1 SingTel Singapore Grand Prix


Contact Person/Event Organiser
Singapore GP Pte Ltd
Contact : info@singaporegp.sg

Design School - Code of Design

Ok in order to explain How Design Works, we are going to come out with a code of design, like our guidelines.

From time to time, those not trained in design school, like say most clients etc, they may not understand what is good design & what is not. They may think their design ideas are good, but when we agree to them & put their design ideas into our design, it looks urrrrrrrrrrrgh ugly.

How can we designers solve this problem? When we try to explain our rational why we design it this way & used this colour, that colour, it always seems like we are arguing with them. And mind you we don't want to make our clients or worse, bosses, feel like we are arguing with them?
Can we come up with all the possible objectives(critism) that we can think of that will be asked when we present our design? Help each other out here fellow designers. Ad hopefully we can better communicate our design ideas in the future & finish our work quicker.

Code of Design

1. Make sure your design has good enough spacing to ensure that your design does not look cluttered. Space can be used to make an element stand out and attracts the audience to that element.

2. Normal Text that is not too strong on the eye. Text can be blended into the background as long as its readable. Some may comment that its too vague. But as long as its readible, its better than having text that is too bright & gone out of the design.
Reference: Apple.com,

3. Allignment. Make sure that you look at all elements to see where they are alligned. Sometimes elements may not need to be alligned, because the design requires that the elements be placed randomly for that out of the box look. As in most street/fashion/music advertisements. Its for that sophisticated complex look.
Refe

4. Simple or sophisticatd design. 2 schools of thought here. Most corporate people will tend to think only about the Simple design. That is a clean design with not much artistic elements. And usually the simple design comes in a bright or white background.

The sophisticated design is like art, where elements can be thrown in at random. To the thinking of corporate people, this way of design is ugly. But to designers, artist & public consumers its cool. This is where sometimes corporations fail to see why their marketing materials are not working, simple because their marketing material lacks sophistication & is too boring.

Simple design reference: apple.com
Sophisticated design reference:

5.

For Sponsor Logos that need to be displayed on a website or poster etc, make sure that its not bigger than the main poster logo or bigger than any other main things on the marketing material.

Design School - Code of Design - Vague comments

Have you ever face a situation where you present your design to your client and they say that hey look this is vague, it not clear, i can't see it. They think they can't see it but its clear enough to be seen.

Eg.



Well, it just makes you feel like you know... Has the guy ever heard of the word blended in (as in not too strong on the eye)

How to do Event Posters that Attract the Crowd?

Ok today I want to design an event poster to launch a website. Are there any case studies or examples that u guys/girls did that got a lot of: 1. traffic to the website? 2. event attendees & participants? May be you can analyse your poster in the following format- How long was the marketing campaign: Number of visitors to website: Number of visitors to the event: Lets list out some good examples of event posters that had a successful impact on attracting event attendees: How long was the marketing campaign: 30 days Number of visitors to website: Number of visitors to the event: How long was the marketing campaign: 30 days Number of visitors to website: Number of visitors to the event: Give me some suggestions here with your comments. Click here: AlexDesign.net.ms

New Facebook. Totally not required. Not so user friendly arrrgh?

I just have to say that the NEW FACEBOOK is not very user friendly. They changed everything. Rule: If its not broken why fix it. FB should just improve on what the users recommend. Changing the whole design & flow of thins just serves to disrupt whatever people already know. People have already gotten so used to the OLD FB interface. They know where everything is. And them boom, they changed it all. I can't even find the basic EDIT PROFILE link when i logged in??? Hmmm, why do all the social sites like to revamp their interface. Revamp design is ok, revamp interface?? its like changing your already successful strategy. Its better to value add & keep value add, not change & be something new??? I am a Web Strategist, looking frm a strategy point of view, FB users are increasing rapidly, there is no need to change. Unless ur users r declining, like what friendster did. Friendster changed in the direction of FB to add newsfeed functionality etc & now they are slowoly getting back more users. But FB now, this change? for what purpose? Alex