AC Vent

If you want a website that you can manage yourself with relative ease, and without having to know any sort of web coding, a CMS (content management system) like Wordpress is definitely the way to go. Contrary to popular belief, Wordpress is not only for blogs. It’s one of the better blog management tools out there, for sure, but that’s not all it can do. It helps manages pages as well as multiple users, has plug-ins for things like photo galleries and mailing lists, and has one of the most intuitive user interfaces out there. Even better, if you have a designer in your corner (ahem, me), you can customize the theme to any style you want. Read the rest of this entry »

Having covered color profiles and website lingo, I will now move on to the wonderful world of print. If you’ve ever had to deal with getting something professionally printed, and are not yourself a printer or designer, you’ve probably been befuddled by terms like DPI, and possibly worried about mention of bleeds and stocks and crops. Not to worry; taking something to print is, usually, a painless and bloodless process if you’re properly prepared. Read the rest of this entry »

I have reawakened my Flickr account and will be using it to showcase any future photo shoots or photography experiments. Also check out my photography portfolio on the main AC site for info on specific photo shoots.

Last time on Decoding Design, I decoded the basic terminology regarding color profiles. This time, I’m going to decode the world of building a website. This is a conversation I have to have fairly often with new clients, so I developed a way to explain it in non-programming terms.

Your website is basically your home on the web, right? So let’s go with that metaphor. There are 5 main components and terms you’ve probably heard regarding having a home on the web: hosting, URL, website, FTP, and mail server.

Hosting

Hosting is basically the house or apartment. When you buy a hosting account, you are buying space on a server somewhere to store all of the stuff that will make up your website. Read the rest of this entry »

To tweet, or not to tweet – that is the question. And the answer is yes.

I’ve had a personal account on Twitter for ahwile, and have found it useful for following people who post interesting articles or blog posts related to their specialty, and I’ve decided to take advantage of that in the design field. Starting this week I have an account on Twitter for all of my professional and design related updates. If you should care to follow me, I can be found at http://www.twitter.com/acobbdesign