AC Vent

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

If you’ve ever had an in-depth conversation with a designer, you’ve probably been bombarded by letter combinations like CMYK, RGB, DPI, and odd terms like bleeds and spot colors. We designers throw these terms around all the time, maybe without realizing that not everyone lives and breathes these things like we do.

I’m going to start with decoding just a few basics in this article, namely the acronyms pertaining to color profiles. They are: CMYK, RGB, and PMS.
Read the rest of this entry »

Starting this month, I’m going to be doing a series of articles here on the AC Vent that aims to help clients and prospective clients understand a little more about the world of design. Design is a skilled trade, so there is a lot of technical know-how and industry-specific lingo that we designers use without a second thought, but which people outside of the design industry may be confused about. This series will hopefully help to bridge that gap and help make sure everyone is on the same page.

It’s going to be called Decoding Design, so whenever you see a blog post with that in the title, that’s what’s going on! The first article in the series will be coming up this week, so check back in a few days.

Here are the parts of the series so far:
Decoding Design: Color Lingo
Decoding Design: Web Lingo
Decoding Design: Print Lingo

Earth Day was last week, and since then I’ve been thinking of all the things I can do or have already done to make my business more environmentally-friendly (and by extension, my home, since my office is part of that).

1. I’ve switched to a carbon-neutral host for all of my websites, and will be recommending it to any future web clients. Not just because they’re an eco-friendly company, but because they have an amazing deal on hosting, have easy to use control panels, and are reliable.
   
2. I use online fax (MyFax) and file sending services (YouSendIt) instead of wasting paper, disks, envelopes/tape, and transportation costs on communicating and sending files with my clients. Read the rest of this entry »