Web Worker Daily

For the past month, I’ve felt like a doctor who has suddenly become the patient. In my case, however, it is a very good thing. What ails me, you ask? Nothing serious. I’ve just hired a Web designer for the first time ever to redesign my professional web site. And like the old adage that doctors make the worst patients, I’m sure there must be a new adage that old-school Web developers make terrible clients.

Every time I want to open my mouth and put in my $2.50, I bite my tongue. I know that my Web design skills are so…1996. That is the year I began hiring other designers to work for me at my Internet company, finally loosening the iron-fisted grip on the creative, so my HTML and design skills are frozen in time. Still, I’ve always redesigned my own web sites - not because I think I’m a good designer, but because I can. Read the rest of this entry »

It used to be only graphic designers and fine artists played with color professionally. Now everyone with a website gets to choose color themes and schemes. But where do you find help and inspiration? Here are three resources you might want to check out if you need to get creative with colors online.

Adobe Kuler color theme creation and sharing tool. From Adobe Labs, this Flash-based tool lets you create color schemes, tag them, share them, and download them. When you create a scheme, you can choose from rules like Analogous (close together on the color wheel) and Complementary (opposite each other) or make a completely custom scheme.

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Joshua Porter runs a design and consulting company that focuses on designing social web applications. He left full-time employment this summer to found Bokardo Design and now works out of his home office. Josh blogs at Bokardo.

Describe your job/career

In August of this year I founded a design and consulting company called Bokardo Design. I focus exclusively on designing social web applications doing interface design, evaluation, and strategic consulting. The types of problems I help clients with are things like:

1) “we launched our web app and nobody is using it” 2) “we see the promise of social features, but don’t know where to start”. 3) “we have a great feature set but are having trouble generating interest and motivation”

So, basically, I’m a social psychologist in designer clothing. :)

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We’re pleased to pull the cover off Web Worker Daily’s site makeover tonight. The lighter background combined with a wider main column width should give a fresher reading experience. Plus, we’ve added a box with featured articles at the top so you’ll be sure to find our most important content. The design comes to us from ACS. Thanks guys.

As we transition over to the new design, you might see some inconsistencies or outright problems, so please bear with us for the next few days.

If you have a chance, browse on over to the mothership GigaOM to see how silverorange has transformed that site.

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