Blogger Basics

I am a fan of Google's Blogger and set my clients up with it linked to their sites. As I have been asked how to configure it by some of my clients I thought it would be useful to write a mini guide as to how you can tailor your blog to suit your needs.

Making design changes to your blog:

1. Make sure you are signed in to your Google account.
2. Select the 'Design' menu from the top right of the page.
3. You should be able to see the 'template' of your site as a thumb nail image and find a 'customise' button underneath it. Select 'customise'.
4. This will take you to the Blogger Template Designer where you can adjust the colours, fonts, layout and size of your blog using the left hand menu.

Making content changes to your blog:

1. Make sure you are signed in to your Google account.
2. Select the 'Design' menu from the top right of the page.
3. You should be able to see the 'template' of your site as a thumb nail image and find a 'layout' link in the left menu list. Select 'layout'.
4. This will take you to the Blogger Layout editor.
5. You should be able to see a 'wire frame' of the layout of your blog. Next to each of the Gadgets that make up your blog you will find 'edit' links. You can click on the 'edit' link to edit each Gadget.
6. In each column/area of the layout you will see 'Add a Gadget' link. This enables you to add new Gadgets to your blog from a predefined list of Google Gadgets. For example you can add the Gadget that enables people to subscribe to your blog or you can add images.

New site launch! Happy Birthday innov8 graphic design

innov8 graphic design new website is now live.

I am very pleased to have it live today because it is the 6th Birthday of innov8 graphic design. What better way to mark the occasion than a new identity. One of the reasons I wanted to refresh the logo was to make it more obvious how the name is spoken – ie "innovate graphic design". Some people did struggle with the old one because it was stacked and in fairness I did design it about 15 years ago! It was part of a university project which planted the seed for 'one day' wanting to bring it to life. Although the old logo was born in fond memories it is with much excitement that I now have the fresh new logo.

It actually pleases me a lot because I do love colour and what better way to enjoy colour than have 4 of them for different flavours of channel. The lime green is the main colour. I've introduced a fucia for social media and comms as you see on this blog. I've introduced a teal for the financial paperwork side of the business and have a purple in reserve for no better reason than it's a good vibrant colour and I like it.

As for the new website –  I've built it onto the I-ntarsia platform I use for my client content managed websites. I've been working with i-next (the brains behind I-ntarsia) for 2 years now and haven't had the chance to get my own site onto the system. I've been chipping away at it over the last year. It could have been easy to get carried away with all the things I can do with the system but i'm easing into it gently as I do prefer simplicity to clutter and don't want to over whelm the viewer.

I now benefit from the 'rss feed module' that you will see sitting under the navigation, it allows me to have all those news posts that I go fishing for delivered right onto my own website for all to see.

I am also using the 'forms module' that allows me to set up any number of forms with unique response messages and they are all validated so people can't send me blank forms anymore! lol

My portfolio pages are now displayed in a very simple but effective way using the 'anibanner' module which I very much like. It also makes life so much easier when I want to add new designs to it.

I also now have a canny little display in a rolling banner to the right under my new logo, it also is created with the 'anibanner' module. This I can update regularly to keep it fresh and show you all my new work as it comes along.

Please do go take a peek at www.innov8gd.com and while you are there you could always tell me what you think via my NEW feedback form!

I am looking forward to being able to try out all the modules that are available on the I-ntarsia system so I can let my customers know what they can do on their websites too.

Creative Augmented Reality

I worked a day's design holiday cover on Friday at TC Communications in Ascot. They are a design agency that I have a long standing relationship with and love working in their studio.

As well as seeing old friends and making new ones I was lucky enough to be introduced to 'Augmented Reality' "Augmented reality (AR) is a term for a live direct or indirect view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are augmented by computer-generated sensory input such as sound, video, graphics or GPS data."

String have created some demonstrations of #Augmented-Reality for their company launch. You download the app 'string' and print out their 'trigger images' from their site and then look at the images through your phone/camera lense.

It's a really great effect and great fun too. "I took this picture with the String™ Augmented Reality Showcase app for iOS. See more at www.poweredbystring.com."

 

 

Have a go because there is nothing like seeing it for yourself.

Buy your favourite colour for Charity!

What a simply brilliant graphical idea! I do love my Creative Review e-newsletter landing in my inbox, they always have something fun and informative on the Creative Review Blog - A simple but wonderful idea to raise money for Charity. Everyone loves colour and whether you want to choose it technically, randomly or emotionally the means are all there.

Take a look at: http://www.ownacolour.com/#008da8  This is one of my new Brand colours that I will be launching next year in February. That's how I chose my colours. I also chose my pink too at: http://www.ownacolour.com/#b10069  You can choose how much you donate but donations go to Unicef

Have a go yourself and let me know what colour you picked.

Creative Review Article on 'Rubbish Poster'

Take a look at this video. it's a documentation of 18,000 peices of beach trash made into a poster, to prevent beach trash, sponsored by Barefoot Wine - love it it's great.Take a look at the full article here.

How do I blog?

I was delighted to find land in my inbox one of the few email newsletters that I do keep and read. This one was from Business Link, a website I have visited many times and would urge you to consult as a first port of call with any business query. With great timing around my last couple of blog posts it gave me a link to a very informative guide on how to write a blog that people want to read!

Need I say more. Apart from that in order to actually write a blog you need to set one up. Using Google's Free Blog service, as I have done, you can easily be blogging before breakfast. You do need a Google Account but this just enables you to use all the other wonderful free tools from Google, including Google Analytics, which I would reccomend should be, if not all ready, in your websites to track your traffic.

Of course at any point you get stuck with all this stuff just drop me an email and see how I can help.

How do I use twitter?

Ok so what about Twitter? Following up from my previous blog post 'How do I use Linkedin?' I did the same for Twitter. I typed into Google 'How do I use Twitter?'. So this time I was delighted to find this upbeat YouTube video link that takes you through all the elements of setting up and using Twitter with visual references too.

Yes it does whiz by a little quickly but you can play it again and again as many times as you like. So again a good place to start.

I think it's probably worth mentioning that you may get the most out of Twitter for business by using it as a news alert mechanism that always includes a link to something of more interest or usefulness to you followers. Whether that be a link to your own business website, an article you have written on say a blog, or even to one of your many 'information portals' also known as 'microsites' or 'splash pages'.

Ultimately it's a great way to point people in the right direction when you have something to say that will help them in some way.