We love the design of our blog and that of our PR agency‘s website. But that’s not all, we at Mirror Communications generally love everything our friends at QBKL release, be it our own websites, new online homes for their clients or their online CV/resume templates. When it comes to designing and developing websites, even more so when implemented on WordPress, we are what you would call QBKL’s groupies

A while back we introduced their Bold online CV/resume template. Since then it has become quite a Themeforest hit and was even included in Envato’s birthday bundle! But it was definitely time for something new from QBKL! They knew it and that’s why yesterday they released MinimalMe, a minimal HTML CV / Resume template. It pretty much is a one-page template that features a unique, clean and minimal approach. It’s easy to use and customize so that your online resume shows off the best possible business presentation of yourself and your services.

MinimalMe, other than looking awesome and being extremely easy to set up, keeps a very important aspect in mind: people like to be special. And their CVs and resumes usually strive to be accurate and convincing, but to also differentiate them. That is why this html template features 130 possible combinations of background patterns and color schemes.

Based on what your hosting packages allows for, you can choose between a fully XHTML based version and  a PHP version that comes with a fully functional AJAX contact form. If you like to dive into the code of any one page website you post online, don’t worry, the template is well documented and you’ll find it extremely easy to customize it to your liking.

More details on how to get the MinimalMe HTML CV / Resume template on Themeforest.

Guest post by Jayson Jones

Of the many blogs that pop into existence (at the rate, in fact, of one blog per second), the vast majority are a form of “personal space.” These intentionally personal blogs are a sort of online journal, more about having a sense of territory than of really developing a following. However, for those who care about having a truly successful blog, the focus must shift to accommodate one group, and one group only: the users.

There are plenty of things you can do to make your site better for visitors; you can get an online web design degree, look up everything you can find on successful blog designing, or better yet follow these five simple tips that will help improve user experience on your blog.

1. Streamline Everything

On most blogs, there are links, pictures, design elements, advertisements, and just about everything else you could imagine, all littering the site haphazardly. Not only is this unattractive, but it’s nearly impossible to navigate through.

Streamline everything you can. Make navigation clear and simple to read, eliminate unclear or unnecessary elements, pull advertisements out of places where they interfere with navigation, and otherwise streamline the site. At the end of the day, users should be able to look at your page and know where everything is without a second glance.

2. Make It Easy on the Eyes

While making your site clean and streamlined will give some benefit here, it’s also important that it’s attractive overall. However, the term “easy on the eyes” is being used intentionally. You shouldn’t improve your design at the expense of readability or ease of use, so always avoid big design elements above the fold and black backgrounds with light text for your main content.

3. Use Widgets

There are blog widgets that do just about everything, ranging from speeding up your blog’s load times to making it easier to leave comments. While you shouldn’t over-pack your site, there’s almost no blog that can’t benefit from at least a widget or two.

4. Be Useful

People come to blogs for the sake of one person: themselves. Help them by creating useful content, such as tips and tricks. Additionally, in “standard” content, be sure to link to appropriate sites when relevant, cite sources when they’re mentioned, and otherwise make further exploration easy.

5. Ask Your Visitors

If you really want to know the nit-picky details that would make your visitors feel more at home, ask them yourself. You can do this by posting questions on your blog, but remember that many people still won’t respond. One of your best solutions is to invest in online survey software. However, this option is also very tricky; a survey request that’s too brazen will irritate visitors to no end, while one that’s too subtle will be missed entirely. This is a wise investment in learning your audience, but be sure to approach with care.

By making your site attractive and easy to navigate, simple to use, filled with rich content, and adapted to the needs of your visitors, you’re sure to improve the overall user experience. This is no footnote on optional quality, either. Remember, a loyal user base is the foundation to any truly successful blog.

About the author

If you’re looking for a new design challenge to flex your creative muscle, look no further! Everything PR, one of the top PR news websites worldwide, and design crowdsourcing site Prova.fm are organizing a design contest in their quest for the best PR news header. The prize? 350 US dollars.

All you have to do is check out the contest details, browse through the articles on Everything PR to familiarize yourself with the style and general design of the website, then gather your creative and web design forces and start working! Once you have uploaded your proposed design, make sure you share it on your blog, on Twitter or Facebook. You will test it against your peers and your friends and they can vote your work on the Prova.fm site, making you one of the contest favorites.

Why should you join the contest? Other than the cash prize attached to it, this contest also means a chance for you to get some online visibility! Other than being featured in the Prova.fm contest winners hall of fame, your work will be features on a high traffic, worldwide appreciate PR news site which can lead to new clients wanting to hire you!

Now start designing and good luck!

Are you a great researcher with eye for creative photos? Can you write smart and catchy taglines to match those photos and turn them into great ads? Noodle, a site dedicated to helping students find the perfect fit for a college or other classes or education programmes they might be interested in, challenges you to test your skills. All you have to do is join their contest at Prova.fm, find great photos and write matching captions to win up to 10,000 USD.

You don’t actually need to take the photo, but if you’ve taken great one in the past why not use them now? If not, search your friends’ photos or any online resource that allows their photos to be used commercially, write the best tagline to help Noodle advertise their services, and win 100 US dollars for every selected photo-caption combination. Noodle is looking for up to 100 different pictures and messages to go with them, so there are 10,000 dollars to be won.

To get a better feel of what is required of you, check the sample ad below and browse more of them posted on Noodle’s ad design contest page.

Good luck everyone! And happy photo hunting and tagline writing!

Guest post by Ben Johnson

Have you created a logo design for your business? If not, then you have got to get one. Why? Well, because your logo design gives your business a face. If you create a good looking logo, then your business will look really good. If you create a low quality design, then you will mess up the image of your company. So, it’s your logo design that can either mess up your business image completely or give it a dazzling identity.

To give a good-looking face to your business, you need to create an attractive logo. Once you create a dazzling identity, you will be able to win the trust of your market. How? Remember, your market won’t be able to meet you personally or see you physically – They will only see your logo and try to determine how reliable you are.

So, if your business has a pretty face (logo), you will create a pretty good impression.

Now…To give your business a dazzling identity with a top quality logo design, there are several elements you need to take into consideration to make it a success. Let’s discuss them:

Make Sure the Color Scheme is Relevant to Your Business

What does it mean? Your logo represents your business, so it must have the right colors to represent your business properly. For example, if you are creating a logo for a hospital, then its color scheme will be light and sober as compared to the color scheme of the logo of an entertainment company. So, you need to keep in view your business and audience before you finalize the color scheme.

Make Sure Your Logo Clearly Depicts the Mood of Your Business

Just like color schemes, this is also a very important element of your business logo. If you are designing a logo for charity, then you must consider the mood of such organizations and contributors. It will be wrong to have a clown in such a logo. So, you need to do some research and analyze your competitors first and then determine the layout of your logo design.

Make Sure it’s Simple and Memorable

Do you think that a complicated logo will make you look more professional? This is a totally wrong perception. Complexity has nothing to do with being professional. Simplicity always rocks and simple logos are always memorable. Do you think that Nike, Toyota, Honda and Target logos are complicated? No, they are not. They are simple and attractive logos and you need something similar too.

Make Sure Your Logo is Visually Appealing

Just as flowers attract bees, your logo should attract your target market. If it doesn’t look good, will anyone take notice of it? No, everyone will ignore it. So, to grab the attention of your market, you must work hard to create a visually appealing logo.

The bottom line is that you have got to seriously consider the elements mentioned above to create an attractive and top quality logo design and give your business a dazzling identity.

About the author

Ben Johnson is the Alliance Manager at Logoinn, a custom logo design company. He writes about the effect of design on marketing and brand identity and helps small businesses find design solutions for effective marketing.

At a first and quick glance, Prova.fm does not seem to offer much more than other crowdsourced design sites. You basically are promised agency level designs for your logo, website, ads and more which also fit in your budget. The procedure is not new. You create a design contest for which you fill out a brief, set the amount you want to pay and wait for designers to submit their work. Just like in other cases of design contest sites following a similar pattern, you get more proposals than with any other agencies, you can interact with the designers and ask them to make the changes you need to pick the perfect fit.

Designers on the other hand get to showcase their work and if they are the lucky winners, they also get paid for their work. If they don’t win the contest, they can still submit their templates to a dedicated section of Prova.fm and get paid if someone else than the original company requesting the design work purchases them.

Pretty much a basic model, even if done perfectly, up to here. After spending some more time on the Prova.fm website and reading more about them on the Internet, I finally got to pinpoint what sets them apart. All contests can be promoted on various social media websites and combined with the voting system for submitted designes, companies looking for brands that work get to test them against their target audiences.

If your customers, industry peers and the media access your blog and see a post about your rebranding process, they can check the designs and provide feedback on the artwork they like best. While they are not qualified designers, they are the best critics of your logo, website or other brand-related imagery. Why? Because they are the people who need to react to it, be convinced by it and act on it!

“Where we differ is our focus. Prova focuses on effective advertisement designs. Prova’s an advertising agency, & our primary goal is to help small business owners have access to agency-quality advertisements.”
[...]understanding what your audience likes is a huge part of effective advertising,” explained entrepreneur David Gash, creator of Prova.fm, to The Next Web.

Buying the designs that attract more customers are the main target of businesses looking for effective branding strategy and it’s exactly what makes Prova.fm stand out!

Hi everyone! As of late last night, Words of a Broken Mirror has a new theme, designed especially for me by Alex Cristache of Blogsessive through his amazingly creative design company, QBKL. We went for a more professional and clean look, staying true to a red based color scheme. Because I am a red maniac and luckily for me Alex indulges this weakness of mine

I want to thank hig again for designing the theme, helping me implement it, and taking the time to explain things to me so that I could understand his point of view. I can be a designer’s nightmare if I really put my mind to it, you know!

I’d really love to hear what you have to say about the new look. I hope you all love it, as I am thrilled with how my pr and marketing blog looks like right now!

We live in a marketing and branding world where Jack Trout warns us that death is the punishment for companies who do not differentiate. Bloggers are trying hard to get unique or customized blogs to support their online brand. We all strive to promote a special something that’s only ours. But is it really necessary? Is it the only way? Or is the uniqueness also nurtured by something else rather than design or having your product photo recognized by everyone without seeing the logo?

I’ve been thinking lately of some large car manufacturers. Peugeot, Citroen, Ford, Toyota, all strong players in the international market. They all have something in common: producing some small cars, perfect for the city life. But let’s take a closer look at how these cars look like:

Peugeot 107

Citroen C1

Toyota Aygo

Yes, you’ve guessed it, they look pretty much the same. Especially 107 and C1, if you see them passing on the street, you can’t tell them apart. Toyota is also close by. Ford Ka was the only one with a very different design, you couldn’t take it for another car that easily!

And then Ford launched a new and improved Ka! While still looking a little different, guess what, it’s getting closer to the common design:

So what do you make of all this? Branding mistake or smart move? Have you heard Peugeot, Citroen or Toyota complaining at all? I would love to hear your thoughts.

Guest post by Alex Cristache

Did you know that every second a new blog is published somewhere in the World? That’s 84,600 new blogs everyday! Some of them are personal blogs, others are targeted, niche blogs. If you are running a niche blog, just think about how many competitors add up each day, eager to overtake your position, authority and search engine rakings. It’s a tough world for a blogger and to insure your success you must take advantage of every “weapon” at your disposal. My weapon of choice for today is Blog Design.

No matter if you are running a personal or business (niche) blog, you should always keep in mind that your blog is who you are, it’s your profile on the internet and a mirror for yourself. It is said that you can’t find two identical people, so why should we find 2 identical blogs?

Blog writers allover the World, agree on one thing: Give your posts a personal touch; make your presence felt on your blog. The same rule applies when it comes to blog design. These days we have hundreds of resources at our disposal, most of them even free. We have free and premium themes, we have plugins and widgets and we have experts giving away free advice on their own blogs. What we don’t have is an excuse not to make a difference by using them!

While a designer will always choose to create a new theme for his blog, the rest of us will have to search for a premium theme that will best serve our interests, or get a free theme that would need to be customized for a better use. Premium themes usually come packed with almost every option that a professional blog would need, so I’m not going to talk about them. Instead, I’ll concentrate on things that need to be taken in consideration when creating a new theme, or customizing a free one.

Choosing the best resolution for you theme

At this time, there is no fixed resolution that can provide accessibility to 100% of your readers. It pretty much depends on your blog’s target and your statistics.
My preferred resolution for design is 1024×768, since it has become widely used, but still there are people using old monitors, or simply don’t need a higher resolution and are using still 800×600. Look at your statistics and compare the two. If the 800×600 users are only a small percentage of your total (mine is around 0.64%), you should definitely make use of more of your available space.

Also, when choosing the right layout resolution you should consider your blog’s structure: 2 columns or 3 columns. If you’re going for 2 columns, you could easily use 800×600, but if you’re choosing a 3 columns layout, you should give your content enough space to “breathe” by using a larger resolution, preferably 1024×768. Always, make sure to eliminate the scrollbar width from you layout’s width (~40 pixels).

Structure and layout

Before designing or choosing a free theme to customize, take a moment to think ahead. Consider you blog’s evolution, advertising needs, required sections etc. These are all important factors in your decision when choosing a 2 or 3 column design. If you’re running a news blog, a 3 column design would most probably serve your needs better. It provides enough space to list recent, popular and featured articles, archives and categories, authors, advertising zones, links and whatever you might want to add at a future time.

Another important thing to consider is your sidebar placement. As most of us are right-handed, and the website’s scrollbar is on the right side, I’ll almost always go for a right-aligned sidebar for navigation purposes, since it’s closer to the users’ action zone. Placing the sidebar on the left has its advantages too. There are many resources online that can confirm the fact that a website’s main heat zone is top to mid-top left. This means that your users will scan your blog starting there and loose interest while advancing to the right and further down to the bottom. Still, I’m choosing the right side, as the heat map is relevant only when providing good, interesting, content, and I’m still to see the internet user more interested on clicking links than reading a good article.

When using a 3 column theme, make sure that your main navigation items are place on the first sidebar, not the one on the right. This gives the low-resolution users the ability to further browse you blog.

Make use, but don’t abuse, the white space. Having a clear separation area between sections and between blog posts it’s extremely important, as it help users scan faster for the desired content. When fighting for a lower bounce rate, making sure your reader finds his way easily around your blog becomes a top priority! Consider at least a 20 to 30 pixels space between your sidebar(s) and the content, and between 2 successive blog posts.

Highly important items and sections

When building up traffic (visits), three factors are essential: the number of pages viewed per visit, the time spent on your site and the bounce rate. These factors can all be improved by providing your readers with means to continue their navigation on your blog.

Always consider having a list of recent and popular items displayed on your sidebar, or at the end of your article, when reading the full post.

Give your users the option to search for relevant content by placing a search box in a visible area in the upper part (above the fold) of your blog. While most blogs automatically place a link to your RSS feed, most of the time it’s placed at the end of your sidebar. Consider repositioning that link closer to the top, and also, adding an option of email subscription.

Place your blog’s categories in an easily accessible and visible area. It serves both as a way to further guide your readers and as a statement of what your blog is all about!

The tag cloud is a great section that can guide your readers through your blog’s most popular topics. Make sure you place it in a visible area, or create a separate page that includes the tag cloud, like I do on my website.

Through phrases in your post and links in your template, guide your readers to the comment section. It’s highly important to add interactivity to your blog. Debates can lead to new content ideas or you might even learn a few new things!

Final thoughts

While having a well designed and structured blog is not enough to ensure your online success, it can easily make a difference between two equivalent-content-quality blogs.
Think ahead, plan, make the right choices and you’ll have a better chance against the thousands of new blogs breathing down your neck every day!

Alex Cristache is 27 and has been working for top Romanian web design, development and consultancy companies for over 9 years. Quite impressive for his young age, don’t you agree?

He’s tried a lot up to now: web designer, senior web, print & logo designer, occasional copywriter, web & SEO consultant and project manager. Although he focuses on design, he’s also been working with PHP & MySQL on the side. He also fell in love with WordPress the moment it appeared on the market and changed our lives.

He currently blogs at Blogsessive.com and runs CREATIVEurope, a website bookmarking the best European creative portfolios available.

When my friend Mig told me I should check JS-Kit out, I of course did as she never recommended something that wasn’t interesting and useful. And she once again was right. JS-Kit is indeed something to keep an eye on, widgets, but taken to another level and in no way limited to blogs. JS-Kit offers just the right tools to make your site visitor oriented and make it easy for those stopping by to provide feedback and comments.

You’ve got quite a few options to choose from: a Navigator showing your most popular works, Ratings to show you how good or bad a certain piece you’ve published is, Reviews and Comments for elaborate opinions and engaging conversations and Polls to quantify what your readers think. It’s all there, easy as copy-paste. But – yes, there is a but – there are a few aspects that simply puzzle me!

Usability and Design

I don’t quite grasp how a site aimed at revolutionizing web site development by introducing easy and customizable gadgets can pay so little attention to the details on their own site. The home page is what struck me most. There is no navigation bar and the About, News, Support and Your Settings links placed on top of the page look quite unfinished, or even worse, like some text ads that haven’t been tuned to fit the general design.

Also, I am not a fan of throwing loads of colors in a website, even if you use them only for sporadic words. 6 colors or shades is too much in my book and I have not counted the gray text, as to me that’s still a non-color. When browsing through other deeper pages in the site, you can enjoy a really nice navigation bar. Unfortunately, it’s there for the product only, the rest of the information is left out.

And we get to their logo. If you only take their logo, tagline and first paragraph and read them, you won’t know what it is they are doing exactly. After reading the entire home page, you still won’t know exactly how it all works. But moving past this aspect, their logo changes too often while you browse through. One rule I know is that you can’t have different colors of your logo, especially when it’s placed on the same background every time. Besides colors, they are also not sure what font to use and how exactly to spell their name. On some of the products they offer, their logo has a completely different font and style. Plus, is it Kit or KIT? They have not decided yet.

I personally happen to also dislike the icon showing up in the browser next to the site’s name. I am sure it wants to envision a kit of some kind, but I can’t help thinking it’s a purse! Besides, if you have a script only logo, what’s that image doing there in the first place?

Customer Care – What Experts Would Freak About

I won’t stress the one word replies that appear too often in their pages! Those are just soft skills, they’ll learn in time. I’d strongly recommend that they changed their style of writing replies as soon as possible and they should take it as good advice from someone who’s spent quite some time in the customer service department.

But there is a way more important aspect: the large numbers of unanswered questions. First you have to know each product section of the site has the same structure of sub-pages: overview, customization, ask your question and FAQ for some of the products. While most questions (but not all) in the Ask your question section are answered, there are plenty of comments turned into questions from different sub-pages that have received no reply. That’s a big no-no, it gives potential users the impression their questions might never be answered, even if they are through an email or on a different page.

A Long List of Unanswered Questions

The first question that I don’t know how to answer after going through all of their pages is if JS-Kit services are free. I can tell you they don’t have any prices listed, but the word free per se is inexistent. Given that the code is in plain view and you can copy-paste it at any time, I’d go for free, for now. Maybe they’ll chose to charge something or place adds sometime soon, everything is possible as they have made no commitment to providing free services.

If you were wondering if their code can be customized to fit your design, I can tell you where you can find the answer: on the About page, the very last paragraph! Such information should definitely be on the first page, replacing other more puzzling details that make no sense. Furthermore, ratings for example feature a unique design: stars. You can customize their color to fit your site, but if you want a different art, you should start creating it.

On the homepage, they also state their services pay you. I’ve been looking for an explanation as to how their widgets pay you all over the site and have come up with nothing. If you can do better, please point me in the right direction.

Business Advice

Their Contacts page is hidden in the About us section. I’d say it would look more professional if it would be moved upper in the hierarchy and displayed in broad view, as it happens for the support email address.

Their roadmap is targeted at driving users and potential partners away. It starts in 2006 and ends in December 2007. We’re in February 2008, maybe they should really add something to it. If they are not going to create new products, they could have a roadmap for improving the existing one. Such as more options when it comes to artwork for the ratings.

To Sum Up…

JS-Kit is indeed easy to use and a bliss for those new at the blog or site fine-tuning business. It also has great potential of becoming part of most web pages out there. But if they don’t focus a little more on keeping users returning and bringing new ones along, they’ll just end up as just another cool toy that everyone first played with and then forgot it in a dusty corner.