A small hosting company from Wisconsin just got a brand new site. It is with great pleasure that I announce the launch of Host Head redesigned by Maquina Studio. This was a two month design and development project that started with the complete visual space for the company’s web presence. When the client contacted the studio way back in July of 2007, the hosting company was in sore need of an design upgrade. The previous site looked like something straight out of the dotcom boom, so we helped the guys at Host Head give the company a facelift. Their original logo came out unscathed, since it had enough personality to shine through in this iteration, and we believe it meshes well with the overall design. Check out the site and while you’re at it you can do some window shopping for hosting. Brad and the guys behind Host Head do a superb job at customer service and offer competitive hosting packages with cutting edge technology.
You need to enable javascript and download the latest version of FLASH PLAYER to view this site.
Host Head goes Live
Introducing Sparta: a Premium WordPress Theme
I’m excited to announce the public release of the first Premium WordPress theme produced by Maquina Studio. Behold Sparta, a simple and ultra-clean WordPress theme. Following the minimal trend in design, Sparta offers a no-nonsense and no-frills approach to theme design, inspired by the Spartans of yore. It’s a differentiated left-aligned two-column layout that makes it really easy to read and navigate. It has a Featured Post Slider using JQuery, and a topical navigation to give it a magazine style treatment. It comes in three different color styles and the versatile layout can be used for different purposes, such as an online magazine, a personal blog, or a professional blog for business. Perfect for those stylish niches like design, fashion, lifestyle, culture, and art, but will work for anything if you simply like good, clean and minimal design. Download Sparta Premium WordPress theme exclusively at ThemeForest.
Asunción Digital Week
For the first time an event of magnitude and digital appeal has landed in the city of Asunción. It spanned for five intense days of workshops and presentations garnering the expertise of South America’s brightest in the realm of digital design, advertising, and marketing. I was fortunate enough to attend the conference and had a first hand look at the latest and greatest of South America’s digital frontier. It was a cornucopia of experts from varying fields within the digital media industry in Latin America. Read the rest of this entry »
5 Smart Reasons to Start Using WordPress Today
If you finally decided to start blogging then you seriously need to look into what WordPress has to offer. Sure there are many blogging services like Blogger, TypePad, SquareSpace and such, but none offers as much flexibility, independence, and support as WordPress does. Wordpress was started in 2003 by a hand-full of programmers and today it’s a bustling community of developers, designers, and bloggers. It’s the most popular blogging platform in existence and it has a very bright future ahead of itself. Here are the five main reasons why I, as a web designer, give WordPress my vote of confidence. Read the rest of this entry »
What Kind of Web Industry Animal are You?
“An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.”
-Niels Bohr
And what’s a web designer’s job description anyway? Lately, I’ve been asking myself this question, especially at this time when the demand for specialization gets greater and greater. In the early 2000’s when I initially got started in the web, it was easy. The prevailing identity on the Internet was that of a webmaster. If you were called a webmaster, you were like a magician; the practitioner of an esoteric and novel art form. Everyone respected that and knew what it meant, even if they knew not what it was all about. A webmaster in 2000 did what a jack of all trades does today, from designing the Photoshop template of a site to administering the database of the CMS. That, as we all know, was not a good proposition. Do you remember the first designs to surface the internet and how hideous they were? Thank god the graphic designers took an interest in the web and resuscitated visual goodness.
Today however, the playing field has shifted. True, there are still coders out there who do it all. But is it efficient? Are they happy? And most importantly, are they good? I cannot agree as the layers of complexity in web design increase. There needs to be a division of labor for truly powerful builds to come alive. And each specialist has his or her place. So in search of truth I posted a question on LinkedIn to see what other designers and developers had to say. I received a decent number or replies and with the exception of a few, most tended to say the same. Read the rest of this entry »
On Short Deadlines
“If the anxiety is about the deadline, then the energy really focuses on the result. If there is not anxiety about a deadline, all of the anxiety goes right to the creative part.”
-Christoph Niemann
I just read a great Behance interview with Christoph Niemann. While being a phenomenal illustrator his tips on workflow are spot on. The above quote I extracted from the interview is such a true concept. What we need as creative professionals is to find a happy medium where there’s enough of an urgency to get things done but not so much as to stifle creativity. If I had all the time in the world to build a site I wouldn’t know where to start and then I would get finicky about every single detail finally bursting into an OCD tantrum. I find that to build a simple website working in two-week to one-month sprints works best. Having more time than this makes me want to find distractions and I end up getting less done with my time. To be productive I need to be engaged in flow, not anxious. And having too little, as well as too much time, can be detrimental.
10 Practical Business Tips for Freelance Web Designers
As most independent web design professionals I have to wear different hats. I am the technician, the manager, and the entrepreneur who drives the studio. And given all these facets, I truly enjoy working the business angle of web design. Before I started designing websites I obtained a business degree, which helps quite a bit in managing the business. However, considering my background, I know that most freelancers are not in the same boat. So if you’re a one-man band, in the following paragraphs I share a few things I learned over the years as an entrepreneur who started a web design business. Read the rest of this entry »
The Exploding Internet
I’m a sucker for infographics and here’s one designed by New Scientist magazine which reveals the exponential growth of internet users. By the year 2012 Chinese users will outnumber North Americans 3 to 1. Guess we’ll have to learn Chinese in the coming years. The biggest web markets besides the Chinese and North American are the Japanese, Brazilian, and Indian. Another important note: $6.8 trillion in e-commerce. It’s a good thing to be in the web business.
Business Card design featured in CardObserver.com
So this week just started off on a nice note. The first message in my inbox was a notification that Maquina Studio’s business card design is featured in CardObserver.com. Not too shabby for a clean and simple design that came about in 2 hours or so of sketching. If you’re not familiar with the design you can check it out here. CardObserver.com showcases the best designs in business cards from all over the world. A handy reference to have for a jolt of business card design inspiration.
- Host Head goes Live
- Happy Holidays from Maquina Studio!
- Introducing Sparta: a Premium WordPress Theme
- Asunción Digital Week
- 5 Smart Reasons to Start Using WordPress Today
- What Kind of Web Industry Animal are You?
- On Short Deadlines
- 10 Practical Business Tips for Freelance Web Designers
- The Exploding Internet
- Business Card design featured in CardObserver.com
- 456 Berea Street
- A List Apart
- Authentic Boredom
- Copyblogger
- CSS Remix
- CSS Tricks
- Jason Santa Maria
- Joshua Davis
- PSD Tuts
- Seth Godin
- Subtraction
- The FWA
