Jeff Wagner Interactive Blog

Ignite Minneapolis Recap

Jeff Wagner — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 16:41:19 +0000

The Ignite Minneapolis event last night at Bedlam Theatre was a blast. The speakers were great and the free beer tickets were pretty solid as well. I was able to take a few pictures of the peeps and some of the speakers during the night, try not to criticize because the photos were with my iphone. Click on any of the pics for a larger view.

The entire event, like last year, was a crowd pleaser. There were lots of laughs and I have to say my favorite speaker on the night was Julie Kucinski giving us a lesson on why “Chicks are the New Dicks.” Hilarious.

If I had one suggestion for Ignite Minneapolis is that they should go bigger on their venues. From the amount of people that were wanting tickets and all the others that were tuning in online there seems to be a high demand to attend. Even if you charged $5 a ticket you could easily sell out a venue that would hold 300-500. Just a thought.

Well done Ignite!

JWI helps Kurt Weiche Memorial with print design

New JWI Business Cards

Jeff Wagner — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 00:50:41 +0000

I recently put together a new look for my business cards. I wanted to keep the branding of my logo the same but I was looking for the high glossy and very polished feel. I couldn’t be happier with the results when I got them from the the printer yesterday.

I worked with a wonderful printing company called W & C Printing. They were great to collaborate ideas with and I think the printing quality speaks for itself. Below are some of the printing options we used:

High Gloss Paper
UV Protective Coating
Digital Press Printing
Rounded Corners

If you’re in need of a new design for your business cards send me an email at jeff@jeffwagnerinteractive.com. If you’re looking for printing services send an email to Amy Storm at W & C Printing, she will walk you through all your printing needs.

3D Web Design Experience

Jeff Wagner — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 04:02:38 +0000

I finally got around to taking in the
3D Avatar digital experience over the weekend and the movie did not disappoint. I, like everyone else, was completely blown away from the CGI (Computer-Generated Imagery) creativity that was put into this movie. When James Cameron creates a movie he does it really big and he is sure to be rewarded for his efforts when awards are to be handed out. The 3D designs were outstanding and really gets the crowd more involved in the movie when animals seem to be running/flying out of the screen right at you.

As I was walking out of the movie theater I
started thinking of 3D website designs, off the
top of my head I could only come up with a couple that really stuck out. Why weren’t there more that came to mind? One of the reasons probably is that I rarely build fully Flash websites because of my obsession with usability, accessibility and simplicity. You lose most of this when building in Flash but you do gain amazing 3D possibilities. So, I went out and did a little looking around and found some sites that have great 3D web experiences and 3D Photoshop tutorials that I wanted to share with you.

3D Websites

3D Photoshop & Illustrator Tutorials
Here is a great collection of 3D tutorials (by Smashing Magazine) that is sure to add some great 3D depth and creativity to your web designs. I use a lot of these types of elements in my designs to help the user more willingly engage and interactive with my websites.

If you know of any other 3D websites out there that are worth mentioning please share them in a comment below.

Is your website WCAG 2.0 compliant?

Jeff Wagner — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 23:01:08 +0000

Developers…have you been building your websites to be
WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) 2.0 compliant? If you’re not sure then you need to look into it more carefully because many business owners could run the risk of not presenting an accessible website to users with disabilities.

The W3C.org has but together a complete list of standards/guidelines that should help web developers make their websites 1.0 or 2.0 compliant. You are allowed to be 1.0 or 2.0 or both for those who want to be on the safe side, my advice would be to try to meet the 2.0 standards, they are the most recent guidelines and are more lenient in areas of time-based media and rich/interactive media.

Why should you care about WCAG 2.0 compliance, well maybe you should ask the following companies about the consequences of not meeting the standards:

Again, if you’re not sure if your website is meeting these standards then check out the W3C.org for more information.

Photos from the San Diego Zoo

Jeff Wagner — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 18:39:11 +0000

I was in San Diego over the weekend and it was my first time visiting this absolutely beautiful city. I had heard so much about how great the zoo was so on Saturday I had to go and check it out. The San Diego Zoo is by far the most amazing zoo I’ve ever been too. If you’re ever in the area you have to check it out.

I took a few pictures for some beautiful animals, click on any of the preview images below and get a nice blown up picture.

If you’d like to learn more about the San Diego Zoo you can visit their nicely designed website at http://www.sandiegozoo.org.

Is your website WCAG 2.0 compliant?

Instant Twitter conversation on your site with Tweetboard

Jeff Wagner — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 17:33:01 +0000

I found this great application a couple of weeks ago that brings your Twitter feed right into your site, the tool is called Tweetboard. Not only does Tweetboard bring your twitter posts to your site but they display it in a great looking slide-out menu.

I’ve recently added the app to my site, if you visit my home page you’ll notice the tab on the far left side labeled “Tweets.” Simply, click on the tab and the slide-out menu appears and lists all of your recent twitter posts.

Anyone can join in on your twitter conversations and leave comments right on your site. You can view recent posts or view all. The board comes with a variety of options and styling controls so that you can customize it to fit the look and feel of your website. It’s just another great social media tool that allows you to communicate more directly to your client base and at the same time gives them the ability to comment back.

You can get an invitation to use Tweetboard on your site by visiting their website at http://tweetboard.com. You will need a Twitter account for this application to work. If you’re not using Twitter yet you need to look into it and start using this amazing social media tool.

Better web designs with these Photoshop Tutorials

Jeff Wagner — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 02:15:07 +0000

Most of my web design work is done in Photoshop and I’m always looking for new and creative ways to make my designs stand out. Over time you learn very handy photo manipulation techniques that really allow you to make different aspects of your work pop.

I’ve posted a collection of links to great Photoshop tutorials that I think designers would find very beneficial. These tutorials will help push you to be even more creative with your designs.

Photoshop Tutorials

Enjoy.

Save time with these web design tools

Jeff Wagner — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 16:58:23 +0000

I wanted to share a few tools that I use on many of my web design projects that not only save you an enormous amount of time but really help make your design much more creative. The best part is all these tools are FREE to use.

1. ADOBE KULER
Adobe KULER is an amazing online tool that can help you find the right colors that you want to use for your next design project. They have hundreds of different color combinations to choose from or you can create your own and submit it to KULER. A very awesome tool that I hope more and more designers will start to use.

2. BG PATTERNS
BG Patterns allows you to create repeating background patterns and textures. Again, you can create your own with your choice of pattern and color or you can choose from a very large collection that others have created. I think patterns and textures really make a website stand out. It gives it that custom look that other sites won’t have.

3. STRIPE GENERATOR
Stripe Generator is another background creation tool that allows you to create custom stripe backgrounds. These come in handy and can be used on almost any design element to give it that Web 2.0 look and feel. You can create your own account that will store the stripes you’ve created and you can others designs to your collection for reference at any time.

4. FAVICON GENERATOR
Favicon Generator is a great tool for creating free favicons. Are you asking yourself “What is a favicon?” Look up in the URL bar (where my domain is) and you’ll notice a blue “W” with a black box around it, that’s my favicon for this site. You can create your own for your site at Favicon Generator. It’s a nice feature that really polishes off your website.

I hope that you find these tools useful in your web designs.

JWI gets new E-commerce project

Jeff Wagner — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 04:58:17 +0000

I have a new E-commerce project in the works that is looking really good. The new website will bring a multi-store company online giving them a whole new presence they never had before. Not only is the site going to look and function great my client is going to have full control over it with content management.

Below is a sample of the home page for this project (sorry, I don’t want to give too much away).

We’re going to really push the user’s overall shopping experience on this site to be as smooth and enjoyable as possible. I can’t wait to send this project live which hopefully (fingers crossed) will be in the near future. Stay tuned.

Typekit helps Web Designers use more fonts

Jeff Wagner — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 23:50:40 +0000

Finally!!! Web designers can actually use their font libraries in their design work instead of the all so famous “web safe fonts” we’ve been using for years. Typekit has come out with an online tool that allows web designers and developers to link to a massive library of fonts within the CSS of the site.

Typekit offers different pricing tiers for their font services depending on how many websites you’re planning on using it for. The pricing is very reasonable for the freedom you’re receiving in your web designs. They do have a free tier for use on one website that allows you to try out two different fonts.

Typekit was developed by a small San Fran company called Small Batch Inc which consists of designers and developers who worked with and at Google. Click to learn more about the Small Batch Team.

You can also follow the Typekit team on Twitter at http://twitter.com/typekit

I can’t wait to start implementing this new service into my website designs, Typekit is really going to help bring web design to a new level.