After mulling it over for a while, I made the decision to completely discard what I had done so far and start anew, this time taking the branding into consideration. Yes, it was quite painful to just toss away hours of work (it took a while to get the borders right, and they still didn’t quite align), but it was a move that had to be made. Being a great designer doesn’t only mean making pretty layouts— it’s knowing when to discard parts of/entire designs if needed, for the purpose of making the end result even better. Sure, this is a step backwards in the redesign of Z-Up, but I think it’ll benefit it more in the long term.

Plus, having Z-Up look like an airmail envelope would be quite confusing to newcomers; they might associate Z-Up with email, because an envelope does not imply storage, whereas a box does.

Does the MPAA and RIAA not see that these laws and measures are completely ineffective? Let’s take a quick look at The Pirate Bay, one of the web’s foremost torrent sites. On May 31, 2006, authorities raided their servers and caused TPB to go online for a whopping three days. Still unhappy, the MPAA and RIAA sued the founders of TPB and found them guilty. After the founders appealed their verdict, the record companies sued TPB’s ISP, and forced them to disconnect TPB. However as of today, TPB is still up-and-running, and all of the torrent trackers are working.

What does all that prove? It proves that piracy cannot be stopped, no matter how hard the companies try. Even if the record companies can get TPB shut down for good, what’s to say another torrent site won’t replace it?

Instead of trying to kill off piracy (which is no less of a challenge than turning Haiti into the next NYC), the record companies should instead try to appeal to consumers by lowering their prices or making their products more conveniently accessible online. Look at iTunes, how did it become so successful even though it requires consumers to pay? It made the whole process way more convenient than illegally downloading. And it charges reasonable prices, unlike record companies. Broke teenagers don’t exactly have the money to buy ten-dollar CD’s or $700 programs (yes I’m looking at you, Adobe). If Adobe Photoshop was a more reasonable price, like $50, then I’d consider buying it, but at $700-$1000 for it I didn’t even entertain the thought of purchasing it before I navigated to thepiratebay.org in my browser.

And technically speaking, we’re not even “stealing.” Stealing implies taking property away from the rightful owner of it. File-sharing is sharing, the owner still keeps the original CD or file. Have we not been raised with the idea that sharing is a good thing? 

How does this relate to web design? Simple, make your interfaces work quickly, don’t put any lag or delay. On certain websites you have to hover over a dropdown nav button for 3-5 seconds for the dropdown to appear. That’s really annoying, so don’t do it. 

• Use proper English and grammar. This goes a long way in making your response seem more mature and professional.
• Don’t curse or badmouth the sender; you don’t need to stoop to their level.
• Calmly debate whatever the sender dislikes so much, and don’t lose your cool.

These work well for the hatemail that is semi-intelligent. For hatemail that looks like:

Fuck you, you moronic pig-ballsack.

Just reply politely and say something like:

Thank you for your feedback, now talk to me when you can form a sentence without using swear words.

I’m writing this from a prior experience, and the above quote was taken from an actual hatemail. I replied politely and the sender then apologized for his actions. It’s much like in real life— a little bit of courtesy will get you a long way. 

I incorporated a boatload of CSS3 into this design, as promised. The green is gone as well. I feel this design marks a step in a different direction. The previous three or four themes were just evolutions of each other, but this one was a total rewrite from the ground up. It’s still not perfect, and if you guys find any bugs, let me know in the comments.

Anyways, Happy New Year everybody! Enjoy the design— I’m off to slave over my portfolio…

You can follow my progress on it here; I’ll try to update it often. 

They Distract From Content

Most bloggers these days use sidebars for advertisements, related posts, recent comments, popular posts, archives, etc. With all of the aforementioned squeezed into a sidebar, the sidebar can become longer than the content itself. This problem is exacerbated by blinking or moving ads in the sidebar. Do we really need the reader to see the recent comments or archives while reading the content?

Alternatives

Instead of cramming everything into a sidebar, try making a bigger footer with all the things you’d put in a sidebar. Not only does this keep the reader focused on the content, it also ensures that they stick around. Normally a footer just means “the end,” but if you put related posts, popular posts, recent comments, archives, etc. into the footer, it will encourage the reader to stay a bit longer.

What do you guys think of this? Do you think that sidebars should stay, or should they be relegated into the footer. 

After several weeks of planning, failed designs, and frustrations, I finally finished redesigning Z-Up. It has a slick new design, as well as some performance improvements…

• The design is a lot easier on the eyes.
• Nothing gets in the way of uploading. I’ve cut all the extra pages out, as they were of no use.
• No ads! The previous version had ads, but they weren’t earning anything. Google Ads barely get any clicks. If you’re going to put ads on your site, go with a quality provider like The Deck or Fusion ads.
• Bulletproof design. Zoom the text up as much as you like- all the buttons will look just as nice.
• Meticulously designed favicon. I actually made it from scratch, pixel-by-pixel, instead of just lazily resizing the logo.
• Modern technology- the site uses CSS3 and <button>.

For comparison I have here the old design and the new design, respectively.

What are you waiting for? Go check it out !