Here is a great new documentary about typography and fonts that will make you fall in love with type. The 7-minute intro to type that’s already garnered over 100,000 views, confirming people’s interest in Typography.

People seldom appreciate the difference between different email providers, and in my job I spend a lot of time trying to convince clients, associates, colleagues and the rest that switching to a Gmail account or even better a Google Apps account has countless benefits.

Today I am going to focus on the simplicity of one of my favourite and most commonly overlooked Gmail features.

Labels and Filters.

Labels in Gmail are basically folders, if you ask me they should have just called them folders but nevertheless they do the same thing. It allows us to create specific folders and if we want sub folders too.

Filters allow us to search each email for set criteria and then do something with the email as a result. We could set all emails to “mark as read” as soon as they arrive, or as we are going to explain in this tutorial have certain emails skip the inbox and go straight into a label (folder).

For the sake of this tutorial we are going to create a social media label, and then create a label for each social media network we want to filter. These individual social networks will be set to have the parent “Social Media” to keep them as organized as possible, and so we can show and expand these labels.

As you can see in the screenshot I have created the following.

Social Media – Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Disqus.

To create a new label browse to the bottom left of your Gmail sidebar and click “Create Label”.

Repeat this process as many times as you need to create labels for each social network you receive email updates from, remembering to nest all sub labels under the parent label (Social Media). You can use this process for filtering and “folderizing” emails of any type by changing Social Media, to the subject of the email type your organizing.

Once you have all of the labels you want to start with it is time to look at creating a filter for each one.

To create a new filter click “Manage Labels” at the bottom of the left hand sidebar in gmail. You will then be on a screen showing all of your labels, and need to navigate to the tab across the top which says “Filters”.

Click “Create New filter” to open up the filter criteria dialog box. Here we will select the most accurate criteria from the options, and add relevant data from an example email which will be constant every time you get an email update from a particular website or social network.

I find the best solution for this is to use the “From:” field, and put @websitename.com as this means the filter will only grab emails from a particular companies email account, but will pick up any extension like info@ sales@ updates@. Companies tend to email you from multiple different email accounts @theirbrandname.

The point of this exercise is to keep our inbox clean from social updates, so we also want to click the box to set “Skip The Inbox (Archive it)”.

We then want to apply the label to put any emails which fit our criteria into. If you already have several emails in your inbox which fit the criteria it will show you a number in the bottom right, in my example screenshot (above, right) it shows 10 matching conversations, it is good practice to tick this box and click create.

Once done, its complete, all emails from that website will skip your inbox and go into a sub label so you can check them all once a day or so instead of seeing them crop up amongst important emails from clients, colleagues, and friends.

Simply repeat the process as many times as you need and you will have an uber organized email system and a way of managing your social media updates thanks to Gmail.

We would love to hear more clever ways to use labels and filters to organize categories of emails so feel free to post a comment below and let us know.

Why is copywriting such a fundamental talking point in internet marketing? One of the main reasons we often find ourselves on the internet is to get information, whether it be something as small as seeing what our friends are up to on Facebook, to find out what the latest news is, or to learn about a product or service we’re interested in. In all those instances, what we’re essentially looking for is something to read, whether it be as short as a status update or tweet, or something more substantial such as a news article, editorial, or product description – and in the case of the latter, professionally written copywriting is essential.

The benefits of good copy go beyond just informing people of what product or service you offer, however: from a purely visual point of view, seeing a decent amount of text on your webpage will immediately serve as a reassurance to visitors that you have a passion about a given subject and have actively taken the time to share that – and this is even before they have begun to read it.

Imagine two businesses selling the same product – a book, for example. The product may be the same on both company’s websites, but the way in which they go about selling it may differ greatly; while one may just show the book cover and the price they’re selling it for, the other may list important information about the book – a synopsis, a short biography of the author, and some quotes from reviews. By doing this, the second website has transformed their product page from merely being somewhere to buy the book to somewhere you can go to actually learn more about it. And chances are, unless the first website is selling the product for significantly less the buyer will purchase the book from the site that gives them more information.

That’s not all, though: if you’re only using stock copy on your website you might fall foul of what’s called ‘scraped content.’ This is the term given to copy that’s cut and pasted from one website – say, Amazon for example – and used on another. Chances are the original copy will have been ‘scraped’ by Google and dated meaning that it’s obvious where it originally came from. While it’s understandable that something like a synopsis supplied by a publisher may be used by any number of different websites who are selling a certain book, where possible it’s best to ensure your copy is fresh and original to help draw visitors to your site.

But while it’s important to feature helpful information on your website, it’s also worth remembering that too much text can overwhelm visitors to your site – and it’s here that a professional copywriter can help you determine exactly the right balance.

Want to find out more about Pixelloop’s professional copywriting services?

The future of web banners has been a concern for some time as many mobile devices do not support the flash platform making impressive animated banners redundant for many users.

The powers that be at Adobe seem to have finally began to admit defeat in their pursuit to keep their popular interactive format relevant to the future of the internet. Even more evidence of this fact is Adobe’s new addition for the next release of CS in the form of Adobe Edge. Software to allow the creation of animated web objects such as advertising banners using HTML5, JavaScript and CSS3.

Adobe® Edge is a new web motion and interaction design tool that allows designers to bring animated content to websites, using web standards like HTML5, JavaScript, and CSS3.

Adobe®

This program is available directly from Adobe as a time restricted preview version. Download Adobe Edge Preview.

Does this mean Flash advertising is dead? Not exactly, or at the least not yet. What it means is the biggest authority in web animation is embracing HTML5 and trying to build tools to assist in using the new alternatives. Adobe have however expressed that this is an early look at Edge and the features and processes within will be heavily developed between now and it’s final launch./p>

A couple of weeks ago Google finally launched their Google+ pages for brands, a feature to compete with Facebook’s popular Fanpage an attempt to step up the social media race against the likes of Facebook and Twitter and we thought it was high time we gave you the scoop and let you know our early thoughts and some of the benefits of jumping on the “plus” wagon.

Facebook has roughly 800 Million users and growing and while Google+ is currently stated to be less than 40 million, why all the hype? Well, while that is a considerably smaller userbase at the moment, it is still growing at a considerable rate, and getting in earlier rather than later has its benefits. Not only that but a slightly more conservatively sized community also means there is less noize, less spammers and is as a result less saturated.

So how do you use Google+ for your business or website? To start click on Create Google+ Page. On this page you will have to select your business or brand type and fill in some basic information. It is useful to include your websites address whenever asked to create a cohesive link between your + page and your website. You can recipricate this on the other end by optionally adding a meta code to your websites <head> section, and adding the link/button somewhere on your site.

Once the basics are taken care of you can then customize your about content areas, upload images, and begin to use the stream (equivalent to your FB Wall). The image upload tool used by Google is a great example that they are showing their intent. The image uploader has a complete section for image editing not limited to just crop, rotate and resize but also including an array of effects more common to the likes of Photoshop users. I think this tool may be more aimed at individuals and getting them to switch rather than directly and businesses and brands though it is still a handy tool to have.

Hangouts

Hangouts are one of the unique features that Google+ pages have over fb fanpages, allowing for video streaming between multiple users. I know from speaking to professional developers that these tools are already being used by the masses for project management and multi user conferences, adding this to Google+ pages for businesses is an intuitive idea that already has Dell suggesting they may utilize this part of their social branding for live video tech support.

The Future

I feel once Google have better consolidated it’s other services with easy +1 integration, the platform can then really take off into a league of it’s own. If they included easy sharing of Google Docs, Calendar Invites and some of the other Apps tools into Plus, and also allowed for sharing with Circles, then they may just have the perfect hybrid between personal and business, finding a nice middle ground between Facebook and Linkedin. This would result in them offering a fairly comprehensive project management system.

Why not check our currently very humble Google+ Page – Pixelloop.

Takeaways

You Want Google+ Pages in your life! okay that may be a bit extreme, but they are useful in your marketing strategy.

If you have any questions or need help setting up, customizing and getting the most our of your Google + page find our more about how we can help at Social Media Design and Consulting.

Here are a few creative design ideas of how to use your image strip at the top of the + page. Creative Google Page Designs.

Whatever the text on your website or promotional materials might say, if you don’t use the right typeface there’s a good chance people won’t even bother to read it. Typefaces – or fonts as they’re also known – are one of the most vitally important aspects of any website or printed material’s visual appeal, and also an important aspect of copywriting. There are literally thousands of different typefaces to choose from, such as serif (with curly bits at their ends) or sans serif (without curly bits), classical fonts that resemble handwriting, to big bold fonts that shout out to the reader. Each type face has its own unique character and style that can help reflect your brand’s identity and purpose.

Whether you know their names or not, you’re probably already familiar with some typefaces, such as Helvetica or Times New Roman. They’re the ones you probably use when you’re typing a document in word processing programs such as Microsoft Word or Apple’s Pages. There’s a reason we use these fonts when we’re writing – basically because they are inoffensive to look at and easy on the eye when you’re reading several pages at one time. But when you’re looking for a typeface to use as a headline or a subhead you usually want something with a little more impact – such as Impact, for example!

Different typefaces can bring your website to life in all manner of ways depending on its purpose. If you’re selling cars you’ll no doubt want something that leaps out and grabs the reader’s attention from the moment the page loads; if you’re a wedding photographer you’ll want a more classical, refined and elegant font.

For general online use there are around 21 typefaces that are know as web safe fonts. These include the most commonly used fonts such as Helvetica and Times New Roman, ensuring that your website will appear exactly how you intend it to look even if the visitor is using an old or out of date browser.

If you want to use something a little bit different, however, Google’s Font API gives you a greater choice of typefaces, all of which are hosted on Google’s servers instead of relying on them being installed on a visitor’s computer. While this opens up all sorts of unique possibilities for the look of your site it’s always best to try and keep your ideas in check to a certain extent; a font that looks new and exciting today might not be quite so attractive a year down the line.

Despite the sheer number of typefaces available, there are some that have become ubiquitous across the internet, and are best avoided if you want your website to have its own distinct personality. There are also those that have through no fault of their own become universally reviled and will have visitors clicking away from your site the moment they see them – which leads us to offer this one final piece of advice:

It’s never ever appropriate to use Comic Sans.

So we have been talking some time about the relevance of running the defunct Quixotic Media and Pixelloop as separate entities and websites. One providing creative new media solutions and marketing strategies, made up from web, social, video, and other misc design services and Pixelloop a website/blog an attempt to profile the things we are doing and share resources with the masses. It became apparent to us that it would be better to consolidate and the point left was essentially to choose the better of the two brand names and the one that has the better longevity.

There was one other reason. There was another company by the same name as quixotic and using a similar domain. Their product was an anti Islamic video they had produced some time ago. and of course it just isn’t good PR to be potentially mistaken as the same guys. To add to that of late the prior seems to have been mentioned several times on different sites given the current climate.

So in short, we are still here, we are just called Pixelloop now, our affiliate program will be resumed shortly, if anyone has any questions feel free to contact us through the usual methods and follow us on our new Twitter, & Facebook Fanpage accounts.

Why is this one step backwards and two steps forward? because our previous brand domain name had built up considerable equity and had recently become a page rank 4. This website at the time of publication is a Page Rank 2, and we will have to put in some extra work to ensure we can maintain this as we develop on pixelloop.

The benefit of us making this switch is that we can be less diluted in our attention to marketing, and focus more of our efforts on publishing useful articles on pixelloop and manage all of our media services from one place.

Thanks again for your continued support.

We have recently launched a new website for a client of ours who are heat exchanger and transfer specialists by the name of Universal Heat Transfer Ltd.

The web design requirement was to bring the website up to date and initiate a marketing strategy to complement it. Their was no option but to start from scratch with this redesign as the existing website was built some years ago using dated web technologies and prehistoric standards. While the website did work it failed to meet any of the SEO criteria we abide by, and also lacked in contextual information.

We began by developing a whole new structure for their website to break down the layers, products and services of the business in a more logical and explanatory manner. In doing so we also wanted to achieve a clean, corporate and professional appearance whilst not being boring or too old fashioned.

See fig 1 for the old website, and then fig 2 for the new website to see the transformation from a website which was blocky, and had some padding issues, most of which are probably more to do with the way the internet and browsers/standards have developed over the years rather than the fault of the original web designer, who at the time of development probably did a pretty good job and delivered what was “at the time” a fairly modern look.

Fig 1

Fig 2

The final result above shows the homepage of the website which is designed to form a microcosm like overview of what the website does, who they facilitate and how to follow the correct sales funnel to get in contact for additional information. The website incorporates features such as Print and PDF for usability, products search, and is built to be as SEO friendly as is computer-ably possible.

To see more of our web design work visit our Web and Blog Design Portfolio.

So we have known for some time that this was on the horizon, but its finally launched… Well Kinda, by that I mean there is currently no facility to add the Google +1 button or plus one to your website yet, and its not always displaying on the search results of Google.

You can request that Google send you an email when the button is available for use on your webpages or blog posts by goin to the Google +1 Sign Up Form.

Hopefully we wont be waiting too long for this facility to be in place, Ideally I think it would have been better to have launched it for websites along with the launch of using it on Google properties. It would be far less confusing that way.  After the much heated debacle surrounding the launch of Google Buzz and automatically opting everybody using Gmail in, I guess they are treading a little more carefully this time around in their aim to create a solid competitor for the Facebook Like platform.

Heres a little video about Google +1

Click here to view the embedded video.

I would love to hear everybody’s thoughts and predictions for this.

This fantastic tool lets you create an image mosaic in seconds. To try it out go to Image Mosaic Generator. Its free, so enjoy and we would love to see some of our visitors results, post them to us as images or links in the comments below. Thanks.