Feed Over Email is essentially a proxy-less RSS feed that can be delivered through Web based mail programs like Gmail. If both the client and mail server can send and receive encrypted email, foreign governments will have trouble using deep packet filtering to block certain keywords.

While research is still beginning and Ho said that funding is still needed, this could be a huge breakthrough in providing email security to bloggers, reformers and average citizens in countries with restrictive or draconian personal privacy restrictions.

This week, we’ll continue our discussion of good icon design by focusing on what makes a design effective. This time our tips come from PSDTUTS.com, a blog/website that offers Photoshop tutorials. In “7 Principles of Effective Design,” Sean Hodge touches on some of the same ideas as the Turbomilk article, but he also notes the importance of using consistent lighting and a limited perspective. Read more of Sean’s tips here. To view a professionally produced icon library, visit www.professional-icons.com.

Turbomilk, a Russian visual interface design company, has posted “10 Mistakes in Icon Design” on its eponymous blog. Number one is, of course, not enough differentiation between icons, even stock icons. Due to the small size, it’s easy to confuse similar icons for one another, which can frustrate the user’s experience. Other interesting observations include overcrowding icons with too many images, adding unnecessary perspective and shadows, and not accounting for national/cultural differences in objects (such as a mailbox). To read the full article, click here.

It reminds me once again that with software there is no relationship between price and quality. Indeed, this is generally true of the information industry generally. And when you are using software for design, as is the case with building a Web site, it is doubly true.
Web design is a comparatively recent art. It combines elements of publishing, graphic design, knowledge management and software engineering. Like many things, it appears simple, so much so that many amateurs think they are as good as professionals. Some of the results are not pleasant.

When desktop publishing became popular in the 1980s, through the power of the Apple Macintosh’s graphical user interface and the availability of low-cost laser printers, enormous power was put into the hands of many people who had never had anything to do with publishing before. The result was a spate of poorly designed documents, many of which are still with us today.

The primary example is “ransom note” publishing, where a dozen typefaces are all mixed up on the one page. Quantity does not equate to quality.
You see much the same thing with many Web sites. The tremendous range of variations that are available, and of tricks that can be used, tempts people into believing they should use them all. The result is gaudy Web sites that are hard to navigate or even understand, constant reminders of the victory of form over content that so often blights the modern world.

One of the contributors to the book I am editing is Tim O’Brien (www.webstrategy.com.au), who recently wrote a book called the E-Commerce Handbook, which is freely available from the Victorian Government if you are a business operating in that State (from www.mmv.vic.gov.au). Tim is a fan of good Web design practice, which he has employed to good effect in some of his own Web sites.

Tim’s three golden rules of effective Web design are short page load times, effective navigation and good aesthetics. The first of these is one of the most important. “Web users regularly cite slow download times as their No1 complaint about the Web,” he says. “Most people still connect to the Web using a 56Kbps modem, at which speed the average download time of a typical Web site is around 16 seconds. That’s too slow.”
The major cause of slow download times, says O’Brien, is the excessive use of graphics on a page.
“On the Web a picture is definitely not worth a thousand words. Web designers should remember the Web is a hypertext system in which users tend to look for words to direct them, rather than pictures.”

Navigation is also important. This covers the organisation of content and the placement of standard functionality and the site map. “The key to designing effective navigation is to think from the user’s perspective,” says Tim. “Content should be organised into simple and logical groupings, which will help users to find their bearings on the site quickly and will enable the content manager to add new content easily. The navigation menu should be positioned at the top of the browser window or along the left-hand side, because the reader’s eye scans the page from the top left-hand corner to the bottom right-hand corner.”

This is where aesthetics starts to come into play a few standard fonts, consistent page design throughout the site, clever use of colours (not too many of them), and the like. The rule, as often in life, is to keep it simple. “Simple page designs are not only the fastest to load,” says O’Brien, “they are usually the most visually appealing and the easiest to use. It is particularly important to ensure that each page retains the same look and feel, with branding and important identification information in the same position on each page.”

The world’s premier guru on Web site design and usability is US consultant Jakob Nielsen, who was in Australia recently for a series of seminars. He publishes Alertbox, a free newsletter on the subject (www.useit.com), which I strongly recommend.
We now know enough about what makes a good Web site and what makes a bad one. Even though it is a comparatively new field of human activity, there is absolutely no excuse for poor Web design. Whenever you see a bad Web page, it is because the person who designed it is too ignorant or lazy to go to the trouble of finding out what people want, or to learn from others.
Unfortunately, there are far too many such people, and far too many such Web sites.

Web design outfits with huge budgets and IT-savvy staff produced flashy sites for companies keen to get online, and a new job market was born.
The industry reached its peak in mid-2000, says Ian Webster of www.consult, when the dot com boom ended, start-ups went bankrupt, and companies became cautious about their expenditure on online projects.

However, there are still plenty of jobs in Web design, says Webster, because some 300,000 Australian companies now have an online presence. While larger ones are setting up inhouse departments to maintain an online presence, the job of creating their Web site is usually outsourced initially, along with any tricky additional features later on.

“It’s an enormously exciting time, particularly for young Web designers,” says Webster. “There are a lot of really cool things happening out there.
“Every year, more and more companies are either establishing or enhancing their online presence. Even for small companies, a Web presence is as important a part of their marketing and operational services as having an ad in the Yellow Pages. This will continue to create demand for Web designers.”
But the freedom for large-profile Web companies to spend big bucks on expensive sites has gone, he says.

Gone, too, are the ridiculously high salaries: “During the great boom you could walk straight out of high school and straight into a job and earn a lot of money, but that has passed as the industry has matured,” says Webster.

Those in the industry say graduates can now expect a salary of $35,000-$40,000, up to $50,000 with a few years’ experience, and from $60,000 to $90,000 for specialist and proven design experience.

The post-tech wreck environment is breeding better qualified and more professional Web designers, as well. Broad skills in programs such as Flash, Java and Cold Fusion, and an understanding of HTML (hyper text markup language), are prerequisites if you want to lead the pack. But an understanding of design principles is becoming crucial as companies realise that having a pretty Web site doesn’t necessarily get consumers to buy a product or use a service.

Just like the early days of desktop publishing when all you needed were Pagemaker skills to land a job the Web was a crude design environment, says Webster. “If you want to be a Web designer, it has moved beyond just being able to do the mechanics. You need a reasonably broad understanding of basic design and usability principles.”
Sharyn Maddison, 31, is a senior Web designer at the Sydney Internet design agency red square. She had no previous Web experience and “got in through the boom when there were not a lot of people around”.

Before joining red square, she worked as a layout artist for a newspaper, in the creative department of an ad agency, and was a marketing manager for a computer company.

Red square, which last year won the AIMIA Award for Excellence in a Lifestyle Site for its Web site for travel magazine Backpacker Essentials, works on Cold-Fusion-based, information-heavy Web sites such as Qantas and YHA, says Maddison.

“The reason that we’re successful is that everyone here specialises in a particular area. I’m a designer, but we have really good HTML coders, Cold Fusion experts … we’re not each a jack of all trades,” says Maddison. “It’s pretty good to pick something that you’re particularly talented at and specialise.”
Derek Ellis, creative director and co-founder of the Web design company Massive, says strong visual communication skills are more important than technical skills.
“It’s going to become a lot more competitive, design wise the standard is definitely increasing,” says Ellis. “We would assume that [Web designers] would know Photoshop, Illustrator and Freehand inside out. But what we look for is more of a design application as opposed to technical proficiency,” he says, adding that companies may employ experts in certain programs such as Flash.

Massive has eight full-time Web designers and won the Australian Interactive Multimedia Industry Association (AIMIA) Award for Excellence in an Event Site last year for Big Brother.

The Massive designer who created the Big Brother Web site didn’t have any HTML experience initially, says Ellis.
Lynne Spender, executive director of AIMIA, says e-commerce is one of the next big opportunities for Web designers. “The big growth in Web sites over the next 12 months is actually going to be existing companies adding an e-commerce facility to their Web site,” she says.

As education institutions go online, “information architects” people skilled in presenting text in an interactive and interesting way will also be in demand as online chat rooms, noticeboards and video classes are established, says Spender.

She also sees work opening up in the area of digital content for interactive TV: “It’s the same sort of skills [as a Web designer] in lots of ways because what you’re doing is bringing the TV to be more like an Internet screen.”

In terms of personal attributes, teamwork skills are essential, she says, adding that they were greatly emphasised in an AIMIA forum of industry MDs and Web students last year. “The guys were saying, `yes, we want you to be brilliant in terms of creativity and, yes, we want you to know all about the functionality of the Web site, but mostly we want you to need to be a team player because multimedia is a collaborative process’.”

Web design courses

TAFE: Diploma in Web site production (11/2 yrs full-time); certificate IV in Web site management (6 mths); certificate IV in Web site production (6 mths).Macquarie University: Bachelor of media in multimedia (two yrs, or three if entering on a portfolio and industry experience instead of a TAFE diploma).University of Western Sydney: Bachelor of IT (3 yrs); bachelor of mathematics and IT (3 yrs); bachelor of technology IT support (3 yrs).UTS: Bachelor of design in visual communicatio
n (4 yrs); bachelor of science in IT (4 yrs).The JMC Academy: Certificate for digital media, Web design and CD rom (1 yr); advanced diploma in digital animation (2 yrs); degree in digital animation through University of New England (3 yrs).

The plan may be to market your talents as a freelance web designer, or to maintain and upgrade your company’s website. Standards are very high, and once you have covered the basics, web design is an area that demands constant upskilling.

“One of the biggest problems with web design is that it is constantly changing,” says Julie Hatton, a Birmingham-based freelance web design trainer. “Programs are being upgraded all the time, and if you don’t stay on top of the changes your skills will soon be outdated.”

Julie teaches web design to private individuals and companies. Complete beginners start with a two-day introduction to web design,
BY ALISON COLEMAN
followed by two days of more advanced training a month or so later.

Training covers the main components of web design, including HTML and JavaScript coding, as well as the use of web design software such as Dreamweaver and Fireworks.
“People tend to have rather high expectations of what can be achieved in a couple of days,” says Julie. “But they soon realise there is more to it than the basics, and as they progress some find it quite in- tensive and, at times, difficult.”

Online learning is increasingly popular with full-timers or people who prefer to work at their own pace.
Lincolnshire-based Office Associates offers web-related courses from introductory level to advanced via an instructor, or interactive computer-based training via the Internet and CD-Rom.

“There are so many different ways of creating and enhancing a website,” says trainer Margaret Sergeant. “You can learn standard HTML code to create a basic web page and then learn to use Flash which involves more programming skills.”

Bristol-based WeTrain4U provides around 2,000 web-based training courses. Its Technical Web Development group has 69 different courses.
“This has proved very popular,” says managing director Tim Totty. “It is ideal for young people just starting their careers, experienced web masters who want to keep up and improve their skills and those who just want to build their own website.”

One of the problems for those planning a career in web design has been a lack of recognised qualifications.
Tim adds: “There are some qualifications available from Certified Internet Webmaster (www.cicertified.com), but generally the software is evolving so quickly it is difficult to keep pace. What some people can do is put a portfolio of their web designs on to a CD-Rom, which they can present to prospective employers to demonstrate their skill level.”

A Government initiative is helping with the cost of training – the Individual Learning Account (ILA) scheme provides up to GBP 150 for each learner over 19 and resident in the UK. Some colleges and universities offer training courses aimed specifically at helping small businesses that are lacking in key IT and web skills.
Liverpool-based Connect, which is run by the University of Liverpool, offers one and two-day courses in web design and marketing. These are free to local businesses but are also available to the general public for a fee.

Connect’s Sue Roberts says: “Without Internet and web development skills small firms can quickly find themselves being left behind in the market place.
“We are addressing that problem and enabling individuals, some of whom have never touched a website before, to manage and upgrade their company’s website.” INFORMATION: Learndirect has information on web design and related courses: 0800 100 900/www.learndirect.co.uk; University of Liverpool Connect: www.connect.org.uk; WeTrain4U: 01275 794 493/www.wetrain4u.co.uk; Office Associates: 01507 313501/ www.trainingwarehouse.co.uk; also visit Training Pages: www.trainingpages.co.uk.

Sure, a graphic designer with html (hypertext mark-up language), Javascript and
Photoshop skills can create a visually attractive site, but there is more to a
successful site than the graphics. The information needs to be structured so
that it is easy to access, without getting lost in the process.

If it is an interactive site, it needs to meet the needs of browsers, searchers
and, sometimes, shoppers. If it doesn’t, the business loses potential revenue.
The solution is usually to call in a Web design consultant.

Catherine Rosenbrauer, the education and marketing manager with the
user-interface design consultants the Hiser Group, uses a building analogy to
explain the important aspects of Web design.

“The architect designs the building, the builder gets the materials and makes
it and the interior designer looks after colours and cosmetics,” she says. “The
architect is the Web designer, the builder is a computer programmer and the
interior designer is a graphic designer. However, some Web designers will
perform all three functions.

“To be a good designer you need visual, information and interaction design
skills,” says Rosenbrauer. “Information design involves grouping information on
a Web site into a hierarchical structure that is easy to navigate.”

Good interactive design allows the user to search, browse and perform functions
such as banking or online shopping relatively quickly and easily.

“A Web designer can have any or all three skills,” says Rosenbrauer, “but there
are not many good interaction designers around.”
With ever-changing software and increasingly complex Web sites, becoming a good
designer requires far more skills than it did a few years back. There are no
longer (or at least very rarely) job advertisements for Webmasters.

“Webmasters did everything,” says Michel Hedley, the education and training
manager at the Australian Information Industry Association, “supplied the
content, html code, page design, graphics, images and loaded it onto the Web
server. It is now far more complex and many of those tasks will be done by
different people and overseen by a Web site manager.”

Prospective employees reading the job ads for Web designers need to be very
clear as to what is meant by the term in each instance.
The job title means different things to different employers – from the visually
creative graphic designer to the person who literally designs and builds the
entire site.

case study

With a commerce degree and language skills behind her, Juliana Ngiam had no
interest whatsoever in the Internet, until a chance search in 1996.
“I typed in ‘Asian women’ and got 80,000 sites of porn,” she says. “I couldn’t
believe what was being done to women. I whinged for a few days and then decided
to take up the challenge and do something about it. I made my own Web site -
Asian Women On Line – and it was so ugly I enrolled in a six-month multimedia
course with TAFE.”

After studying the basics, Juliana continued to learn independently and moved
forward from a freelance Web designer, to producer, to project manager.
She has recently completed a role as a project manager for the Federal
Government Online Australia initiative, Women’s Online Week
(www.onlinewomen.looksmart.com.au), and is looking forward to her next venture.
“It’s a great job, very left brain and right brain. You need to be logical to
structure information, and creative to make the site visually attractive. You
need to motivate people to want to ‘click’.”

While she is reticent to talk about her income, Ngiam says her skills have
recently been valued by recruitment agencies as being worth $60,000 to $100,000
a year.

the point

Internet site designers with visual, information and interaction design skills
are in huge demand, but hard to find.

which course?

An evening surfing the Web should return loads of information on available
courses (www.aiia.com.au is a good place to start).

Talk to the educators about course content and to those in the industry about
skills in demand, where they studied, and what they do at work.
• Most universities offer a three-year degree course in either communications,
multimedia or computer science which include Web design.

• TAFE (phone 131 601 or visit www.tafensw.edu.au) has a number of certificate
courses and a two-year diploma course in Web design and management ($610 a
year).

• There are countless courses on offer from private organisations which cover
many aspects of Web design. The Hiser Group (phone 9212 7700), for example, has
a range of courses, including Successful Web 1 – Overview ($595, one day), and
Successful Web 2 – Practical Techniques ($995, two days).

• A number of graphic design schools offer courses on graphic design for the
Web.

With basic Web design skills you should be able to kick off a career at about
$30,000 to $35,000. With good graphic design skills as well, that rises to
about $50,000 and with visual, information and interaction design skills, you
can earn about $60,000. By the time you have mastered all the ins and outs of
good design and can direct others, you can start looking above $60,000.

 Web design is one of the most explosive areas of this new territory, and, as with other areas of Internet consultancy, it is not necessarily the design fraternity that is reaping the most rewards.

 According to New Media Finance, a specialist newsletter reporting on the Web sector, some design agencies command client budgets in excess of pounds 300,000 for a Web site. These top agencies might be capable of generating annual turnover of pounds 5m over the next two years.

 New Media Finance also claims that the size of the Web design sector could be worth pounds 100m, assuming that there are around 100 dedicated Web design agencies.
 Scott Ewings, creative director of Crown Communications, believes that any design company not including the Internet in its remit does so at its peril. According to the Design Business Association, fewer than half of its 240 members offer Web design services, so it seems that technology-based companies are picking up a considerable amount of Web design work, rather than the traditional design agencies.

 Web design has been driven by technology from the start, explains Daisy Cresswell, head of new media at design and communications agency Imagination, where the multimedia department has grown rapidly from six to more than 20.

 ’Traditional designers are scared of the technology,’ she suggests. ‘As a result, there’s a hell of a lot of trash out there.’ But Cresswell believes that Web site design should be the domain of the traditional designer, rather than the computer programmer. ‘As the Web develops in terms of its design, and as more well-designed sites come up, it might encourage more design agencies to think about moving into new media,’ she says.

 Presentation skills

 With so many companies offering a Web site design service, it can be very difficult for clients to know which company to choose. One way is to look at the design company’s own Web site. This was a tactic remembered by Eventer Design Group when it decided to create its own online presence.

 ’Prior to designing our site, we had a good look at other design and multimedia companies’ sites,’ says David Ward-Streeter, Eventer’s managing director. ‘Overall, we found them uninspiring, with blocks of text, no movement or any interaction – a bit disappointing for what is supposed to be an exciting industry.’

 Eventer’s Web site was designed around a ‘virtual agency tour’, which included a conference room to view the company’s work, a press cuttings folder, even a kitchen to read postcards from the staff and reviews of recommended bars and restaurants.

 According to Matthew Bagwell, a new media designer at Imagination, clients need to find people who are capable of managing their brand within relevant media. ‘A lot of technology-driven companies are able to offer Web solutions, but they might not understand brand management,’ he argues.

 Bagwell believes that the very best Web design can be simple, with fast delivery by using uncomplicated graphics and informative, strong text.
 ’We understand what the user requires, rather than gratuitous eye candy,’ he adds.

 In the future, says Bagwell, what you might see is a continuing convergence of traditional disciplines into Web media. ‘This includes online television, channel Web sites, more animation and video. In short, a more interactive environment.’

 Arbiters of taste

 Not surprisingly, companies from a traditional design background see themselves as the arbiters of good taste and aesthetics. They often view the Web as the province of marketing and are concerned with designing critically-acclaimed sites which are often reviewed in the Internet press.

 But traditional design agencies have only recently become more aware of the Internet’s potential, suggests Richard Mellor, creative director of Hyperinteractive. ‘People from design backgrounds are learning the skills or teaming up with the right people to do very pertinent and ideas-oriented work,’ he says.
 Hyperinteractive built the D&AD (Design and Art Direction) Web site.

 ’Its audience is visually the most critical you can imagine, and certainly the most seasoned,’ says Mellor.
 A Web site needs to have clarity, as users will be a mixture of Net novices and more experienced visitors. Ease of use, in the form of well-planned and well laid-out pages, is important.

 Good navigation around the site is necessary to allow users to find what they want quickly – making it a pleasurable, rather than a frustrating experience. A well-designed site directs users to the information they need, while both branding the company and opening up the potential for new business.
 Content is the key to good Web site design, with text and graphics integrated to maximise the effectiveness of the message – although Nigel Salter, director of new media at design company Stocks Austin Sice, believes that strategy is sometimes more important than visual content.

 ’Some of the best-looking sites are among the most confusing and least effective,’ he argues. ‘Define who you’re trying to speak to and what you want from it.’ This might be difficult for some clients who have little idea of what they want or need from the Web. ‘Everybody feels they must have a presence, but ask them why and they say it’s because other companies do.’
 Lack of strategy and a clear idea of the site’s purpose are a common failing.

 Instant impact

Designers need to take on board the challenges of the Internet. Site ‘hits’ are very short, with an average visit lasting just eight seconds.
 Something can be visually attractive, but the message is lost simply because it is not responding quickly enough to the user’s request.
 Also, the palette of colours available on the Internet is limited compared with the print medium; downloads of graphics can be slow and visual representation is on a computer screen, not an A4 page.

 Jeremy Keohane, head of new media at Bamber Forsyth, insists that many Web sites are just linear reproductions of printed articles, such as annual reports. Even a year ago, it was not unusual for companies simply to scan in their brochures and use that as their Web site. ‘Whereas corporate literature can be persuasive in nature, with the Internet you have to be more informative,’ says Keohane. Understanding the power of new media as a communications tool is the name of the game.

 The traditional design sector’s new competitors in the new media arena are gathering rich pickings from the blue-chip companies that approach them to design their Web sites. AKQA has designed sites for BMW, Microsoft, and Durex. Ajaz Ahmed, director at AKQA, believes that one of the reasons for the company’s success lies in focusing on the marketing value of the Internet: ‘Relevance, reliability, performance and engagement are among the most important elements in successful Web design – and this equals brand value.’

 Site costings

New Media Factory is part of a new breed of Web design firms which are merging new technology with design. According to Beverley Nolan, its marketing consultant and project manager, the company creates three basic types of Web site.

 First, the basic site which acts purely as an online brochure and costs around pounds 5000. Further up the price scale, at pounds 10,000 to pounds 20,000, greater technical capabilities are added on – such as a database, which is very useful for companies needing to store large amounts of information. For the top price of pounds 40,000, New Media Factory provides a Web site that can deal with online commerce transactions.

 The Web is growing at an exponential rate, perhaps reaching 200 million users by the year 2000. This means an abundance of opportunities for Web designers who are quick to realise the Internet’s potential. Some traditional designers might have been unwilling to take on the mantle of the anorak, but there are many easy-to-use software programmes which dispense with the complexities of programming. In the future, designers will be called upon to create sites which are not only visually appealing, but also information driven.

 If this golden nugget doesn’t appeal to those from a traditional background, then new media companies will gladly pick up the pieces.