Email Marketing Links - Web Design Meetup Presentation

This is an electronic copy of the links provided at the March 3rd, 2009 Web Design Meetup.

Jim Conway's Links:

------ Required reading ------

Free Email Marketing Guide - http://www.mailchimp.com/resources/
Warning signs that your Client is Spamming - http://www.mailchimp.com/resources/
Your First Email Marketing Project - http://www.mailchimp.com/resources/
Email Design Guidelines - http://www.campaignmonitor.com/resources/
Guide to CSS support - http://www.campaignmonitor.com/resources/
How to Code HTML Email Newsletters by Tim Slavin - http://www.sitepoint.com/article/code-html-email-newsletters/

------ Email marketing services ------
http://www.mailchimp.com/
http://www.campaignmonitor.com/
http://www.myemma.com/
http://www.constantcontact.com/

------ Online Help ------
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAN-SPAM_Act_of_2003
http://www.email-standards.org/

------ Email marketing tools ------
http://fingerprintapp.com/
http://spamcheck.sitesell.com/

------ Free email templates ------
http://www.campaignmonitor.com/resources/
http://www.mailchimp.com/resources/html_email_templates/
http://www.constantcontact.com/email-marketing/html-email-templates/index.jsp

Here is a link to Jason's chart:
http://thomerwald.net/files/Guide_to_CSS_Support_in_Email_2008.pdf
and the article online: http://www.campaignmonitor.com/css/


David's links:

The Sitepoint articles are good how-to pieces
http://www.sitepoint.com/article/code-html-email-newsletters/
http://www.sitepoint.com/article/email-marketing-strategy/
http://www.sitepoint.com/kits/email1/
http://www.sitepoint.com/article/designers-guide-html-email/

More info articles
http://blog.subscribermail.com/

Only slightly useful, but good for identifying the issues.
http://email-marketing-service-review.toptenreviews.com/

Adobe Kuler

Adobe's KULER is a very cool web based color palette tool. You can pull a color palette out of a photograph.

Jonathan's WebDev Demos

My colleague at MATC, Jonathan Meersman, has recorded these video demos on several topics.
Jonathan's Demonstrations

ColorMatch

The ColorMatch is a javascript tool for finding matching colors. It was originally hosted at www.colormatch.dk but it has since dissapeared. Nothing seems to match the elegance of the original.

Graphic and Web Design Toolkit for Nonprofits

Do you work with a Nonprofit Organization? If they want help with the web, they should look at this page. These are articles that explain some very technical issues in layman's terms.

Graphic and Web Design Toolkit

TechSoup, "The Technology Place for Nonprofits", provides a range of technology services for nonprofits, including news and articles, discussion forums, and discounted and donated technology products.

Dreamweaver Developer Center : CSS Design

Web designers and developers are making the transition from table based layouts to CSS layouts.
The Adobe - Dreamweaver Developer Center : CSS page has about a dozen experts presenting tutorials and articles reflecting their approach to this issue.

WIKINOMICS

WIKINOMICS A new book on Web 2.0 and how mass collaboration on the web is changing everything, using the internet that changed everything 10 years ago. A must read for entrepreneurs. Doomed to be outdated in 5 years, they've started their own WIKI to allow readers to collaborate and add new chapters to the book.

Project Foundry: Streamlining Student-Centered Project-Based Learning

Project Foundry goes in the blog for my personal reference and its focus on Student-Centered Project-Based Learning. It's an interesting use of technology and is created by a Milwaukee based group, Homeboyz Interactive.

Favicon - How To Create A Favicon.ico | PhotoshopSupport.com

Use Photoshop to create an ICO file. A tutorial: How To Create A Favicon.ico PhotoshopSupport.com
This requires a plugin that you can download from Telegraphics: http://www.telegraphics.com.au/sw/

Web Style Guide, 2nd Edition

This is the YALE Web Style Guide style guide that I highly recommend. You can purchase it in book format, but the whole thing is here anytime you want to expand your knowledge.

Font Embedding on the Web?

Embed Fonts in your Web page? About Font Embedding from Microsoft Developer's Network (MSDN)

HTML Goodies

A long time ago, I blogged Webmonkey and W3Schools. but today I discovered
HTML Goodies. The tutorials are a little less dry than w3schools. It's not for the advanced user, but it's a good place to get started on a lot of topics.

iStockphoto.com : royalty free stock photography community

Bob Stocki recommends iStock. There are a lot of Photo exchange communities out there but this one seems to have the right prices and a very professional design. Die, Getty Images, Die! iStockphoto.com

One of the big things we learn in business, that cannot be taught in school, is how to deal with clients. This article lays out arguments for a detailed design document. Things like "feature creep", "death by revision" and "content interuptus" are things that drive up costs and kill projects. Bulletproof Web Design Contracts isn't the answer to it all, but it's a good start.

Looking for design inspiration? Look at the
AIGA Design Archives

Lots of cool web resources compiled by one of my students, Kevin Neu.

Ultimate Web Resources

One great font site. Lets you preview the font with your text. Link provided by Keirston.
Download fonts at dafont.com

Donated by Paul Duquesnoy. Thanks Paul!
Levitated | Levitated Daily Source, the good source

An interactive Demo on Color Theory: Color, Contrast and Design

Part of a presentation in class by Don Lex. A resource for research on Ecommerce and M-commerceCenter for Research in Electronic Commerce UT Austin

Hundreds of public domain wildlife photos from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
US:FWS Digital Library System
Just a small portion of all the images available through the US Government archives

This came up in class and I went looking for clarification. The definition of "comp" seems to vary from one agency or designer to another. <Comps in Desktop Publishing> Here are some links on "About.com" that offer some definitions.

Something I plan to read, when I get time:
The Dao of Web Design , and maybe you should too...

Referred by a student, Isaiah Chetnick. Digital Art - Lombergar.com
Lombergar also has some quicktime video tutorials that share some of his techniques. I also enjoyed some of the commentary he makes about his own work. Very thoughtful and thought provoking.

An article on jobs in the gaming industry by Kenn Hoekstra of Madison, WI RavenSoft. Students are always showing interest in jobs in the gaming industry. Here is one of the better guides, IMHO:
GameSpy.com - Getting A Job In The Game Development Industry

Got Content? Here's all the text a designer will ever need. Untill the client shows up with the promised documents.
Lorem ipsum generator
"Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit..." Monty Python couldn't have said it better

"Get out the vote 2004
Good design makes choices clear." is the slogan for the AIGA's poster campaign. As featured on NPRAIGA - Get out the vote 2004:

PRESSTUBE

I don't know why i blogged this site. You'll just have to go there to see for yourself.

Top 7 Trends in Online Ad Design [Design Practice]
I get Sitepoint delivered to my PDA so I can glean some of the gems from the stream of articles that flow past. I thought that this was one of them. Take any article on Advertising with a grain of salt, but this one has many lessons in thinking about the basics of design in advertising.

Workbook.com is a source for clients to find artists, but you can use it for lots of things.
Find inspiration
Get ideas on specific Themes
Look for tecniques to try.
This link points to the page for ILLUSTRATION but use the drop-down menu in the upper right corner to explore the whole site.

One of the most elaborate and well built flash applications around. The the sydney opera house virtual tour is a real delight. Now back in it's second version!

An amazing resoource! For Free Fonts, Photographs, Clip art. You can spend a day or a week exploring this elegantly laid out site.
BLUE VERTIGO | Web Design Resources Links |

Posting is a little quiet over the summer, since my summer home is on an island in Lake Superior, without an internet connection. My wife and I volunteer for the National Park Service. This summer we were assigned to the
Manitou Island Fish Camp where we gave tours of a 1930's camp for itinerant Norwegian fishermen. One of these years I plan to put it all up on the web. Watch the links at right

A refreshing perspective on Site Redesign. Conrad at SpinGroup Turned me on to this:37signals >Web Design and Usability Experts

The Spin Group, Local Milwaukee Area Web Developers have put together one of the better resource pages for Accessibility, E-learning and Usability Spin Group Resources | Committed to Effective and Usable Design

Pixelphoria - Commonly Overlooked Website Details: Good info for web developers

Another Interesting site for figuring out layout in CSS
Why tables for layout is stupid: problems defined, solutions offered

Looking for a good tutorial on using FORMS with and IIS server, i came across "WebThang".

WebThang: Web Design Tutorials, Code Snippets, Book Reviews and Resources. Dreamweaver MX, UltraDev, Flash MX & 5, Fireworks, ASP, HTML and lot's more.......

More specifically, here's the basic tutorial on sending email directly from your server using ASP and CDONTS (Collaboration Data Objects for NT Server)
Get Tutorial

In my quest for design samples, I came across the
CWD Design Inspiration Page

The MMUG/MCA-I Joint Meeting was a big success. A special thanks goes to Romke De Haan from IS Design & Development who saved the program by the generous loan of his computer and connecting gadgets.
The report from FlashForward brought these links:
Flashforward2004.Com >> Film Festival Winners Marcus Dennert [Feb. 26th post] was a Finalist in the Experimental category.

Samuel Wan got special mention. check out his Flash-related blog: Samuel Wan : News, Information and Resources and his incredible Expression By Proxy

Also, Making Things for their nifty little mechanical gadgets that interface with Flash.

Sound of Design Is Ty Lettau's site. It speaks for itself. Ty will be the lead-off presentor the MCA-I/MMUG joint meeting. He is going to demonstrate some new experimental techniques incorporating audio in interface design.

Project One Was listed as Macromedia's "Site of the Day" on Feb 24th. Tim McKee of Hanson Dodge Creative was instrumental in creating this site. He is one of the presenter's at the MCA-I Milwaukee's March meeting. His presentation will be "Flash, Not just for the Web Anymore".
Try the "Build your own" link to get the full effect of this Web Based Application.

RANDOM TERRITORY is the website of Marcus Dennert, Milwaukee based Flash Designer and finalist in the 2004 Flash Forward Film Festival.

Marcus has agreed to give a short "Highlights" of the Conference at the March 9th joint meeting of the MCA-I and MMUG.
Go here for more info on the Milwaukee Chapter of the MCA-I or Milwaukee Chapter of the MMUG

Filling out the evening's presentations will be Amii LaPointe president of MilwauCHI speaking about her organization's focus on the interface between Humans and Computers

MilwauCHI is the local chapter of the Association for Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction.

A search engine that visually maps your search. More relevant links appear larger. Connecting links recommend new search keywords. links can be added and subttracted from search mix. Very cool.
Try the link on the page to the new version 4
Kartoo - Visual Search

A List Apart

A List Apart is an advanced web design tool for serious webmasters and web designers. Very low key and not splashy, just serious tutorials on things you didn't know you could do with CSS, XHTML and all sorts of related concepts and technologies.

An interesting site for Webmasters, aspiring and otherwise. Has a different approach to layout of information than say, W3schools.com. Leads with news articles but lots of tutorials if you drill down a level.
SitePoint : Empowering Web Developers Since 1997

This link was courtesy of Highway61.com, searching the web since 1961! Er, ah, we mean, 1996!

W3schools.com

Great site for dissecting what is offered by Free Web Hosting services:
free web hosting reviews
When you're ready to purchase a hosting plan, http://findmyhosting.com/ offers a search form that shows hosts appropriate to your needs.

More Design Inspiration
Interactive Media Design Review - I.D. Magazine 2003 Competition Winners

The discussion over what is good design... or more precisely, what makes this bad design, requires constant review of professional design examples. Not sure what makes for good design? Take a look at what the people who make a living at it think... or do.
HOW magazine - Graphic design stuff.