AEW studios

http://aewstudios.com

Who We AreWe run a small IT-based business.We've been in business for 3½ years.

Essentially the business is husband/wife team, but with other collaborators as necessary.

We both came to IT from different fields before we set up our business.

Who We Are

Our business has 3 core elements:• Website Development and Design

• 3D Graphics (for advertising and marketing as well as architecture)

• Graphic Design

I’m going to do some talking and then we’ll show you some examples.

What is Web Design?• Seeing as I'm the web developer and designer, I'll

explain a little bit about what this aspect of our business means. (I'm not really involved in the 3D side)

• I'm going to 'geek-out' for a few minutes - if you're interested stay with me, but otherwise just come along for the ride.

• Feel free to ask questions.

Being a Web Designer:What is the Internet

• Internet is a series of tubes

Being a Web Designer:What is the Internet

• Internet is a big computer network

There are 2 sides:

• our computers that we browse the internet with

• webservers which store all the internet information and know how to send it back to your computer when they're asked

Being a Web Designer:Webservers

Basically just a bunch of normal computers, like the ones that we're used to, But they're all:•connected to the internet •have special programs installed

• allow incoming information (eg, http://aewstudios.com/about )

• then when they get this request it knows to send back a particular webpage

Obviously it's more nuanced than this there are things called 'nameservers' and 'webservers' but that's a different story.

Webservers were invented in 1969, but everything was just basic text.

Being a Web Designer:What is HTML

In 1991 a team in Switzerland lead by a Tim Berners-Lee (known as the 'father of the internet') invented a very simple way of making the text more interesting

It’s known as marking it up or just 'mark-up‘.Eg making it bold, italics or coloured or links.

What he invented is HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language).

The first Web site built was there at CERN, and was first put online on 6 August 1991.

Being a Web Designer:What is HTML ctd.

This is awesome BUT ... there is a catch.

There was no 'official' form that webpages should be presented in.

There is an excellent standard at World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) (which Tim Berners-Lee founded at MIT)but this isn't the law.

But there was no regulation who made web-browsers or how web pages should display.

Being a Web Designer: What is HTML final.

Microsoft, Apple, Unix, etc could all display html any way that they wanted.

Eg, if a browser wanted to display all bolded text asa picture of a flying monkey they could.

Obviously this is an extreme example and they wouldn't do this but ... and this is important ...

There are many many differences between the way that different browsers (and even different version of the same browser) display HTML.

Being a Web Designer

Our job as a web designers is to make a informative and pleasant pages for our clients, that will reach as many of their customers or potential customers as possible.

That means that it doesn't necessarily have to be identical across the board, but at the very least work well in all the different ways that people view the internet.

Today’s Rule-of-Thumb A-grade Browsers

 Win XP Win Vista Mac 10.5.† Mac 10.6.†

Firefox 3.0.† A-grade      

Firefox 3.5.† A-grade A-grade   A-grade

Opera 10.0.† A-grade      

IE 8.0 A-grade A-grade    

IE 7.0 A-grade A-grade    

IE 6.0 A-grade      

Safari 4.0.†     A-grade A-grade

http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/articles/gbs/

Being a Web Designer: You MUST Know About

AccessibilityAccessibility is a big deal and there is an excellent standard set by World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

Eg, the Australian Government and EUsuggest the use of the following standard:Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 (WCAG 2.0)

This is not just for internet users who are visually or physically impaired but also for the automated friendly spider and bots whoneed to look at your page for Google, Yahoo, etc.

Also, in the future 50% of the internet will be accessed by mobile phone or other hand-held devices. (Both Ant and me do already!)

Web Development

Programming languages: Databases:

Being a Web Designer: Tools We Use

Proprietary FOSS(Free and Open Source Software)

Adobe Dreamweaver Text Editor: (any text editor)WYSIWYG*: KompoZer/NvuSeaMonkey/Amaya

Adobe Photoshop GIMP(GNU Image Manipulation Program )

Adobe Illustrator Inkscape

*WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editors are HTML editors that attempt to display the Web page as it will show on the browser.

Kinds of Work

Salary v. Small Business(Security v. Freedom)

Business: Priorities

• Always Be Professional– Finish things (on time!)– Do what you say you’re going to do

• Communicate– Be realistic and Honest– Communication solves most problems–Most problems are communication

problems

Business: Priorities

• Be Proactive– Try to stay up-to-date (yay internet!)Note that it’s easy to get overwhelmed,work out a balance that is good for you.– Be involved with your chosen

community

• Respect Gets Respect

3D examples:http://www.aewstudios.com/3d/portfolio/http://www.aewstudios.com/3d/general/

Website examples:http://www.aewstudios.com/websites/portfolio/http://www.bmamag.com/http://www.bmamag.com/http://churchilltrust.com.au/http://mandalaminerals.com.au/

Graphic Design examples:http://www.aewstudios.com/graphic/portfolio/http://www.aewstudios.com/graphic/pack/