As a musician and a photographer and an independent businessman, I realized some years ago that the Internet would be an invaluable, inexpensive tool to advertise at my services and products. The only problem was that my business was complex enough that hiring someone to design a site for me would be prohibitively expensive. So I took the plunge and bought some web design software.

Little did I know what a chaotic mess the Internet is. Every computer, every browser, and every operating system is different from every other, and designing for the Internet means finding the common denominator that will present the material in an eye-catching way, but also finding a way to make it work on all those different systems.

I wouldn't describe myself as an authority on web design, but I know more about it than most other artists and small business owners, so people have sought me out to design sites for them. If you find yourself in the market for a website and think I might be able to help, read on. To contact me, click one of the logos above.

Introduction

When I first considered designing my own site, I knew virtually nothing about the Internet, and there was a pretty steep learning curve which I'll confess I have yet to master. I assume that you're still in beginner mode so I'll try to explain some of the basics you'll need to consider before hiring me or anyone else to design a site for you. If you already know these things, bear with me.

First of all, I'm a designer, not a host. (In other words, I can create your site for you but you will have to rent space on a server in order for people to be able to visit your site on the Internet.) The host that I use for my own site and the one that many of my clients have chosen as well is called Gate.com, which so far has been reasonably priced, very reliable, and most helpful when things go wrong. There are many, many other companies that offer the same services as well, so you might want to shop around by searching for "website hosts." Gate.com offers a name search function, which will tell you if the name you want to use is still available, a registration service, which costs about $20 a year and reserves the use of the name for you exclusively, as well, of course, as hosting the site itself, which includes more memory capability than most sites demand. There is a monthly fee (which is usually around $10 a month, depending on what services you require) which you can bill to a credit card. Most hosts also provide a statistics function as well, so you can track how many hits your site gets, as well as many other useful bits of info. If you're interested in using Gate.com, contact me first, because I may be able to get us both a small discount.

Next, you have to have an idea about what your business entails and how you want to present it. This sounds obvious, but it's more complex than some people think. Some basic elements of most websites are a home page, the first thing that people see, a bio page to let potential customers know who you are, a contact page so customers know how to order your products or services, and, of course, at least one and often many pages describing what it is you provide.

Most web design services and software packages include templates that you can use, which are easy, attractive, and inexpensive. I see a couple of drawbacks to templates: a) they're never exactly what you want and b) someone else may have a site with the exact same design. I create every one of my sites from the ground up, using custom designed artwork. It may cost a bit more initially, but I believe that every one of my clients is unique and deserves a unique site that suits his or her particular needs and tastes.

The big advantage that websites have over print advertising is that they are interactive and easily modified. Designing a website is just the first step. A site worth putting out in front of the whole world is also worth keeping up to date. If you've visited my own site, sonuvabish.com, you know that my music and photography take me all over the country at times, but I can almost always get any modifications to a site that one of my clients requires posted on the net within a day or two. Most of the elements of a website are fairly easily communicated via e-mail, which can reach me no matter where I am, and my cell phone, a Colorado Springs number, reaches me anywhere.

Since every site and every client is different, I can't quote fixed rates here. I generally charge a fee for the design of a site and then an hourly rate for maintenance, which is only incurred when needed. I don't charge a monthly maintenance fee. Most of my clients have told me that my rates are very reasonable.

Basic Design Elements

While every website I design is unique, they all share a few common elements that you should consider.

Column Width: The column you're reading is 600 pixels wide. (Pixels are the little light dots that display color on your screen.) The Internet is set up so that something 600 pixels by 800 pixels will print correctly on a standard 8 1/2" by 11" piece of paper with the proper margins. Many older computers and browsers only displayed things that were 600 pixels wide, so that if this column were 900 pixels wide, those users would have to scroll to the right to see the whole column. Today, most people don't print out much of what they find on the Internet and they have higher resolution screens that display more than 600 pixels without scrolling left or right, but this column width is still fairly common, because it works for everybody. This column is centered on your screen, but for some animation effects, the column has to be displayed on the left.

Backgrounds: If your screen or browser displays more than 600 pixels in width, then you can see that the page has a dark purple background with a texture to it. You can specify any background you like, though some work better than others. One thing you need to understand is that this type of background is tiled, like linoleum. If the squares blend together well, it works. If not, it's distracting. Here are some examples of background images that I've created for my own site. If you click on one, it will change the background on this page. (Double click on any example to return to the original.)

Red Gauze

Mat Fabric

Canvas

Green Gauze

Plain Purple

Clouds

Each background changes how the column strikes the eye. The "Red Gauze" lightens the whole page, but the column doesn't stand out as well. "Plain Purple" has no texture. That makes it slightly easier for the browser to load, but it isn't as interesting. The "Clouds" image isn't too bad by itself, but when it's tiled, it becomes too busy. And the "Canvas" background, you'll notice, is the same background that I've used on this column. There is, of course, no wrong answer here, just different concepts that may or may not appeal to your taste. Any site or any column may have a different background from the rest, but staying consistent is often the best way to go.

Fonts: I have over a thousand fonts available on my computer, and I use many of them in my design work. The font you're reading at the moment, however, is one called Arial, and it is the most commonly used font on the Internet. That's because almost every computer has it in its font collection and it's simple and easy to read even in small sizes. The other most common font is Times New Roman, which looks like this. Serifed fonts don't work quite as well on a computer screen.

Navigation Bar: Unlike print documents, a website can be viewed in whatever order the user wishes. That requires a navigation bar, which is just a series of links to the other pages. Since this page only leads to the home page of Sonuvabish.com, it only has one choice, but the other pages of my site have many other choices. I've done some interesting things with navigation bars on the sites I've designed, but just a simple system at the top of the page seems to work the best. Get fancy with the products, not with the directions for how to get to them.

Hyperlinks: These things are what make the Internet tick. You probably used a hyperlink to get to this page, for instance. One of these links can direct the user's browser to another place on the page (like the top, for instance), to another page on the site (which is what the navigation bar does), or to any other page on any other site on the Internet. You don't need permission to put a link from your site to someone else's, but if you want them to link to yours, you have to ask their webmaster to do so, and sometimes pay a fee as well. Hyperlinks are often in a different colored font and underlined like this, which will bring you back to the top of this page.

Images: The Internet is primarily a visual medium, so images are very important. On the other hand, images take a long time for the viewer to load, especially through a modem (a phone line connection), so images are generally kept fairly small. Most of my clients furnish me with some or all of the images I will need, in a variety of forms, including photos and print images. I can convert most of these forms to JPEGs, which are the most commonly used image format on the Internet. (I also use GIFs sometimes as well.) Digital cameras, of course, are ideal for creating images for a website, but the images most cameras produce have to be reduced in size for use on a website.

Let me talk a little about graphic design. A website is basically just a collection of interlinked web pages and, assuming it works properly, should be easy-to-use and utilitarian. (Sonuvabish.com, for instance, has about 75 separate pages, some of which would take many pages of paper to print.) What makes a website special is the quality of the images it contains. This page and all the pages of my site contain images I created myself, sometimes with my digital camera, sometimes with my Adobe Photoshop software, which really can work magic. Below are Before and After images of a music store in Colorado Springs.

Using Photoshop, I've been able to readjust the brightness and contrast, correct the perspective, relight the storefront, and add some blue sky. These are just a few of the things I'm able to do to make your images look their best.

One of the most common, and most important, images on a website is a header, an image displayed often at the top of the page, which is usually a logo of some sort. I can incorporate an existing logo into your website or I can create a new one based on your specifications. You'll see some of my work below.

Sounds: Most computers have speakers of varying quality, so websites sometimes contain sounds which usually come in the form of MPEGs. Since I'm a musician and have my own fully equipped studio, I've created sounds for my main pages and also provided samples of my music. (One of my original songs, called "Ida's Tune," plays when you load my home page. To hear it now, click here. It should play through your computer's media player.) Sounds are very large files and are usually used sparingly.

PayPal: If you have products that you'd like to sell directly from your site, I can help you set up a PayPal account. (PayPal was developed by E-Bay to enable people to order their auction items using a credit card.) I use PayPal on my own site, and it's inexpensive, not hard to set up, and safe and secure. PayPal sends me a unique link that I place on the page of your site where customers order your products. By clicking on the link, the customer is directed to the PayPal site to set up an account or, if he or she already has a PayPal account, goes through the process of ordering the product from you, which you can set up to include shipping charges, for instance. PayPal gets the money from the customer's account and holds it in an account until you withdraw it or direct it to be deposited into your bank account, and also sends you an e-mail notification of the order, including the customer's name and address and what products they ordered.

Other Sites
Designed By Tom Bishop

Here are some other sites that I've designed, along with some of the features that make these sites unique. Click any of the logos to visit the actual site.

Logos

A logo can be very simple or very elaborate, but whatever it is, it's the main image that web surfers will associate with your site.

For the Nancy Cain Bead Art site, I got a head start on a logo from Nancy, a graphic designer herself. She whipped up the simple but effective design you see above, just some text in a font she liked and a simple, colorful design. Using my Adobe Photoshop software, I was able to give the beads some shine and three-dimensionality. I also had a font that had a similar feel to the one she used, which looks raised above the textured background. Using Nancy's very nice photos of her original bead designs, I put together a simple, easy, colorful, inexpensive site that displays her work in an appealing way. Her work, of course, is original and very creative and together we created a website that gets tens of thousands of hits a month, and her business has grown accordingly.

About Nancy Cain

Nancy Cain is a rising star in the bead design world. She teaches beading technique at Bonnie's Beads in Colorado Springs and at various other sites around the country, and with a designer friend is competing in this year's Bead Dreams show. You can visit her site by clicking on her logo above or entering NancyCainBeadArt.com into your browser's address window.

"You are not going to believe how many hits I had from January 1 to February 1--23,000! One month! I don't remember exactly how many last year but around 10,000-12,000. Wow! I have gotten e-mails from Africa, all over Europe, Australia and Canada. Wow! Thanks!" 
                                       --Nancy Cain

Hierarchical Inventory Pages

Most of my customers have been musicians (like me) or bead artists, who needed mainly to show what they could do. When Bonnie Heidler of Bonnie's Beads approached me about upgrading her existing website, I knew at once that we would have to take a different approach. She needed her website not just to show people the schedule of workshops conducted by artists like Nancy Cain and Teresa Meister, she also needed to put online a list of the beads she carries. And the list is truly immense! So I put together a way for her customers to find out if she carries a particular style of bead in a particular color, a system that lets the beader shop online for the parts before going to the store. (The system is still under construction due in part to the size of the inventory.) To see a very small portion of this system, click here. (Click on the underlined words to see the next level down of the hierarchy.)

About Bonnie's Beads

Until recently, Bonnie's Beads was located in Old Colorado City near Colorado Springs, Colorado, and carried a huge inventory of craft beads, attracting customers from all over the country. They also had an extensive roster of classes and workshops for the hobbyist. Bonnie has since moved to Arizona, where she hopes to continue her website. Check for changes to her business and her website at bonniesbeads.com.

Detailed Image Views

One of the limitations of the Internet is that images, being large files, load slowly, so they are usually put on the site fairly small, like the image at right of Teresa Meister's Tiered Drop Necklace. Otherwise, people with modems get impatient while the large file loads. But the problem is that bead afficionados like to see the details of the various stitches involved, which can't be seen at this small size.

The solution? A detailed view of just one portion of the image, which loads quickly but allows the viewer to see much more detail. To see the detailed view, click the image twice. To return to the original view, click once.

About Teresa Meister

Teresa Meister, like many artists today, holds down a "real" job, but that doesn't dampen her enthusiasm for original bead design. She shares that enthusiasm with other beaders at the classes she teaches at Bonnie's Beads. (See above.) Her husband Jason captured the very nice images for her site on a digital camera, and even their greyhound Frida got into the act, modeling a very special collar Teresa designed just for her. To see her site, click on her logo above or enter teresameister.com into the address bar of your browser.

"I have gotten excellent feedback on the site."

                                                           --Teresa Meister

Animated GIFs

I designed a CD cover for my good friends the Mitguards a couple of years ago and they liked the logo for the cover so well that they decided to use it on all their promotional materials. One of the most important design elements was Chris's favorite animal, the snake, which I wove through their name above the artwork.

But, again unlike print media, the Internet offers some interesting alternatives to static artwork. Using what's called an animated GIF (a GIF is an image format similar to a JPEG), I was able to get the snake to wiggle its tongue and tail while its color shimmered. Such eye-catching graphics can be very memorable to web surfers.

About The Mitguards

Chris and Debbie Mitguard are an excellent musical duo based in Manitou Springs, Colorado, putting their own unusual slant on traditional Americana music. They engaged me originally just to take a standard promotional picture, but in the last couple of years I've also designed a number of posters and other promotional documents for them, as well as doing all the graphic design for their great CD Nobody's Fool. Their website includes a calendar of their performances, and if you get a chance to catch one of their performances, I highly recommend it. Find their site by clicking their wiggly logo above or enter www.themitguards.com into your browser's address window.

Animated Graphics

Animations aren't restricted to the GIF images I mentioned above. Many types of image and text effects are possible, a small example of which is visible at right. This site that I created for Malcolm Lucard has many other types of animations, including an exterminator truck that drives in front of this storefront and a cockroach that runs up and down the various pages as the user scrolls. Many of those animations, as I pointed out in the Column Width section, won't work with a centered column like this one, so I can't demonstrate too much of it here, but you can see all of them by clicking his logo above or going to www.malcolmlucard.com.

About Malcolm Lucard

Malcolm Lucard is a talented and innovative musician who became a local favorite in and around Colorado Springs, playing either solo or with his band Irrational Exuberance. Originally from Vermont by way of New York, he wanted his website to reflect his eclectic and funky take on the world, which is part of the reason I incorporated the New York skyline in the graphic above. (The storefront itself is in Butte, Montana, but it resembles a lot of the architecture of New York.) Malcolm has recently decided to shift his base of operations to Geneva, Switzerland, so his website will have to be altered drastically to reflect this change of scene. But I'm sure wherever he is, Malcolm will bring his unique style to his own little corner of the world.

"I don't know what to say, other than 'wow!' I'm blown away. It looks great. A whole new look. I love it."
                                                 --Malcolm Lucard

Photography

One big advantage to websites is the ability to show your product in full, vivid color. While I can do some impressive things in image alteration, as I've shown above, there's no substitute for good images that demonstrate the full beauty of your product. Pat Musick's intriguing enameled copper art is highly reflective, so we had to photograph it from a couple of different angles. Double click the image to see the other angle, single click to return. To see her site, click the nameplate above or go to www.musickstudio.com.

About Pat Musick

Look for this symbol of quality, affordable website design. If you'd like to add your business to this list, e-mail me.