wizely

Gotta love Bluedreamer! I'd add to his chestnut: Think of an innovative message you want to get across... think as if you're creating a killer advert. The message should target learner drivers in a way that engages them and then sets you up with a strong message which then will lead to a design theme to support it (I call it web design but lots of folks skip all this and just get stuck into the piccies!). Thinking the biggest target audience will be teenagers, how about: Wanting to escape home - think like those 'mini adventure' TV ads? Wanting to get away from parents - parents instead of cones on a test track? Cool kids drive - think of flashy cars pulling up outside college? Pretty crap... but here's a corker!: Backseat 'romance' - "mirror, signal, manoeuvre": Only "mirror" is a teenage guy preening in front of a mirror getting ready for a date, "signal" is a girl winking at him at a party, "manoeuvre" is an exterior shot of a car with steamed up windows! That'd suggest a kind of 'photostory' layout/ look. Just how my mind finds inspiration (yes, usually through play-on-words and then, ultimately it turns to smut!).

New Zealand has the MMP... which is kind of good, but then kind of not and there's going to be (another) referendum on whether to keep it. It works something like this: 1. You get 2 votes on election day - 1 for a party, 1 for your local MP 2. Parliamentary seats are allocated in proportional representation style... a party gets the % of seats equal to the % of votes. 3. Your local MP is decided in a straightforward 'first past the post'. Sounds good right? Proportional representation and the ability to vote for your local MP regardless of party... you can vote for local and national concerns. Proportional representation/ separate local votes means minority parties/ independents get heard. The problem? There's usually very little gap between parties so they have to team up with smaller parties to form a majority coalition... this means the 'bigger smaller' parties end up with way too much clout - if the main party doesn't keep them sweet they defect and that main party loses a majority. There's been a hell of a lot of 'corruption' based on that loophole. Oh and it can get messy! One example: A party could get more of its MPs voted into seats locally than the seats it's allocated from its percentage of the party votes. e.g. Say parliament has 100 seats. A party gets 20% of the party votes so is entitled to 20% of the seats (20). But its MPs win their individual votes in 40 constituencies. What happens is they increase the number of seats in parliament to keep the percentage right... so to fit the 40 MPs and keep the party to 20%, parliament must grow to 200 MPs. So there you are!

Don't build your entire business model on it?

I'm saddened.

No holidays for me for a few months Had a flight booked last week to Hong Kong and then onto London a couple of months after that (was going to South West China & Vietnam) but let it go... bought a house instead! Will be scary not being on the road for a few months (first time in 7 years) - I'll probably end up going postal!

Dissed ya as it were (I filled in the survey!). Slightly miffed that if I'd filled it in 2 days ago I would've still been in a lower age bracket - guess I've got to get used to it now.

Food from around the world... now we're talking! Mariner shrimps / all kinds of dim sum from Hong Kong, Sydney Rock Oysters/ Swimmer Crab from Oz, Hida Beef/ Snapping turtle/ Basashi (raw horse) from Japan, Llapangachos from Ecuador, Tarta del Camino/ Pulpo a la Gallega/ all kinds of tapas from Spain, Korean barbecues, Moules Mariniere from France, Barbecued Chicken Hearts/ Shanghai Dumplings/ Ju Ro Bao from China... shed loads more - I love my food and my travel.

Aw... thanks peeps. Just got back from a couple of days of fun in Queenstown and am now furiously planting trees to offset the Icelandic-proportioned carbon emissions of my birthday candles!

Not false advertising as you do get a website for £1... the fact that you need hosting and a domain to use that (and can only use theirs which they tell you) doesn't really matter. It's like the 'on-road' costs when you buy a car - the car may be £x but it'll cost you another £x to actually be able to get it out of the showroom!

No offence but all this doesn't sound like the clients' fault. You are the designer you should make the decisions, you should lead the design and clients SHOULD be able to say what they want the website 'to be' - and then it's your job to create that. If you're asking what should go here or there, what colours to use etc. or there's lots of project creep then you're not controlling things, not the clients fault. Not being cruel here... I just read a lot of 'clients from hell' stories that are in fact more a case of the designer's inexperience. You just need confidence to clearly define project boundaries and lead the creative process. Welcome to the forum btw!

Mmmm... missed this one, how bizarre. Like something out of Lord of the Rings the Golden Age of WDF has waned but there are still a handful of elves kicking around with their sagely wisdom, friendly character and drop-dead gorgeous Liv Tyler looks... OK got side-tracked, what was this thread? Oh yeah. WDF is a rarity in forums in that you have knowledgeable folks willing to help and who don't have egos the size of Uranus (oh yes, I used that planet). Apart from killing all spam-monkeys and providing-providers etc. what I'd like to see improved is actual meaningful debate on design and real feedback in reviews. No offence meant to anyone but "yeah I like it" or "Nah, blue is crap" or "Tables are bad" or "I think good design uses purple" or "SEO is link-building in directories" or... well you get me. And !b don't go waking-up the copywriting section... d-zine-ers dunt kneed no help wiv dare right-in coz proppa websights dunt yewz wurdz own lee pickchas.

Really want to play long road trumps?!!! Welcome to the forum Debbie... they knew what you meant - just the boys playing "my road's longer than your road"!

Glad to see such a profusion of Web And Net-Knowledge Engineering Resource Services in the industry.

*Staggers into the place with blood pouring from his left shoe... "Who left that bloody anorexic Spice Girl on the doorstep look at this splinter"* *Headbutts all Manilow lovers, smashes all Elvis buttons on the jukebox, applauds !b's wonderful unplugged set and puts Martika's 'Love Thy Will Be Done' on continuous loop* Sort the bones out of that!

Time for a spot of creative writing. OK... so most of the folks here on WDF are individual freelancers but wouldn't you just love to sound like Homer's internet company? So what would you call yourself? Company Name Job Title Division For me it'd be: Transglobal Megacorp Consortium Inc. Overlord Global Lexicography Division

I haz dunnit.

hee hee... Skidz typed faster!

'm' will be the field name so I think you'd do something like: $result = mysqli_query($query); $row = mysqli_fetch_array($result) or die(mysqli_error()); echo $row['m']; $query being the SQL above.

*Catches notbanksy right in the bo jangles with a wickedly-sharpened thesaurus*

Setting a project means you can write 'real' requirements in plain old English and then look up the technical bits later. e.g. "I need to display a list of blah that contains blah, but only if they're blah. I want to order them by blah". Sounds to me like a good thing would be, as you said, to carry on with the PHP and functional side (making sure you don't skip how to structure a database properly) so you know how to call SQL, then just look up how to build specific queries as you need them.

I'll raise your tuppence to fourpence and say... nail your business model/ target market and then decide on your name... then what you said!

Well... there we are then! I'm always saying turn to Photoshop last in the design process rather than starting with it. *Wizely hugs his knees whilst rocking back-and-forth in the corner*

I make that 1-1 so let's keep this thread for reviewing the layout that's been posted. Bocaj has nailed it for me... refine, edit and simplify - you'll get down to the 'real' design that's lurking beneath the 'Oh God I've got to impress' layer! <aside> Rja... considering you're new to the design world and 'Pixel Perfect' is so obviously already in use you're on thin ice with such an attitude. Reign it in. </aside>