warrenchandler.com

Easter Website Deal £599

SuperWaz — Sat, 02 Apr 2011 17:15:47 +0000

I must admit I love the Easter Bunny, and how he gets around with all those chocolate eggs still mystifies me to this very day. I’m sure DHL are in on it somehow…

Anyway, to celebrate my chocolate-filled expanding waistline at this time of year, until the end of April 2011 (or at the very latest until I run out of chocolate) I’m running a very special deal for prospective web clients, giving a huge potential saving of £251.

What I am offering is a wonderfully functional brochure website, up to a maximum of 25 pages, properly SEO optimised and some pretty heavy duty marketing thrown in to the package.

In fact, you’ll get all this:

Brochure Website

Brochure website creation
Free web hosting for a year
Free domain name

SEO Optimisation

Sitemap creation with prioritised URL’s in correct xml, html, .txt and .ror formats
Keyword/Keyphrase Optimisation
Internal Linking Structure
Title & Meta-tag Optimisation
URL Optimisation (Mod ReWrite)
Keyphrase density analysis

Additional Marketing

750 PR 0-9 Directory Submissions with 12 unique title and descriptions
Focused keyword pushing – from selected keywords you wish to aggressively promote, i.e. “beauty tips”, “women’s health” etc
600 Article Submissions with 1 unique article creation and 5 variations. 75 per week over 8 weeks.
125 Social Bookmarking links, once every two weeks for 8 weeks.
250+ Search Engine individual page submissions
Guaranteed lifetime listing in PR2 search directory and PR1 search directory
Manual submission to ALL directories falling in the top 5 Google pages of one given keyword search

Interested? Contact me while the chocolate lasts.

Google Maps Shortcode for WordPress

SuperWaz — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 13:14:05 +0000

Note: This method no longer works as intended due to changes in WordPress and Google maps. However, if you paste the iframe information from the Google maps page, WordPress automatically converts the frame to its own shortcode for you. At least, it’s supposed to work that way.

Adding Google maps to your WordPress installation isn’t actually difficult at all. Simply add this to your functions.php file and call using the resulting [ googlemap ] shortcode.

//Google Maps Shortcode
function fn_googleMaps($atts, $content = null) {
extract(shortcode_atts(array(
"width" => '640',
"height" => '480',
"src" => ''
), $atts));
return '';
}
add_shortcode("googlemap", "fn_googleMaps");

And then inside the post itself:

[googlemap width="200" height="200" src="[url]"]

View Larger Map

100+ Memorable Design Quotes

SuperWaz — Sat, 05 Mar 2011 13:17:21 +0000

Since re-launching my website a few hours ago, I’ve already received comment about the quotes that frequent the header area of the site.

While some are my own work, much credit has to go to designwashere for their design related ones. I’ve listed more below for your amusement. Enjoy!

My rates are as follows:

£50 per hour.
£75 per hour if you watch.
£100 per hour if you help.

Design is easy. All you do is stare at the screen until drops of blood form on your forehead

-Marty Neumier

Practice safe design: Use a concept

-Petrula Vrontikis

I love the comment, “You must love designing for a living.” At that point I usually start to laugh or break into uncontrollable tears

- Andrew Lewis

It’s art if can’t be explained.
It’s fashion if no one asks for an explanation.
It’s design if it doesn’t need explanation

- Wouter Stokkel

Every child is an artist. The challenge is to remain an artist after you grow up

- Pablo Picasso

Beauty is the ultimate defense against complexity

- John Carmack

Good design keeps the user happy, the manufacturer in the black and the aesthete unoffended

- Raymond Loewy

In design man becomes what he is. Animals have language and perception as well, but they do not design

-Otl Aicher

Designers can create normalcy out of chaos; they can clearly communicate ideas through the organising and manipulating of words and pictures

- Jeffrey Veen

Design from the spine and you’ll be fine

- Carl Heaton

Everything is designed. Few things are designed well

- Brian Reed

The client may be king but he’s not the art director

- Von R. Glitschka

Graphic designers are idea embalmers. loving undertakers preserving bits of data like so many butterflies pinned to felt in a jewel box

- Paul Saffo

To create a memorable design you need to start with a thought that’s worth remembering

- Thomas Manss

Graphic designers are, by and large selfish and spoiled. They stubbornly control and individually design things that are generally smaller than them, perfecting to a level appreciated only by people like them. They don’t share and play well with others

- Wayne Hunt

A picture is worth a thousand words. An interface is worth a thousand pictures

- Ben Schneiderman

Good design is all about making other designers feel like idiots because that idea wasn’t theirs

- Frank Chimero

Remember it takes a lot of shit, to create a beautiful flower

- Jacob Cass

Design is a good idea

- Emigre

If you know how to use a pencil to draw, you could draw anything. Now apply that to everything in life

- Justin Durban

We aren’t designing photocopies of web pages, we’re designing web pages

- Andy Clarke

A computer without Photoshop is like a dog with no legs. Sure is fun, but you can’t really do anything with it

- Benjamin Cavanagh

A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools

- Douglas Adams

Everyone is an artist

- Joseph Beuys

Colour does not add a pleasant quality to design – it reinforces it

- Pierre Bonnard

Marketing without design is lifeless, and design without marketing is mute

- Von R. Glitschka

Without good design it is easy to miss the point

- Bjarni Wark

Design is not the narrow application of formal skills, it is a way of thinking

- Chris Pullman

The life of a designer is a life of fight: fight against the ugliness

- Massimo Vignelli

In the design process, my gut instinct is my best critic. I just wished I would always listen to it!

- Bryan Tamayo

Art is like masturbation. It is selfish and introverted and done for you and you alone. Design is like sex. There is someone else involved, their needs are just as important as your own, and if everything goes right, both parties are happy in the end

- Colin Wright

Design has become the cover for unnecessary consumption

- Peter Saville

Design is creativity with strategy

- Rob Curedale

Stop looking at yourself as a designer and start thinking of yourself as a deliverer of ideas

- Stle Melvr

No masterpiece was ever created by a lazy artist

- Salvador Dali

Good ideas turn into good designs fairly quickly. If you catch yourself fiddling too much with colors, borders and treatments to bring a design together, chances are the problem lies somewhere deeper

- Ryan Singer

We can’t just design an item that looks great. We also have to anticipate how it is boxed up, distributed, and shipped, as well as whether or not a seventeen-year-old kid with a summer job can stock it on the store shelf without ruining it

- Robin Perkins

Art has to move you and design does not, unless it’s a good design for a bus

- David Hockney

Good design goes to heaven; bad design goes everywhere

- Mieke Gerritzen

The difference between a Designer and Developer when it comes to design skills, is the difference between shooting a bullet and throwing it

- Scott Hanselman

People ignore design that ignores people

- Frank Chimero

Never re-invent the wheel, unless you’re sure the client needn’t go anywhere

- Russell Bishop

Making good design is easy. It’s polishing the half-assed stuff that takes time

- Stefan G. Bucher

You can have an art experience in front of a Rembrandt… or in front of a piece of graphic design

- Stefan Sagmeister

Whether we like it or not, our legacy as designers is ugly. We’re largely responsible for fueling a culture of consumption

- Eric Karjalouto

Graphic designers find themselves in a role of visual dishwashers for the information Architects’ chefs

- Gunnar Swanson

Design is like a mom, nobody notices when she’s around, but everybody misses her when she’s not

- Santiago Borray

A designer who gives her art away, makes no pay, A designer who keeps her art to herself, makes no friends

- Amber Seree Allen

Good design means never having to say “Click Here.”

- Shawn Leslie

Being a graphic designer gets you used to rejection of your brilliance. So it’s good practice for dating

- Heather Phillips

Inspiration the seed. Design but the flower

- Michael Langham

Every designers’ dirty little secret is that they copy other designers’ work. They see work they like, and they imitate it. Rather cheekily, they call this inspiration

- Aaron Russell

Design should never say, “Look at me.” It should always say, “Look at this”

- David Craib

Design is intelligence made visible

- Alina Wheeler

Designers are meant to be loved, not to be understood

- Fabien Barral

You can’t do better design with a computer, but you can speed up your work enormously

- Wim Crouwal

Maths is easy; design is hard

- Jeffrey Veen

Graphic design will save the world right after rock and roll does

- David Carsong

Welcome to WarrenChandler.com 2.0

SuperWaz — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 00:18:19 +0000

Okay I’ll admit it, I’m my own worst enemy when it comes to building websites. I’m acutely aware that I am far too picky and quite often it’s up to the client to tell me when enough is enough. “Hey, the first design you sent me would have sufficed”, seems to be a common theme, but even if the client is over the moon I am rarely happy with the end product.

And don’t even get me started about blogging. Over the years I have promised myself that I’ll use my blog to store handy snippets of code I have written so I don’t have to repeat the feat, or to update the masses (hi mum!) with what’s new in my life or career. I also promise myself I will compile a handy portfolio of my work for all to see. It never happens. That is, until now.

Character is what emerges from all the little things you were too busy to do yesterday, but did anyway.

Of course I am well aware as I write this that I am writing this article on yet another unfinished website, with a faint resemblance of a blog, a non entity of a portfolio, and a logo that, well, don’t get me started on the logo. But the intention is there and this time I’m going to follow through on my promises.

I’m probably too busy for it, that’s the usual excuse, but that’s really nothing new. The bottom line is that even if I have bitten off far more than I can chew, I’m going to keep chewing anyway.

Getting Visitors to Your Website

SuperWaz — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 11:41:49 +0000

Before building a site there are many things that you need to take in mind. For example, how are you going to design your site, what is it going to cost you, how long will it take you to build, etc. All of these things mentioned a both are important aspects to consider when designing a site, but there is no point in doing all of this if you cant even get visitors to your site afterwards.

So you may ask yourself, what are some of the best ways of getting visitors to my site? Well there are many ways of getting visitors to your site. The following shows you some of the best ways of doing this:

1. Adding Your Sites Link/URL to Your Signature
These can include email signatures, forum signatures, etc.

2. Writing Good Articles
This is probably one of the best ways to get some good quality traffic to your site. If you can write a good article, then other people are more likely to want to re-publish it on their own sites, newsletters, ezines, etc.

Some useful places for submitting articles are:

http://www.simplysearch4it.com/article/articledir.php
http://www.goarticles.com/
http://www.zongoo.com/
http://www.articlecity.com/

3. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
This is a big factor to consider when building and advertising any site. This is because up to 85% of visitors use search engines to find something that they are interested in before they actually look elsewhere.

To do good SEO you will have to consider many things. Some of these include the use of metatags within your site, a good use of keywords within your sites body, and exchanging links with other sites that is on the same subject as yours.

4. Exchanging Links with Other Websites to Build Your PR
If you want your site to rank higher within the major search engines then exchanging links with other sites that are on the same subject as yours is a good way to go. This is because exchanging links with other sites will help to build your PR (page rank).

When exchanging links with other sites, a good approach would be to try and exchange links with sites that already has a good PR. But when exchanging links with other sites, you must also consider that you will also be getting traffic from these sites as well, which will be an added bonus.

5. Pay Per Click Search Engine Advertising
This is a cost-effective and good way of receiving highly targeted traffic to your site. This is because you only pay for the visitors that you actually receive. You choose how much you want to pay per visitor by bidding against other advertisers.

If you were thinking of trying out PPC Search Engine advertising, then http://www.simplysearch4it.com/webma/ppcse/advdir.php would most probably come in useful to you as it lists a large amount of Pay Per Click Search Engines.

If you have not used PPC Search Engines to advertise your site before, then I would personally recommend that you try out the larger PPC Search Engines. This is because you are more likely to receive a higher conversion rate than what you probably would with the smaller PPC Search Engines.

Search and Replace in Web Files

SuperWaz — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 19:02:59 +0000

This handy function will search and replace all instances of a search term in every file with the PHP extension, across all directories and subdirectories. Upload the file to your root directory and run it.

function callbackDir($dir){ 

$searchString = "searchforthis";
$newValue = "replacewiththis";

// directory, and file type
$path = "$dir/*.php";


$searchString = "#".$searchString."#";
$globarray = glob($path);
if ($globarray) foreach ($globarray as $filename) {
  $source = file_get_contents($filename);
  if (preg_match($searchString,$source)) echo "$filename 
";
  $source = preg_replace($searchString,$newValue,$source);
  file_put_contents($filename,$source);
  $count++;
}
echo "Done - processed $count files";

  echo "$dir
";
}

function walkDir($dir,$fx)
{
  $arStack = array();
  $fx($dir);
  if( ($dh=opendir($dir)) )
  { while( ($file=readdir($dh))!==false )
    { if( $file=='.' || $file=='..' ) continue;
      if( is_dir("$dir/$file") )
      { if( !in_array("$dir/$file",$arStack) ) $arStack[]="$dir/$file";
      }
    }
    closedir($dh);
  }
  if( count($arStack) )
  { foreach( $arStack as $subdir )
    { walkDir($subdir,$fx);
    }
  }
}

walkDir('./',callBackDir);

Remove Trackbacks and Pingbacks from Comments

SuperWaz — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 15:01:30 +0000

Unfortunately, the default Recent Comments widget also includes trackbacks and pingbacks and the sight ain’t so lovely thus I had to add this hack to weed out the trackbacks and pingbacks.

Open your theme’s functions.php file and add the following code

if ( !$comments = wp_cache_get( 'recent_comments', 'widget' ) ) {
    $comments = $wpdb->get_results("SELECT $wpdb->comments.* FROM $wpdb->comments JOIN $wpdb->posts ON $wpdb->posts.ID = $wpdb->comments.comment_post_ID WHERE comment_approved = '1' AND post_status = 'publish' AND comment_type IN ('comment', '') ORDER BY comment_date_gmt DESC LIMIT 15");
    wp_cache_add( 'recent_comments', $comments, 'widget' );
}

Please note that the value red (DESC LIMIT 15) controls how many recent comments will appear in your sidebar and the order with which they will appear (ASC or DESC)

Protect Your Blog from Spam

SuperWaz — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 10:36:13 +0000

Recovering from a WordPress Spam Injection attack is not fun, but you can regain your Google Search Results after being hacked by a spam injection attack.

The best policy with Google is to be specific in your explanations. You will need to make sure that you have removed all bad files from your server and then contact Google again explaining what actions you have taken to resolve the situation and submit your “request for reconsideration”. In most cases where a valid site has been hacked Google will restore their sites rankings within two weeks. However, don’t expect any notifications from Google on their progress of reevaluating your website or WordPress blog. I am writing this article in hopes that it will help anyone from having to go through that processs.

What should you look for if you suspect a WordPress Spam Injection Attack?

The first thing you should look for is a list of spammy keywords showing up in your list of keywords located in your Google Webmasters Tools. If you aren’t using Google Webmaster Tools then you should definitely look into this. When your site starts showing up in weird looking search results, which can also be seen in Google Webmaster Tools under search results for your site, you need to act fast because at this point Google will act fast to remove your site from SERPS in order to protect others who may be at risk from visiting your website.

The key to detection is awareness. Be vigilant in monitoring your website and your website’s stats. Spam injections are a clever, effective form of hacking and show no outward signs of infection. However, If you do a Google Site Search for spammy key words like; {site:yoursite.com viagra} you will be able to see if your site is referencing spam keywords. You will not be able to see spam showing up on your site. In order to physically see spam tags in your site you must go to the “cached” version of your web pages and view them in “text mode”. If you’ve been infected you will now be able to see spam keywords, usually appearing as a footer.

What does a Spam Injection Do?

Spam Injection software hides spam keyword links in code that is usually encoded with a PHP function that effectively scrambles html to be decoded once safely embedded on your server, database, etc. You won’t see these files decoded, but the Google Bot and other bots will when crawling your site! Once the Bots access the code the spam injection software has done it’s work, effectively stealing your search index to improve their own pagerank.

These spam injection hacks are very hard to detect software injections inserted into your site, usually on a database level, via templates or plugins. This is part of the reason WordPress is such a target for these attacks. Plugins are what make WordPress so dynamic and cool, but they are an open doorway for spam injection software. For obvious reasons we should all focus our attention on prevention so that you don’t have to deal with detection.

What can I do to prevent a WordPress Spam Injection Attack?

I’ll start with the simplest things you can do to protect your WordPress blog or site from spam attacks first. . .

First: Update WordPress

Updating WordPress is the easiest thing to do, so why not do it? I usually wait a short period of time after a new release to make sure the bug fixes have been worked out. Please be aware that simply updating WordPress is NOT enough!

Second: Pick a good password

Pick a good password. Don’t use the same password on every site. If you’re really diligent you can also change your password regularly.

Third: Change the admin user name

The default WordPress user name is “admin”. This is just a guess, but I suspect that the majority of people never change this. Don’t give any information away. Hackers are clever, but like burglars they would rather move on to the easy score. You can change your admin by creating a new user and then deleting the admin user. You’ll be given the option to migrate posts to another user.

Fourth: Hide your WordPress Version Number

David Kierznowski of blogsecurity.net lately released a simple plugin to hide your wordpress installation version number. The no version plugin is a simple plugin that will replace the version number with blanks, so anyone doing a view “page source” from the browser on your site will not be able to see your wordpress version.

Fifth: Protect your plugins

Plugins are the easy gateway way for hackers to access your blog. All WordPress files begin with (wp-) by default so, hackers can quickly discover which plugins you’re using by going to /wp-content/plugins/, if you haven’t renamed your database files. A quick remedy to block a blank index.html file in the wp-content/plugins/ folder.

More Complex Procedures:

First: Protecting your WP-Config file.

This file contains your database name, database username and database password. Obviously, you don’t want anyone to have access to something this valuable. If you don’t feel comfortable making changes to your config you may want to contact your hosting company for help otherwise you can add the following code to your .htaccess file:

PHP:
1. # protect wpconfig.php
2. {files wp-config.php}
3. order allow,deny
4. deny from all
5. {/files}

Second: Change your database names

Note: do not attempt this unless you are comfortable with PHPMyAdmin and making changes to MySQL. If you are not comfortable with this you should hire a professional to assist you.

Begin by backing up your database!

Many people have problems with the database table name prefix changing functionality of WP Security Scan. You can manually change your database names following the instructions below.

1. BACKUP your WordPress database to a sql file – you can do this in “phpmyadmin”.
2. You should Deactivate your plugins as a precaution before proceeding. You can reactivate them after you have finished.
3. Make a copy of the .sql file you created, then you can open the .sql file and use a text editor to find and replace all “wp_” prefix to “rename_”.
4. Now, drop all tables of your WordPress databases, but DO NOT drop the database.
5. import the (.sql) file that you have just edited into your wordpress databases.
6. Finish by editing your wp-config.php file and change the $table_prefix = ‘wp_’; to $table_prefix = ’something_’;

How To Decode WordPress Base 64

SuperWaz — Sat, 01 May 2010 13:01:31 +0000

1. Open your index.php and find

2. Place a HTML comment that you can easily recognize, before and after

Something like:

3. Visit your blog

4. View the source

5. Copy the HTML source between the two markers

6. Open footer.php and replace the encoded content with the HTML code.

Note: Most themes will have a license that’ll not permit you to change the footer links. If that’s the case, then you are better off finding another theme

WordPress Breadcrumbs

SuperWaz — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 20:55:56 +0000

Creating breadcrumbs in WordPress themes can be a pain. With that in mind, this handy function should be exactly what you need.

function waz_breadcrumbs()

{

$delimiter = '»';

$name = 'Home'; //text for the 'Home' link

$currentBefore = '';

$currentAfter = '';

if ( !is_home() && !is_front_page() || is_paged() ) {

echo '';

global $post;

$home = get_bloginfo('url');

echo '' . $name . ' ' . $delimiter . ' ';

if ( is_category() ) {

global $wp_query;

$cat_obj = $wp_query->get_queried_object();

$thisCat = $cat_obj->term_id;

$thisCat = get_category($thisCat);

$parentCat = get_category($thisCat->parent);

if ($thisCat->parent != 0) echo(get_category_parents($parentCat, TRUE, ' ' . $delimiter . ' '));

echo $currentBefore . '';

single_cat_title();

echo '' . $currentAfter;

} elseif ( is_day() ) {

echo '' . get_the_time('Y') . ' ' . $delimiter . ' ';

echo '' . get_the_time('F') . ' ' . $delimiter . ' ';

echo $currentBefore . get_the_time('d') . $currentAfter;

} elseif ( is_month() ) {

echo '' . get_the_time('Y') . ' ' . $delimiter . ' ';

echo $currentBefore . get_the_time('F') . $currentAfter;

} elseif ( is_year() ) {

echo $currentBefore . get_the_time('Y') . $currentAfter;

} elseif ( is_single() ) {

$cat = get_the_category(); $cat = $cat[0];

echo get_category_parents($cat, TRUE, ' ' . $delimiter . ' ');

echo $currentBefore;

the_title();

echo $currentAfter;

} elseif ( is_page() && !$post->post_parent ) {

echo $currentBefore;

the_title();

echo $currentAfter;

} elseif ( is_page() && $post->post_parent ) {

$parent_id  = $post->post_parent;

$breadcrumbs = array();

while ($parent_id) {

$page = get_page($parent_id);

$breadcrumbs[] = '' . get_the_title($page->ID) . '';

$parent_id  = $page->post_parent;

}

$breadcrumbs = array_reverse($breadcrumbs);

foreach ($breadcrumbs as $crumb) echo $crumb . ' ' . $delimiter . ' ';

echo $currentBefore;

the_title();

echo $currentAfter;

} elseif ( is_search() ) {

echo $currentBefore . 'Search results for '' . get_search_query() . ''' . $currentAfter;

} elseif ( is_tag() ) {

echo $currentBefore . 'Posts tagged '';

single_tag_title();

echo ''' . $currentAfter;

} elseif ( is_author() ) {

global $author;

$userdata = get_userdata($author);

echo $currentBefore . 'Articles posted by ' . $userdata->display_name . $currentAfter;

} elseif ( is_404() ) {

echo $currentBefore . 'Error 404' . $currentAfter;

}

if ( get_query_var('paged') ) {

if ( is_category() || is_day() || is_month() || is_year() || is_search() || is_tag() || is_author() ) echo ' (';

echo __('Page') . ' ' . get_query_var('paged');

if ( is_category() || is_day() || is_month() || is_year() || is_search() || is_tag() || is_author() ) echo ')';

}

echo '';

}

}

warrenchandler.com

Easter Website Deal £599

Brochure Website

SEO Optimisation

Additional Marketing

Google Maps Shortcode for WordPress

100+ Memorable Design Quotes

My rates are as follows: £50 per hour. £75 per hour if you watch. £100 per hour if you help.

Design is easy. All you do is stare at the screen until drops of blood form on your forehead

Practice safe design: Use a concept

I love the comment, “You must love designing for a living.” At that point I usually start to laugh or break into uncontrollable tears

It’s art if can’t be explained. It’s fashion if no one asks for an explanation. It’s design if it doesn’t need explanation

Every child is an artist. The challenge is to remain an artist after you grow up

Beauty is the ultimate defense against complexity

Good design keeps the user happy, the manufacturer in the black and the aesthete unoffended

In design man becomes what he is. Animals have language and perception as well, but they do not design

Designers can create normalcy out of chaos; they can clearly communicate ideas through the organising and manipulating of words and pictures

Design from the spine and you’ll be fine

Everything is designed. Few things are designed well

The client may be king but he’s not the art director

Graphic designers are idea embalmers. loving undertakers preserving bits of data like so many butterflies pinned to felt in a jewel box

To create a memorable design you need to start with a thought that’s worth remembering

Graphic designers are, by and large selfish and spoiled. They stubbornly control and individually design things that are generally smaller than them, perfecting to a level appreciated only by people like them. They don’t share and play well with others

A picture is worth a thousand words. An interface is worth a thousand pictures

Good design is all about making other designers feel like idiots because that idea wasn’t theirs

Remember it takes a lot of shit, to create a beautiful flower

Design is a good idea

If you know how to use a pencil to draw, you could draw anything. Now apply that to everything in life

We aren’t designing photocopies of web pages, we’re designing web pages

A computer without Photoshop is like a dog with no legs. Sure is fun, but you can’t really do anything with it

A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools

Everyone is an artist

Colour does not add a pleasant quality to design – it reinforces it

Marketing without design is lifeless, and design without marketing is mute

Without good design it is easy to miss the point

Design is not the narrow application of formal skills, it is a way of thinking

The life of a designer is a life of fight: fight against the ugliness

In the design process, my gut instinct is my best critic. I just wished I would always listen to it!

Art is like masturbation. It is selfish and introverted and done for you and you alone. Design is like sex. There is someone else involved, their needs are just as important as your own, and if everything goes right, both parties are happy in the end

Design has become the cover for unnecessary consumption

Design is creativity with strategy

Stop looking at yourself as a designer and start thinking of yourself as a deliverer of ideas

No masterpiece was ever created by a lazy artist

Good ideas turn into good designs fairly quickly. If you catch yourself fiddling too much with colors, borders and treatments to bring a design together, chances are the problem lies somewhere deeper

We can’t just design an item that looks great. We also have to anticipate how it is boxed up, distributed, and shipped, as well as whether or not a seventeen-year-old kid with a summer job can stock it on the store shelf without ruining it

Art has to move you and design does not, unless it’s a good design for a bus

Good design goes to heaven; bad design goes everywhere

The difference between a Designer and Developer when it comes to design skills, is the difference between shooting a bullet and throwing it

People ignore design that ignores people

Never re-invent the wheel, unless you’re sure the client needn’t go anywhere

Making good design is easy. It’s polishing the half-assed stuff that takes time

You can have an art experience in front of a Rembrandt… or in front of a piece of graphic design

Whether we like it or not, our legacy as designers is ugly. We’re largely responsible for fueling a culture of consumption

Graphic designers find themselves in a role of visual dishwashers for the information Architects’ chefs

Design is like a mom, nobody notices when she’s around, but everybody misses her when she’s not

A designer who gives her art away, makes no pay, A designer who keeps her art to herself, makes no friends

Good design means never having to say “Click Here.”

Being a graphic designer gets you used to rejection of your brilliance. So it’s good practice for dating

Inspiration the seed. Design but the flower

Every designers’ dirty little secret is that they copy other designers’ work. They see work they like, and they imitate it. Rather cheekily, they call this inspiration

Design should never say, “Look at me.” It should always say, “Look at this”

Design is intelligence made visible

Designers are meant to be loved, not to be understood

You can’t do better design with a computer, but you can speed up your work enormously

Maths is easy; design is hard

Graphic design will save the world right after rock and roll does