You can check out our hard work at http://honors.fiu.edu/ — more details on this project (the process, challenges, etc.) will be posted sometime soon.

Andy

The renovation isn’t complete but, unlike most projects of this nature, we’re actively applying the changes to the live site. This means that you can actually watch the daily evolution of the website as we make the necessary design changes.

Here are some of our goals for the redesign:

- Develop a color scheme that has more weight and is less airy (no pun intended)
- Widen the site’s body to fit more content horizontally
- Improve accessibility (flexible text sizing and actual UI element to control text size)
- More interactivity
- Better implementation of CushyCMS
- Advanced news, event, and photo archives

And no transformation would be complete without the world famous before and after photos.

Before:

After (ongoing!):

Hope you enjoy!

You can check it for yourself at http://www.wingsovermiami.com/.

The program is really simple:

1) Recommend our web design services to your friends and family.
2) If your recommendation results in a contract, we’ll send you $50.

It’s that easy. Just have whomever you refer provide us with your contact information when contacting us, and if a contract is signed, we’ll send you a check for $50. Awesome.

Have any comments/questions about referrals? Just contact us and we’ll get back to you as soon as humanly possible.

(URL: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Miami-FL/Miami-Design-Studio/107884386600)

If you don’t have a Facebook account, simply go to Facebook.com and follow the registration directions on the main page. It’s simple, easy, and takes less than two minutes.

In upcoming posts, we’ll explore the benefits of using social networking to advertise a business, as well as provide some additional insight into social marketing by sharing our own experiences. More coming soon.

But now we’re beginning the process of redesigning the site, both aesthetically and technically, to make it more effective at communicating the firm’s mission and to improve the site’s retention rate (the amount of visitors to the website who actually contact the firm after visiting the page).

We also look forward to once again implementing the CushyCMS system to allow the firm to update the site’s content without the aid of a web designer. For more on CushyCMS, check out the brief overview presented on the earlier Wings Over Miami post.

The final product will be launched in the next few weeks, so stay tuned!

But research can be expensive and time-consuming. Especially quantitative research. That’s why I was so happy to discover the Pew Internet & American Life Project. The site basically contains all the reports published by the Pew Research Center that relate to the Internet and technology. There are some 38 topics ranging from banking, families, gaming, race and ethnicity, technology user types, web 2.0, and so on.

For instance, check out how the center’s report on Twitter and social networking illustrates the digital divide between age groups:

Twitter and similar services have been most avidly embraced by young adults. Nearly one in five (19%) online adults ages 18 and 24 have ever used Twitter and its ilk, as have 20% of online adults 25 to 34. Use of these services drops off steadily after age 35 with 10% of 35 to 44 year olds and 5% of 45 to 54 year olds using Twitter. The decline is even more stark among older internet users; 4% of 55-64 year olds and 2% of those 65 and older use Twitter.

If you need some data to provide some insight into whatever web project you’re scheming, this may be a good place to start.

The Wings Over Miami Air Museum has been a fixture in the Kendall community for as long as I can remember. I used to go there as a kid over 15 years ago to check out all the antique aircraft and watch the planes take off. (They even had an old flight simulator where you could pretend you were an airline pilot). It was known as “Weeks Air Museum” back then, before being shutdown for a couple of years after Hurricane Andrew. The museum was part of my childhood (and countless other people’s, too).

So when we were given the opportunity to create the website for the museum, we jumped at the chance. Using light and airy colors, clear typography and accessible navigation, we were able to create a website that captures the atmosphere of flight and provides visitors with basic information about the museum while effectively communicating the museum’s mission and purpose. They wanted something clean, modern, usable, and informational—we did pretty well, I think.

The website uses CushyCMS so that the museum can easily edit and maintain the site’s content without the help of a web designer or any programming knowledge. CushyCMS is a content management system that allows the client to edit their webpage from a simple browser interface. It was created by Stateless Systems and is free of charge and easy to use. Here is Stateless Systems’ founder Guy King giving a tour of the software:

CushyCMS is a great way to give clients control of their website (it’s their website after all) and we look forward to using it in future projects.

Anyways, make sure you check out the brand new Wings Over Miami website. It can also be viewed in our portfolio.

Without going into too much detail quite yet, this webapp (we’re just calling it “Project Symphony” for now) will help classical musicians more easily procure and organize their sheet music. The goal is to create a large and easy-to-browse database of open source sheet music—both old and new works—that will facilitate the exchange of musical ideas and help make classical music a little bit more transparent and accessible. Musicians can add their own (presumably legal) copies of sheet music to the database and, conversely, add sheet music from the database into their own digital libraries and then manage them with a variety of organizational tools.

Simply put, musicians can remotely store and organize their sheet music collection as well as discover and share new compositions. Any musicians who have ever scrambled for missing pages or requested pieces the day of a gig will appreciate the usefulness of these features. It’s a pretty cool thing.

There’s no timetable since all the work is being done at our leisure (whenever there’s a free moment to spare), but we’ll be sure to keep you updated on our progress as we go along, including a followup in the next few weeks with some more details.

I’m collaborating on the project with Eric Lemmon, a talented violist and composer currently at NYU. You should check out his website at OpenSourceMusic.org, it’s an excellent read if you’re a classical music lover.

Anyways, that’s all for now. More later!

Smashing Magazine has compiled a showcase of 45 beautifully designed online stores.

Below our two of my personal favorites:

ShoeGuru:

ShoeGuru is beautifully minimalistic. The only thing displayed to visitors is shoes and nothing else. The way the shoes are displayed, horizontally with a scroll bar, is also pretty innovative, although it might present a usability issue to some users.

Yellowood:

This site sells fingerboards (think skateboards, but really small) and like Shoeguru is pretty minimalistic. The only thing displayed is the logo, a clean navigation, and the products — oh, and a background featuring yellow woods (pretty appropriate, right?). The result is a beautiful, intuitive shopping experience.

You can check out Smashing Magazine’s article to see the rest of their showcase. Cool stuff.

Typefaces generally rely on subtle alterations to make their impact. In his photo-heavy book Helvetica, designer Lars Muller praises the titular typeface for its “understated self-assurance” – describing it as if it were an especially pleasing glass of shiraz.

In the same book, designer Katherine McCoy goes further, arguing that, “The Helvetica Medium lower-case ‘a’… is the most beautiful two-dimensional form ever designed. Its luxurious sensual curves are balanced by points of crisp tension. Its lovely counter makes me think of Mozart.”

Why is Helvetica praised like this? Certainly no one is singing from the rooftops about Times New Roman. But Helvetica is more than simply a popular typeface. Many consider it the official typeface of the 20th century.

You can read the rest of the article here. And for a more technical exploration of the typeface, check out the Wikipedia article on Helvetica and the Typophile entry on the font.