Web Design Inspiration Blog | SpicyWebDesigners.com

Over the past 3 to 4 months since I started Spicy Web Designers I’ve had the chance to talk to a lot of bright and highly creative web designers from just about every corner of the world. One of the biggest things that most web designers face is establishing credibility in a very large market. I am proposing starting the Spicy Web Designers Network which is a network of sites that carry a seal/badge. If anyone would like to provide a creative mock-up with their ideas about this they will get credit for the design as well.

The purpose is two-fold:

1. To help web designers establish a creditable way to distinguish themselves
2. To showcase the latest articles from these web designers’ blogs via RSS feed syndication

I am just being to plan this out but I would like your feedback. Let me know what you think because without you SpicyWebDesigners.com would just be an idea and not a reality. I am still interviewing web designers so stay tuned for more interviews and as always feel free to contact me if you’d like me to interview you.

Luc Arnold

founder

SpicyWebDesigners.com

I’ve noticed that a lot of great web designers that I’ve found, interviewed and talked to over the past 3 months have almost one thing in common. They all use galleries to promote the web design work that they do and to get their name out there. Recently I came across a website that I personally think is a very helpful tool to those web designers, interactive designers, new media designers, etc. that are looking to submit their portfolios to.

The site is called “The CSS Gallery List” and it’s a service aimed at web designers who don’t have the time to submit to every gallery individually. Really it’s a smart idea and the site is run by a guy who goes by the name, Klaye Morrison, out of Australia (I believe).

Klaye is a web designer and a site owner who thought this site up recently in the past few months. For a small fee ($5 I believe, payable via PayPal), Klaye will submit your site or portfolio to the Featured Galleries like CSS Mania, CSS Burst, Website Gallery, CSS Showcase just to name a few. The service is already seeing some action after a month of business according to Klaye, who said “There are currently only a few submissions a day, but I expect its popularity to increase in the coming months.”

This is what Klaye wanted to add about his service…

“I originally started the site as a resource that listed the many CSS galleries that are out there today. I know I haven’t got them all, but I think I have a fairly good selection. Being a designer myself I found manually submitting to galleries very repetitive so I thought of an idea to be able to submit to all of the galleries from one easy form.

I am currently working on redesigning the site – giving it more of a clean ‘web2′ look and allowing users to sort galleries by rating, page rank, alexa rank etc. I think that this will give the site a much needed element which it currently lacks.”

How many of you web designers out there would use a service like this to promote your web design business?

In the month of November 2008 we’ve seen the number of visitors go up slightly while the number of page views went down slightly. Keep in mind that I was in El Salvador for a week so no updates were made to the site for about 9 days. That being said I am expecting to really see an improvement in the numbers for December 2008 going into the New Year.

As always the most viewed web designers list that i’ve been putting together is here so have a look…

It looks like the Veerle Pieter’s Interview that i did received the most views.  I am so glad that I got a chance to interview her and the other web designers i’ve interviewed through out the month.

I’d like to start getting web designers, front-end developers and other web professionals to contribute articles to SpicyWebDesigners so feel free to email me about this.

Luc Arnold

founder

SpicyWebDesigners.com

Ah October… It’s the time of thanksgiving, cooler temperatures (If you are Canadian like me) and Halloween. It’s also time to showcase our stats for the month as well (well some of them; not all of them) seeing as its November 1st already.

We’ve seen a good amount of growth and traffic in October 2008 illustrated in the following screenshot from my Google Analytics account…

… With that being said the top 5 web designers who received the most traffic are…

… Most of them accomplished this by either writing a posting on their blog about the interview or adding a “featured on SpicyWebDesigners.com” link somewhere on their site. In the future I’d like to create a badge for those of you looking for a way to add a link back to your review quickly and easily. If anyone has some good ideas I’d love to see a mockup of your idea. After all, this site wouldn’t exist without you. Another idea that I have is running a contest for all web designers and the winner would be rated by the viewers to the site allowing them to select the winner for a cool prize like a “Nintendo Wii” or a “Playstation 3” or an iPhone or something cool. It’s been a pleasure interviewing all the web designers I’ve interviewed so far and I look forward to November when I interview more of you! Stay tuned for more!

Luc Arnold

Founder

SpicyWebDesigners.com

With this being the Canadian thanksgiving holiday weekend it gives me time to stop and think about the past few months since I started Spicy Web Designers and the unexpected and much hoped for love that’s been receiving from the web designers that I review and interview.

I started Spicy Web Designers for this reason alone… It’s hard for the general public to understand what questions to ask a web designer before they hire them unless they’ve worked in web design or have a web design professional advisor which a lot people from small business owners to project managers simply do not have. The response has been great and I’ve actually got more interviews coming, and interest from web designers I haven’t gotten to that is driving the success. I wanted to take a moment and post some of the comments that people have mentioned over the past couple months.

Hello Lucas,

I’m very flattered that you are interested in interviewing me for your website. I have read some of the content on Spicy Web Designers, and you have some well written pieces in there! If you would like me to answer some questions, I would be more than happy to do so. Just let me know how you would like to go about conducting this interview, and I’ll do my best to accommodate your needs.

Regards,

Dickson Fong

Pete from Bapple.com.au

ME: Thanks again Pete for agreeing to the interview

Pete from Bapple.com.au: No probs, pleasure. I think your site is providing a great insight into the industry & I actually wanted to ask you a question or two.

1. Are the majority of web designers you interview solely designers or do they code as well, and do you find the web is moving in the direction of specialists that focus on their areas i.e. Designers, coders, IA etc

2. Can I make you a spicy web designer’s website header? I’m baffled by the “Flash News Theme” title; I’m assuming it’s the standard WordPress template header.

Thank you though for the interest and I look forward to seeing this interview on your site. I have been visiting your site regularly now as I find the interviews really interesting. Keep up the good work.

Good luck with it all

All the best

Katie Taylor

Keep up the great work and good luck with SWD!

Benjamin Tollady

Thanks for publishing the interview.

I “back linked” it from my blog at: http://claudiaadler.com/blog2/2008/09/interview-with-spicywebdesigners/

Cheers

Claudia Adler

Those are just a few that I thought I’d share. Hope you enjoy the interviews and the up coming interviews.

Luc Arnold

Founder

SpicyWebDesigners.com

In my quest to keep SpicyWebDesigners.com more of an “open forum” i do not usually restrict what is said on the site and interviews because people have the right to comment openly about their skills and indifferences. And, with that being said it only makes sense that SpicyWebDesigners.com and myself is equally open with you. So far I’ve been able to publish 14 web designers in the first month of running SpicyWebDesigners.com and that number is moving up really quickly.

How do we do that?

Well i thought long and hard about how to best show the people who make SpicyWebDesigners.com what it is the important stats because after all you want to know who is seeing you and who is the most viewed and most popular, etc.

5 Top viewed web designers on SpicyWebDesigners.com

I wasn’t sure if I wanted to post the full list of web designers and the number of views each web designer’s interview yielded. Let me know If you’d like to see the full list. So here are the top 5 most viewed designers on SpicyWebDesigners.com…

Stay tuned for October’s stats which I am sure will be higher as we grow faster and faster and if you are web designer that hasn’t been interviewed and you’d like to be interviewed just contact me today.

Luc Arnold

founder

SpicyWebDesigners.com

I had the chance to interview Pete from Bapple.com.au (the interview is coming shortly) and he responded with a few questions of his own including “Can I make you a spicy web designer’s website header? I’m baffled by the “Flash News Theme” title, I’m assuming it’s the standard WordPress template header.” Of course I answered that I was interested and I was using a template that I’ve started to modify as Spicy Web Designers grows. I am going to be posting some stats as to how the site is doing because things are going great for it being the first month and all. Can’t wait to see what Pete comes up with!

Update: Here is the logo that Pete designed for SpicyWebDesigners.com.  Let me know what you think about it.

Luc Arnold
Founder
SpicyWebDesigners.com

It’s officially fall!  Time to break out the sweaters, eat warm foods, get ready for christmas (not just yet) and interview more people in the web design industry.  In my quest to offer not only web designers a place to be featured but also an open forum for people to share their insights into the world of web design i’ve started reviewing web design firms as well.  Now you may ask “Why would you wanna go and do something like that?” and the answer is simple.  Many people and companies looking for web designers find it hard to know who to trust? who is the best? and other questions like this.  It’s the reason i started this site about a month ago and to be honest so far the response has been great for such a new website.

Clearly, people love to read about web designer’s experiences and I’ve got the stats that show it.  Maybe i’ll post them up so you can have a look… if you are interested?

What to expect at SpicyWebDesigners.com moving forward…

• Focus on continuing to review the hottest web designers
• New Focus on reviewing and interviewing the hottest web design firms

Yes, that is the big plan.  I’ve already had the chance to review and interview my first web design firm “Core Media Design” a little while ago and it is my plan to keep on interviewing established web design firms to help people considering a web design company with which one to go with.   Back to searching for the hottest web designers…

Luc Arnold

founder

SpicyWebDesigners.com

I just wanted to write a post about two more great web designers that i am getting the courtesy of interviewing in the next little while.  The first is a guy that i a lot of web designers and web design lovers know as the “WordPress RockStar”, Adii out of South Africa.  The second is Veerle Pieters who is an equally excellent web designer that has the skills that pay the bills!  If you are reading this and you think your web design talents are out of this world then please contact me.  Stay tuned for more web designer interviews and keep on building those sexy websites that we all love!

Luc Arnold

founder

SpicyWebDesigners.com

I wanted to take a minute out of interviewing the hottest web designers from around the world to mention an excellent resource website. LogoDesignLove, is a website that David Airey put together for one reason… the Love of Logos! While he is not technically a “web designer” per se but he is a very talented guy who is doing something great over at LogoDesignLove. It’s well worth a look if you are looking for inspiration or ideas for your own web design products and even though he is not a web designer we’d still love the opportunity to interview him soon. Maybe he’ll be so kind? You never know!  More web designer interviews coming soon,

Luc Arnold

Founder

SpicyWebDesigners.com