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07
Feb
2012

40+ Apps & Tools To Customize Your Facebook Pages

Facebook now has over 800 million active users around the world. If it were a country, it would be the third largest in the world (right behind China and India), and more than twice the size of the United States.

So it’s pretty much vital for anyone trying to promote a product, service, event, or cause to create a Facebook page. While other social networks (Google+ among them) are making gains, Facebook is still the largest and most popular out there, and that’s unlikely to change in the immediate future (and besides, Google+ doesn’t even allow brand pages yet).

One of the biggest mistakes brands make when creating Facebook pages is to just use the default tabs and default content. They post nothing but self-promotional updates and have no realy ways of interacting with their fans. Basically, their pages are boring.

The answer to this common problem is to make use of all the custom content applications and tabs available for Facebook pages. You can add custom welcome tabs, video tabs, feed your blog or other RSS feed into your news feed, import your tweets, and a lot more. Finding the apps to do all this, though, is a bit trickier.

In this guide, we’ll show you some of the best apps for Facebook pages and how to best use them. While it would be impossible to cover every app available (there are thousands that can be used on pages), this post will get you started.

More related posts:

Customizable Tabs

Creating completely custom tabs is the bread-and-butter of Facebook Pages. These apps make it easy to create completely custom tabs for just about anything.

First Impression

First Impression is North Social’s landing page app. The CMS built into the app makes it easy to create, edit, and update the page. It also includes the ability to customize the image and message that get posted when someone shares you page. Pricing for North Social apps is based on the number of fans you have (less than 1,000 fans is only $19.99 per month) and all accounts come with a 14 day free trial.

Welcome Tab

Welcome Tab is Involver’s landing page app. It makes it simple to create a custom branded splash page for your FB Page that invites visitors to become fans.

TabMaker

TabMaker is a free tool for creating custom tabs for your Page. You can create pages in a WYSIWYG editor, making it accessible for non-tech-savvy users. There are additional apps you can add to your tabs, both free and paid.

Social Candy

Social Candy offers content management and marketing tools for creating and managing professional, customized Facebook Pages, with no technical skills required. Subscriptions start at $29.99 per month, though you can try Social Candy for free.

ShortStack

ShortStack lets you create a number of specialized tabs for your Page, including fan-only content, sweepstakes and contests, custom contact forms, and more. They offer a number of widgets for adding functionality to your pages, including Flickr, images, voting, polls, virtual gifts, countdowns, iFrames, videos, and more. Their free account can handle Pages with up to 2,000 fans, and paid plans start at $15 per month.

Tabsite

TabSite is a fan page platform that lets you easily customize your Facebook page. It uses widgets to let you customize the content that appears on your custom tabs. Widgets available include everything from images and text content to YouTube channels, RSS feeds, and contact forms. They offer a free plan with up to 2 tabs per fan page, advertising in the footer, and a limited number of widgets. Paid subscriptions start at $5 per month, and there’s also a full white label option available.

Lujure Social Suite

The Lujure Social Suite offers a number of widgets and apps for customizing your fan page, including iFrames, YouTube, PayPal, Google Maps, Countdowns, Twitter, Live Chat, Tumblr, Real Estate, Skype, Vimeo, and more. Their free plan allows one tab and access to all the applications. Paid plans start at $30 per month and include all the applications, plus an unlimited number of pages and tabs.

Fan Page Engine

Fan Page Engine makes it really simple and easy to design your own custom tabs. They have a drag and drop interface for creating pages, offer “reveal” tabs (fan gates) to increase likes to your page, and they have help videos to guide you in creating your own tabs. Their Basic subscription starts at just $4.97 per month.

Video Players and Tabs

There are a ton of video players and tabs for Facebook pages out there, so we’ll only cover a few of them. If the ones below don’t do what you need, you can rest assured that there probably is an app out there somewhere that does, you’ll just have to do a bit more research.

YouTube Tab

The YouTube Tab, from TabFusion, lets you easily add a YouTube tab to your fan pages. While it’s not free, pricing is a reasonable $10 per year. It’s a very versatile tab that can be easily customized to fit your needs, and is already used by a number of high-profile brands, including DC Shoes, Nissan Japan, and Peugeot.

Video Channel

Video Channel from North Social lets you add and organize YouTube video content directly. You can customize the tab header, add a fan gate so visitors have to like your page prior to watching video content, commenting is optional on videos, and there’s management options for sharing. It requires a North Social subscription, which starts at $19.99 per month.

Video Premiere

Video Premiere is another video tab app from North Social that is focused on showcasing the release of new video by displaying a single large format YouTube video on your page. It includes fan gate functionality, a customizable header, sharing management, and optional on-page comments. It requires a North Social subscription, which starts at $19.99 per month.

Best YouTube Channel for Pages

Best YouTube Channel for Pages lets you display playlists or your channel and will show up to fifty of your most recent videos. The app is reasonably priced at $9.99.

Hubnut

Hubnut is a widget directly from Vimeo. Just create your Hubnut with your Vimeo videos and then paste the code it gives you into any custom tab that allows HTML.

Blip.tv Tab

Blip.tv Tab is another app from TabFusion. This one lets you includes your Blip.tv videos on your Facebook Page. The background image and text colors can be customized, and the app is only $10 for the year.

Vimeo Tab

Vimeo Tab is also from TabFusion. It only works with Vimeo Plus accounts, and includes all your videos and channels. The background and text colors of the app are customizable. Vimeo Tab is $10 for the year.

Contests

Running a contest on your FB page can greatly increase the number of fans you have if you run the contest well and get the word out. There are a number of apps that can help you run a contest or sweepstakes. It’s important to be very careful when running a Facebook promotion or contest, as it’s vital that you adhere to Facebook’s rules, or risk having your page deleted without warning. This is why using a third-party application can be a good idea, as they make sure everything is set up according to Facebook’s rules.

Votigo

Votigo offers a number of contest and promotion apps for your page, including photo and video contests, and a viral sweepstakes app. Both apps are still in beta, and are currently very inexpensive, at only a couple of cents per month.

ContextOptional Contest

ContextOptional offers a Contest app for adding a contest to your page. You can add photo contests, video contests, and essay contests (or a combination of the three) to your page, with the ability for fans to upload their own content and where fans can vote on entries.

ContextOptional Sweepstakes

ContextOptional also offers a Sweepstakes app, which gives you complete control over the design of your sweepstakes tab. You can gate entries with a requirement to like the brand page or provide an email address or mobile phone number. You can also control the number of entries per fan, and collect custom information from each entrant.

North Social Sweepstakes

The North Social Sweepstakes app lets you launch a sweepstakes in minutes on your FB page. It supports fan gates, includes tools for building your subscriber lists, and lets you embed a simple, customizable info-capture form. A North Social subscription is required.

Momentus Media Contest

The Momentus Media Contest app lets you create video, photo, and text-based contests, with winners decided by a judging process that you define.

Sweepstakes & Contests

Sweepstakes & Contests from Friend2Friend makes it easy to set up a sweepstakes or contest tab, including a form for collecting data, photo uploads, and more. Fan gates are also supported, as are newsfeed Share options to help word spread about your page.

Strutta Contests

Strutta Contests lets you create photo, video, audio, or text-based contests quickly and easily. Users can comment and vote on entries, share the contests through Facebook and Twitter, and four conest configurations are supported: public vote, judges pick, public vote for finalists with final winner picked by judges, or judges pick finalists and public votes on the winner.

Blog, RSS Feeds, and Other Imports

Feeding your blog or other RSS feeds directly into your FB page is a great idea. It means your page regularly has new content added, and also drives more traffic to your blog. You can also import your Twitter or other social network feeds directly into your Facebook page, which can greatly simplify keeping your page up-to-date. Some apps let you import the feeds directly to your newsfeed while others give you the option to just have it import to a tab.

Blog Tab

Blog Tab, a free app from TabFusion, lets you include your favorite blog within a tab on your page. You just provide the RSS or XML feed and Blog Tab does the rest.

Google+ Tab

The Google+ Tab, free from TabFusion, lets you import your Google+ stream as a tab within your Facebook page.

Tumblr Tab

Tumblr Tab, from TabFusion, lets you include your Tumblr blog as a tab within your Facebook page. The app is $10 per year.

Selective Tweets

Selective Tweets lets you update your Facebook status from Twitter, just by appending the #fb hashtag to the tweets you want to post. This way you’re not cluttering up your Page’s feed with tweets that may or may not be relevant.

North Social Twitter Feed

North Social’s Twitter Feed app makes it easy to import your Twitter feed into your fan page. It includes a customizable header, easy design interface, and management for sharing options.

Involver Twitter

Involver’s Twitter app syndicates your Twitter feed directly to your Facebook Page’s newsfeed. It requires a free Basic Involver subscription.

RSS Graffiti

RSS Graffiti syndicates RSS feeds to your Facebook wall. It can support multiple feeds and multiple walls, you choose the combination.

Involver RSS Feed

Involver’s RSS Feed app lets you syndicate your blog to the news tab on your Facebook page and automatically pushes updates to your fans’ news feeds. It’s included with a free Basic Involver subscription.

North Social RSS Feed

North Social’s RSS Feed app supports fan gates, have a customizable header, and includes the ability to customize the image and messaging when content is shared by your users. It requires a North Social subscription, starting at $19.99 per month.

eCommerce Tabs

The addition of ecommerce tabs to Facebook is relatively new. Until recently, the only way to sell things through Facebook was to redirect users to a different site to make purchases. Now, there are a number of apps that let you sell directly through Facebook (and, in some cases, other social media sites).

Owjo

Owjo lets you manage multiple storefronts on different social networks through a single interface. It even lets you host your store on other people’s websites by offering a cut of revenue. It’s easy to customize the look and feel of your site, has a completely secure payment platform, and even lets you create product bundles. It’s free to open an Owjo store, there’s no contract, and you only pay once you start making sales (you pay 7% of each sale plus normal credit card processing fees).

BigCommerce SocialShop2

BigCommerce lets you sell on a variety of platforms, including Facebook through their SocialShop2 app. You get a complete store on Facebook with point and click installation, a customizable display banner, real-time product search, and complete orders and returns right from Facebook. SocialShop2 is included free on all BigCommerce plans.

LunarStore

LunarStore, from LunarMods, is a freemium ecommerce app for Facebook that offers payment through PayPal or Amazon checkout and can be set up in as little as 15 minutes. There’s a free plan that has a 5% transaction fee but no monthly fee and allows for up to 50 products. Their paid plans allow for more items (and multiple photos for each item) and start at $19.95/month.

ShopTab

ShopTab is a Facebook app that includes inventory management, support for multiple languages and currencies, and FB share integration. Plans start at $10/month for up to 500 products. All the plans come with 24/7 support and a free 7-day trial.

Ecwid

Ecwid is an ecommerce widget provider that lets you easily set up a Facebook store in minutes. Ecwid can be integrated with virtually any site, including most common CMSs and even sites designed with programs like iWeb. In addition to integrating with Facebook, it also works with MySpace, Blogger, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Ning, and many more. You can use it with a variety of payment methods, including PayPal and Google Checkout, too. There are both free and paid plans with Ecwid, with the main difference being the number of products you can have (the free plan allows up to 100, while the paid plan allows up to 20,000).

Payvment

Payvment lets you set up a Facebook store for free. There’s a free version and two paid plans (starting at $29.95/month), with slightly different features for each. The main advantages paid plans have are that they automate promotion to fans and offer full analytics. All the plans allow for CSV catalog importing, social sharing through Facebook, Twitter, and email, setting of “featured” items, automated inventory control, and much more.

VendorShop

VendorShop is a free social shopping Facebook app with a number of useful features. You can have fan-only discounts to entice people to like you page, and shoppers don’t have to enable any apps to purchase from you. There are no subscription or transaction fees beyond standard PayPal fees to process your transaction.

Newsletter Signup Forms

It’s pretty important for brands to capture information about their fans outside of just Facebook. What happens if Facebook suddenly deletes your page or bans you? You will have lost the contact information of everyone who was a fan. That’s why it’s a good idea to make it easy for your fans to sign up for your newsletter from your page, and to encourage them to do so (exclusive newsletter-only offers are a great way to do just that).

MailChimp

MailChimp offers integration with Facebook in the form of a signup tab, embedding a signup form right on your Page.

Constant Contact Labs – Join My Mailing List

Constant Contact offers Join My Mailing List for setting up a subscribe form on your Facebook Page.

Other Interesting Apps

Depending on the type of page you’re creating, you might be interested in some of the following apps:

My Etsy

If you sell on Etsy, then the My Etsy app lets you add your Etsy store and/or favorites to your Facebook Page, with share functionality for each item. It also automatically posts to your news feed if one of your items is featured on the Etsy home page.

Genbook BookNow!

Genbook is scheduling software that can be integrated with Facebook to let people schedule appointments right from your FB page. It’s a great option for appointment-based businesses like salons, chiropractors, counselors, tattoo parlors, and more. A Genbook account is required to use BookNow.

Schedulicity

Schedulicity is another appointment and scheduling app that lets you connect with existing clients and lets them book appointments directly from Facebook.

PageLever

PageLever is an analytics suite for your Facebook pages. You can measure things like fan growth, mobile fans, comments, and likes, and lets you know which of your posts have performed best. There’s a free trial available, and after that plans start at $34 per month.

FAQ Page

FAQ Page makes it simple to create a F.A.Q. tab on your fan page. Enter questions and answers and it will automatically format them with a list of questions and accordian-format answers.

Poll

Poll lets you create quick polls for your pages. It’s easy to use and effective at collecting user consensus and data. Photos, videos, and links can also be added into polls, making it more versatile.

Conclusion

There are thousands of apps you can use on your Facebook pages, to do just about anything you want. With new support for iFrames, you can even embed entire web pages into your Facebook Pages, with little work other than setting up the initial page. Apps make it easier for non-tech-savvy users to create custom pages, though, and aren’t going anywhere in the immediate future.

What are your favorite apps, tools, and widgets for custom Facebook pages? Leave a comment below to share your finds with other readers!

Tags: facebook, Social Media, Web 2.0
Posted in Photoshop

06
Feb
2012

Networking Guide for Bloggers: Choose People Wisely, You Must (Part 3)

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I’m sure you can relate to this and agree that selecting the right people to reach out to is the most important step on your way to success (whatever success is, since we’re talking networking).

If you do this right, clearly, you’ll be able to build strong relationships with great people. If you take a more random or less thought-through approach then your mileage may vary, so to speak.

networking 03 Networking Guide for Bloggers: Choose People Wisely, You Must (Part 3)

Clearly, contacting everyone whose email address you can get your hands on is not the best idea. You don’t need to be in touch with the whole world. A small group of people who you really want to meet and get to know is more than enough.

Quick note:
This post is a part of a series titled – Networking Guide for Bloggers. Be sure to check back next week for more! If you’ve missed the previous post(s), here are the links:

Part 1 – Networking for Bloggers: Why It Is Important
Part 2 – Networking for Bloggers: Setting Your Goals and Rules

Good starting point

There are a couple of things to keep in mind when choosing the people you want to reach out to. First of all, let’s talk the areas/niches those people are in.

There are three main places where you can go to find interesting people:

Look into your niche.
Look into your passions.
Search for like-minded people.

Your Niche

Now, looking into your niche is self explanatory. You simply investigate what’s going on in your niche, and find all the interesting (for whatever reason) people.

There are no rules, someone interesting is simply someone interesting. Once you stumble upon such a person you’ll know that it’s them.

Your Passions

This is an area that might mean exactly the same as your niche, but not always. Consider this example: If you’re a guitar blogger, looking into your niche means going through different websites and blogs, and trying to find interesting authors. But going through your guitar passion means finding other guitarists, guitar teachers, and other people that might have only a presence on Twitter, for example, and not even a website.

Remember, it’s not strictly business, so grading people solely depending on the sizes of their sites rarely turns out well. Even people with seemingly no connections might be extremely helpful for all kinds of advice or help.

Like-minded People

Finally, what I mean by like-minded people are people who share a similar journey to yours. Let’s use the same example. If you’re a beginner guitar blogger, you might consider reaching out to some beginner bloggers in other areas, not only guitar. Also, you might choose to reach out to someone who has already achieved the goals you are trying to reach right now (and they don’t have to be within the same niche as well).

Advice from those kinds of people is often invaluable. Seeing what other people are doing in different niches, and then applying it to your own can give you a real head start before your competition realizes what’s going on.

Different groups of people

OK, we’ve covered some places where you can find interesting people. Now let’s talk what kinds of people to look for. Three categories here: peers, a-listers (E.g. celebrities) and mentors.

Peers

A peer is someone who’s at a similar stage that you are at. In other words, it’s someone who you can share your journey with. There’s rarely anything better than discussing your plans and planning future projects with someone who’s talking to you from an equal level.

How to recognize such people? First, start by searching for some blogs that appear to be getting the same publicity as yours does, or slightly more of it.

Look at things like average number of comments, shares (retweets, likes), PageRank of the blog (you can check this at http://www.prchecker.info/ or by using a FireFox plugin called SearchStatus), Alexa rank of the blog (http://www.alexa.com), number of RSS subscribers (if the blog owner shares this). I know that there are a lot more metrics you can look into, but using just the ones here is more than enough to recognize a peer.

Peers are great for networking. They always keep you accountable, and force you to constantly work on your growth if you don’t want to be left behind. Building a network of peers has a lot more value in itself than just helping you to achieve your initial goals. This is probably the most valuable group of people you should reach out to.

A-listers

A-listers or celebrities in your niche can help you in many different ways. And you don’t even have to ask for that help. In most cases, just the sole act of you doing something for them is helping you already.

For instance, in the blogging niche, the sole act of you working with someone like Darren Rowse on a project bumps up your brand a lot. Even though you might be participating in the project for free, with no actual monetary compensation.

A-listers can also introduce you to many influential people, and vouch for you when it’s really important. Moreover, working with these kinds of people makes you much more experienced, and more knowledgeable about how things are being handled at the top.

Your niche’s celebrities are very easy to find. Probably, you don’t even have to search for them, you just know who it is from the top of your mind.

However, getting in touch with them, and building a relationship is much harder than it is with peers. You have to understand that A-listers are hit from every angle by other people who want to achieve the same thing you want, so getting through the filter is much more difficult.

If someone says no then don’t take it personally. You never should. Just proceed with your strategy like nothing ever happened. Busy people have to say no if they want to be able to do anything in a day, soon you’ll face this situation yourself.

However, depending on the exact person you’re trying to contact you might stumble on different personality types. Just like in real life, some people are great, and some are not. Don’t believe anyone who tells you that every A-lister is a great person, this can’t realistically be the case.

The goal while dealing with celebrities in your niche is to be able to talk to them from the same level, like you’re equals. I know that when you’re just starting out they are popular and you are not, but you are still same human beings, and there’s no point in one of you being treated with less respect. Keep that in mind.

Mentors

Finally, a mentor. Having a mentor is truly a great thing. A mentor is someone who’s much more experienced than you, and hopefully has already done what you are trying to do. Advice from such a person is often invaluable. Especially if you’re stuck at something and can’t find a good way out.

Identifying your desired mentor is not difficult. Simply choose the person you’re looking up to the most. Someone whose actions have always been highly inspirational to you. Someone who’s books/posts/blogs you’ve always been reading.

One more thing to think about is what exactly do you want to learn from this person? What are the first 5 questions you might have for this person? Your mentor should be someone you know you could easily spend many hours talking to on various topics related to what you’re doing.

Once you know who it is, you have to come up with a strategy to get this person to become your mentor (which we will discuss in the next episodes).

Now, your mentor doesn’t have to necessarily know that they are indeed your mentor. For them, you might be someone who they like contacting and talking to or exchanging emails containing various advice.

Also, sometimes you don’t even have to talk to your mentor to get some advice. Sometimes looking up some information on what they did in a similar situation that you’re in (when facing a similar problem), is more than enough to get you going.

Unfortunately, there’s no guarantee that you’re going to be able to connect to your mentor and build any kind of relationship. The problem is similar to the one with A-listers – many people trying to achieve the exact same thing you are trying to achieve. So if you can’t seem to reach a given person you might want to select someone else.

Interestingly, getting a mentor is often easier than building a relationship with celebrities in your niche. I think it has something to do with our mindset. We tend to be much more careful and much more respectful when approaching a mentor.

Action time! Now it’s up to you to go ahead and select the groups of people you want to get in touch with.

A simple path you can follow

Select a group of 15 peers, either in your niche, your passions or other like-minded people.
Select 5 celebrities in your niche or broader niches (in case yours is too narrow).
Select 1 mentor you truly want to contact.

These 21 people are the starting point for you. In the next parts we’re going to discuss how to go about contacting them and building those relationships.

Of course, if you want to select a bigger group of people I don’t advise against it, but you might find it a lot more challenging to be able to handle all the initial communication. And you can’t mess that up. Often, if you fail to make some things happen on your side you might burn the contact completely.

Now, let’s get down to business. The next part is all about ways of approaching people. Until then don’t forget to subscribe to get the posts delivered straight to your inbox.

Did you manage to create your own list of 21 people? Feel free to share your opinion and thoughts you’ve had when completing the list.

Tags: blog, blogger, networking, Web 2.0
Posted in Photoshop

04
Feb
2012

A Look Into: Black and White in Design

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Black and white are too of the most emotive visuals in nature. Polar opposites, the two seem to stand for opposing metaphors, as well. Black is usually seen as dark, a symbol of authority and power, and, occasionally, as a symbol of evil. White is a sign of purity and brightness and of a natural innocence that combats its opponent.

black white zebra strips A Look Into: Black and White in Design
(Image source: Fotolia)

The real benefit of these two shades is to meld together in a contrasting design. Using such a stark dichotomy, you immediately establish a dynamic in the design that is impossible for the viewer to ignore. It is clean, can be either simple or complex, and has endless opportunities that other color schemes just don’t manage to generate. It all just balances itself out.

Many graphic designers today see that the best way to stick out in today’s full color world is not to join them but to set themselves apart by refusing to follow the norm. Duality has become the name of the game, giving us every reason to try it ourselves to see the effect.

Let’s take a look at how black-and-white designs are being used in various graphics, with great success.

Product Packaging Design

1300 on Fillmore
This specialty food product is a line created for the 1300 on Fillmore restaurant, run by chef David Lawrence. Each bottle design features a simple black-and-white picture of his hands as they work with various ingredients, each one related to the item itself.

1300 on fillmore A Look Into: Black and White in Design

For example, you see Lawrence handling cornmeal for the jalapeno cornbread mix or dicing garlic cloves for the roasted garlic and bacon vinaigrette. The design is elegant and effective, without any color at all. It looks even more striking against the clear bottles of liquid dressings that have their own, natural color.

Henry (Lagarde)
This Argentinian wine is already well known throughout Europe for its taste. But the packaging needed to be just as memorable. Using a black bottle instead of the traditional, shaded green glass, they used both a black-and-white label and a matching box.

Henry A Look Into: Black and White in Design

There are two different lines of the boxes, one that is black with white font and one that is white with black font, featuring a black-and-white picture of a cluster of grapes on a vine as the only decoration. The slight reddish color of the foil on the bottle works well with this design.

Scent Stories
Probably the greatest example of black-and-white packaging, Scent Stories is a product line of perfumes made as a personal project by Ah&Oh Studio. It is based on four famous authors: Edgar Allan Poe, Marquise de Sade, George Orwell and Pierre de Laclos.

scent stories A Look Into: Black and White in Design

scent stories 02 A Look Into: Black and White in Design

Each scent was tailored to the tone of the writers’ stories, with a small explanation of each on the packaging. On the back of each bottle is a snippet from the authors’ most well known stories. Then, the bottles were topped with finely crafted busts for each. For de Sade it is a screaming women, for Poe a grinning skull, for Orwell a pig and for de Laclos a faceless, wigged aristocrat.

More: Showcase of 50 Black & White Creative Package Designs

Website Design

Marcin Kaniewski Photography
This photographer has implemented a really brilliant design for his website. Not only does it use the beautiful contrast of black and white very effectively, going so far as to remove all color from even the thumbnails, but it acts as a portfolio as well.

marcin kaniewski photography A Look Into: Black and White in Design

Each image features one of Kaniewski’s photographs, which can be viewed by clicking for a larger image. You can also change the background from black to gray or white.

Subtraction
Subtraction is the website for social collage app Mixel, created by former New York Times design editor Khoi Vinh. He took an interesting approach to the main image by using his large black dog as the featured subject. Then, he built the rest of the site in black and white around it.

subtraction A Look Into: Black and White in Design

The unique factor here is not the design itself but the way Vinh manages to make the contrast appear friendly and warm rather than the usual intensity the dual shades create.

2otsu
This portfolio site for a graphic design group has been featured on a number of lists for best overall concept. Available in both Flash and HTML, it uses viewer interaction to great effect. You start by deciding what format you want to view it in. Everything at this point is black and white.

2otsu A Look Into: Black and White in Design

Then, it takes you to the main page and has you select what color you want for the interface. From there, you are directed to the now customized list of fast, scrolling portfolio images, which are black and white until you click on them and they expand in full color.

More: Showcase Of Beautiful Black And White Websites

Logo Design

Culinary Zen
The black background with the white text and image is very direct and well made. It is impossible not to have your eyes immediately drawn to it as a whole rather than any particular part of the logo.

culinary zen A Look Into: Black and White in Design

The use of the "C" doubling as a plate is another nice touch that brings it all together by giving the image itself more relevance to the actual name, not just the focus of the company.

Silent Monkey
Unlike the logo above, Silent Monkey uses a white background to give the image more light and brevity. The cartoon ape in the center is cute and simple, and the lack of a mouth brings the image together with the name very effectively.

silent monkey A Look Into: Black and White in Design

The text is extremely small, which is actually a benefit, as it makes the words seem somehow quieter, as though they are being whispered to the viewer.

Fashion Australia
Not all shades have to be so bold, and actually, using intermediate colors is a good idea for less stark logos. This one uses a dark gray that softens the image. It works well with the only color in the logo, which is a pink bowtie on the kangaroo.

fashion australia A Look Into: Black and White in Design

It is also a softened version of a brighter shade, mixing it beautifully.

More: 35 Stunning Black And White Logos

Conclusion

Black and white are two of the most useful shades you can find for any design project. What are some of your own favorite examples of black-and-white design?

Tell us in the comments.

Tags: black, web design, white
Posted in Photoshop

04
Feb
2012

Weekly Web Design and Development Inspiration – N.124

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This is our weekly selection of our favorite web designs from the past week, thanks to everybody for their recommendations. Feel free to comment and let us know what you think.

Have you tried StylesInspiration yet? It is our web design showcase that aims to not only showcase the best and most innovative web design styles currently available, it also aims to give you a visual overview of current web design trends and highlight the latest in innovative web technologies. You’ll love it :)

Brian Gardner

RSTOO

Ri Channel

Leading Art

Audemars Piguet

Custora

One Reason

6 Ways to Unleash Creativity in the Workplace

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The demand for creativity from employees is rising in this age of rapid technological advancement. This is evident when we see multinational companies like Google setting up something known as a the 20 percent program or policy where Google developers get to spend 20 percent of their working hours (a day at work) on side projects. It was an attempt to give employees the time and space to think innovatively. Indeed, the policy works well, with some of the best products of Google (e.g. Google News) originating from the program.

unleash creativity 6 Ways to Unleash Creativity in the Workplace
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Some of you may think that creativity is an inborn trait rather than something that can be learned and developed. This may be so, but without a conducive environment for creativity to be expressed, how can we expect to see ideas arising from creative employees? This is precisely what this article is about, to show you ways which you can adopt in the workplace to encourage employees to seek innovation in their work.

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1. Reward Creativity

If you want to get employees to think out-of-the-box, you need to motivate them with some form of rewards. Moreover, suggestions have to be taken seriously so that employees are willing to come up with more creative ways of improving the workplace. Otherwise, everyone will think it’s a waste of time to squeeze out creative juices for suggestions that won’t be implemented anyway.

To kick-start things up, you can set goals for your employees to think up of some ways of making work processes more efficient. Perhaps each employee can be tasked to provide one suggestion by the end of each week and you’ll assess which idea is the best. This will be followed with a reward for the employee and equally important, implementation. The reward can be tangible ones like giving monetary incentives, or intangible ones like recognition from the organization by announcing the winner to the rest.

2. Anonymity & Confidentiality

Your employees may already be motivated to be creative but have no outlets to voice out their wonderful ideas. While the outspoken ones can always speak to the management about some suggestions they have in mind, others may be too shy or afraid to do so in this manner. Providing a suggestion box or anything similar would grant these employees the anonymity and confidentiality they crave, thereby inspiring the creative spirit that you wish to instill as part of the organization culture.

However, some of the most creative ideas are born out of brainstorming sessions where a group of people discuss and debate about possible solutions to a problem. Having such a private channel for employees to contribute ideas may thus hinder the creative process. Moreover, those who provide the effective ideas won’t get identified and get the recognition they need. It will be wise to balance both private and public mediums for employees to propose their suggestions.

3. Innovation Teams

A more systematic way of promoting creativity in the workplace is to set up innovation teams. Each innovation team will be tasked to come up with ideas on how to improve the work process of a particular aspect. Deadlines are to be set to ensure that the teams present their ideas and be rewarded if they are excellent. When done properly, this will signal to everyone that the organization values work-related creativity.

One catch is that such innovation teams may be seen as too ‘deliberate’ to some employees. Creativity is supposed to be spontaneous; ideas arising from the strokes of genius. Having such teams may make it seem like an extra chore for those assigned to them, and the systematic approach (i.e. the focus on a single topic) may come across as too rigid for creativity to flourish.

4. Support Creativity

Employees may be unwilling to take risks because they do not know whether the organization supports creativity. This is when you need to guide the organization in the right direction, and show that creativity is highly valued. This has a lot to do with how receptive you are to their ideas, and how you make known your intention to be a more creative company.

One reason why employees are not thinking out-of-the-box or coming up with solution that are vastly different from how things used to be done is that they may be afraid of the repercussions of making mistakes. Risk-taking has to be encouraged and be seen as a norm in the organization. Developing a creative culture takes time, but it starts off with management being more open-minded and less judgmental to the suggestions by employees.

5. Diversity Among Employees

How can different ideas exchange if everyone thinks in a similar manner? Employees with comparable backgrounds, qualifications, experience, etc creates a homogeneous working environment. Perhaps having such homogeneity between the employees will facilitate team-bonding and such, but when it comes to workplace creativity, a uniform and agreeable crowd leaves little room for ideas to flourish.

Rather than setting stringent recruitment prerequisites, you might consider giving more allowance in your criteria. Hire staffs from different knowledge and background and get them to mingle around in projects and even company events. Organize more informal settings between employees with dissimilar profiles for the interchanging of thoughts.

6. Positive Working Environment

Sometimes, too serious a mindset can hinder creativity. Having fun during work allows one to be relaxed and that’s where one tends to get inspired with wonderful ideas. Needless to say, a stressful or even depressing work environment doesn’t give one the mood to think of doing things differently. The employee would only look forward to the end of the day.

Psychological studies have revealed that positive mood can spur creativity. The idea is that positive mood awards us with greater flexibility in thinking because our perspectives are widened. We become more open-minded in that sense and are willing to explore alternatives. Knowing such findings now, incorporating fun into the work through team-bonding activities or retreats every once in a while can be a crucial element in injecting creativity in the workplace.

Tags: creative, creativity, productivity, Web 2.0, workplace
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6 Ways to Unleash Creativity in the Workplace

1. Reward Creativity

2. Anonymity & Confidentiality

3. Innovation Teams

4. Support Creativity

5. Diversity Among Employees

6. Positive Working Environment

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