Design in Context: A Web Design Blog by Greg Kihlstrom

5 Web sites I am thankful for...

Yes, the spirit of the Thanksgiving holiday was contagious.  Here's a few sites that I'm thankful for.  There probably aren't any shockers on here.  There's plenty of much more fun sites out there, but there's something to be said for the dependable sites that always deliver what they're supposed to.

1) Technorati
It's really  just the best site about blogs. Like they say... "55 million blogs... some of them have to be good..."  Some of them are good.  Most are bad, but some are that special kind of bad that is just ... good.

2) Quicktime
I know - this is a pretty old school one, but it's still my favorite place to watch movie trailers.  Because some times sitting through them for 30 minutes in the theater just isn't enough.

3) Google Maps
For some reason I'm still amazed at this technology even though it's been out for a while. Regardless, I find myself getting lost less easily using Google vs. Mapquest.  My only request is that someone find a way for me to download addresses, routes onto my car's GPS.

4) iStockPhoto
There are tons of low-cost stock photo sites out there but for some reason I keep coming back here. I can almost always find a cheap photo to at least use in a design comp here.

5) Rotten Tomatoes
Sure, I still have my OWN opinions about movies... i think.  But it does help to know if the movie I've been looking forward to seeing just got a 25% according to the Rotten Tomatoes meter.  50% and below and I've learned to wait for it on cable...

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Greg RS Kihlström is an award-winning Designer and is currently Creative Director at Carousel30, a Washington, DC-based firm that specializes in Web site Design, Video Production and Post-Production and Print Graphic Design.

 

Why Another Blog About Web Design?

I decided to start this blog because there's some things that many of my potential clients ask before we start a project, whether it's a corporate Web Design project or a small online marketing campaign, a video project, or some print marketing collateral, and I'd like to take the opportunity to address some of them because I think that if the people that I run into have these questions, there must be plenty of others that do as well.

My company, Carousel30, has a process where any project that we are involved in starts with what we call a Discovery phase.  This is where we meet with the client in person and over the phone to determine marketing goals for the project: what they want to say, who they are saying it to and how they want to say it.

This is also an opportunity for me and my team to really get to know our new client, their industry, their customers and the culture of the company we are working with.  It's one of my favorite parts of my job.  Carousel30 hasn't set out to specialize in a specific industry or market sector simply because it's too much fun to learn about something different every day and I feel that that constant learning and discovery helps us to be better designers, marketers and business people.

So, that's why "Another Blog About Web Design."

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Greg RS Kihlström is an award-winning Designer and is currently Creative Director at Carousel30, a Washington, DC-based firm that specializes in Web site Design, Video Production and Post-Production and Print Graphic Design.