Sorry, I’m slammed and haven’t been able to post much.  But being busy is good in this economy eh? Here are a few projects that I have been working on:

CrystalKFlower.com

AirgunsDirect.net

Crossman-Airgun.com

When testing an email campaign design, there are a few things you want to keep in mind.

First, set up multiple accounts with email providers, and spread them out among email clients on PC and Mac. I do have to say that I am an Apple guy myself, but the majority of users still use a PC. It is imparative to test both Mac and PC. Great email clients to test in are Apple’s Mail app, Thunderbird, and Microsoft’s Outlook/Outlook Express. The following email providers’ online clients are a must: Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, and if you host a domain with a provider try their email client. I personally have found success in designing for Google’s Gmail, and then testing the other clients later.

Like I said earlier, I am an Apple guy! However, testing in Mail will proove to be tough because it supports all kind of CSS strategies, divide based layouts, and background calls in div style tags. For the user, all of this is amazing to have and makes viewing a great experience. But, keep in mind that online clients like Gmail will strip out any external calls to CSS or any CSS embedded in the head, and kiss div tag reliability goodbye. When designing email layouts, it’s time to go ‘Old School’ and use tables for everything. Yes, a pain in the butt, but reliable and consistent. With tables, you can successfully call backgrounds in Gmail and trust that the layout will stick to placement and dimensions.

If you are having issues with font styles when testing, try calling the styles using a div tag. (I know I said divs are unreliable, but in the specific case of font styling, I have not experienced any issues.)

Don’t forget to test on mobile devices!!! If you don’t want to compromise your design to work around mobile limitations, then make sure you have a ‘view in browser’ link at the top of your layout. More and more people are using mobile devices to check email especially following, my personal favorite, the iPhone. With ‘new school’ devices, email still seems to be stuck in the ‘old school’ ways. So, brush up on your tables!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone (while driving somewhere in the middle of the Rockie Mountains)

Here is what my money doll came out looking like.

The first week of October, I attended PhotoshopWorld 2009. iStockPhoto had the great idea of getting a bunch of artists to get creative on some Munny dolls. They started out as plain white alien looking dolls, and after some paint and accessories they came out reflecting the personality of each artist.

The Munny doll was the ticket to the iStockPhoto after party. We were all shipped off in buses to a mansion where the reality show “Supergroup” was recorded. It was a Vegas party for sure! With an open bar, butlers carrying appetizers, and Cirque du Soleil contortionists and fire jugglers. Check out the iStockPhoto Flickr event page for the party here and see more cool photos.

In July of 2008 I designed my very first catalog.  Three weeks, Adobe CS3, two 30 in. monitors & MacPro, loud music, energy drinks, and a lot of over time apparently is a great formula for success.  My catalog design is an ACCM Award Finalist at the Multi-Channel Merchant Conference.  I’ll find out tomorrow if the design winds up winning anything. If not, I am still ecstatic about being a finalist.  I was worried about the quality of pushing out 80 pages in 3 weeks.  But hey! It’s a good start to my catalog designing career.  I could not be happier and the content was fun to work with!

Check out my work and view the spreads:
Download Steve Spangler Science 08/09 Catalog
(25.2 MB)