VisionFriendly.com Blog

Focused Above the Fold

Most website users today -no scratch that, everyone is moving to fast to take the time to casually stroll through your website.  Not at least until you’ve convinced them that it’s worth their while.  This means that in the top 768 pixels (browser navigation bar included) you had better make your stand and show them why you are worth more than just window shopping.

So look at your website and at what important aspects are above fold.  Are you showcasing large attractive imagery that speaks to your audience? Are there unimportant taglines or obvious statements - why are they on your page?  You have about 10 seconds (being very generous) to entice most visitors to read/skim on.  Expect that of your home page content maybe 3-4 sentences will be read, so make sure that your designer is taking the most important tag lines and highlighting it bold and at least 5 font sizes bigger than your body text.

For your internal pages it is not quite as important.  For example, visitors who’ve reached your About us page or your blog are probably interested enough to spend some time actaully reading.  But for pages like a protfolio or other gallery focused page it is still important to see where the page breaks in the 1024 x 768 pixel arena to make sure that the page is delivered in a user friendly manner.

Would you rather bombard your customers with everything available to them and make them scroll to find the part that they are interested in, or would you rather get them focused on the best specific offering(s) that you have. 

Less is more.  The only thing your website really has to do is entice people through the use of strong photos and headlines (just like the dinosaurs of the newspaper industry have know for decades).  Your business or organization likely has a niche -something you do really well that your audience would be ready to sign up for if only they knew about it. 

You just need to help them get the ‘picture’  (not the text)

Photoshop tips for quickness

I have found that no matter how ergonomic your mouse is or how many levels of sensitivity one’s stylus has, there is nothing to make your work go faster than good use of keyboard shortcuts.  So I thought it might be useful for me to present some of the lesser know Photoshop shortcuts for your review. 

First and foremost, the simple ‘tool switch’ shortcuts are the most essential in my process and these are also the ones that I never see my designers using.  This allows you to skip the mouse moving over to the needed tool and back to the canvas.  I recommend printing them off and having them next to your screen until you’ve internalized them. 

The Tools Are:

‘M’  -  Marque Tools
‘V’  -  Move
‘L’  -  Lasso Tools
‘W’ -  Magic Wand
‘K’  -  Slice Tools
‘J’  -  Healing brush Tools
‘B’  -  Brush Tools
‘S’  -  Stamp Tools
‘Y’  – History Brush Tools
‘E’  – Eraser Tools
‘G’ - Paint Bucket/Gradient
‘R’ – Smudge/Sharpen/Blur
‘O’ – Burn/Dodge/Sponge
‘A’ – Path Selection
‘T’ – Text Tools
‘P’ – Pen Tools
‘U’ – Shape Tools
‘N’ – Notes Tools
‘I’  – Eye-dropper Tools
‘H’ – Hand (temp shortcut – Spacebar)
‘Z’ – Zoom

Additionally, any tool can be easily switched with the next in it’s series by holding the ‘alt’ key and clicking the tool.  And of course, the spacebar temporary hand tool is essential for moving the document while using a different tool as well as all of the functionality of the ‘shift’ and ‘alt’ keys within nearly every tool and function in the program, if you are unfamiliar with these, just try it, that is what undo is for.

- Happy designing.