Andy Mangold, a twenty-year-old designer from West Chester Pennsylvainia, decided to repackage the classic Monopoly board game by Parker Brothers.

Monopoly, in spite being the classiest of all board games, unfortunately is packaged just as boringly and uncreatively as every other garbage board game on the shelves. So, I decided to repackage it… turning the class up to 11.
All of the boxes are made out of chocolate brown mat board and skinned in cream arches cover. The final package is just over 10″ x 10″ x 1.5″ and includes smaller containers for all of the various pieces and cards and a laser-cut holder for all of the houses and hotels.

Strategic Design: 6 Steps For Building Successful Websites

Strategic design is the fusion of your organizational goals with every aspect of your design process. You aren ’t simply designing a user interface that looks good and is usable and accessible. You’re designing an interface that will help you accomplish your organization’s objectives.

Because of this, blogs are also being used as internet marketing media.  Before, internet marketing is done by placing banners and links on popular websites, such as news and information sites.  Links were also included on newsletters and marketing letters sent to the members of their mailing lists.

Many people spend time reading blogs.  People read their friend’s blogs, their favorite author’s blogs, blogs on topics that they are interested in, and blogs on product reviews.  With the increasing popularity of blogging, it is even feared that people rely on blogs to get the latest news.

While getting news reports from blogs isn’t reliable, some people look for product reviews through blogs.  In some cases, this is more dependable.  While it is true that some media persons are being paid to write good reviews about a certain product, blog writers write about their actual experiences on products and services from a company.

Since there are many people who read and start their own blogs, blogs are a good medium to market a product.  With the increasing blog traffic means increase in product sales.

Blog traffic can be increased by joining affiliate programs and sites, which will list your blog under a certain search category or name.  You can also have your blog advertised in popular websites.  This, however, will cost some money and is not advisable if you have just started blogging.

A writer who has just launched his/her blog will want as much traffic as possible to increase advertisements on the site.  Also, some advertisers pay every time their link is clicked or the page that has their link is viewed.

When you have increased traffic on your blog, you should try to keep you visitors coming back and recommending your blog to friends and colleagues.

This can be done by having informative or amusing content and good blog layout and design.  You may develop your blog’s content or you can also acquire the services of a web content writer to provide you with the blog articles.

The blog’s layout and design also plays a big role.  While most of the companies offering free blog hosting offer pre-selected templates, there are also some that allows customization that if you utilize this feature correctly can increase your blog’s traffic.

Here are a few tips to make your blog stand out from the millions of blogs out there that have standard designs.

Customize the banner

The banner usually has the most generic designs that are common to the blogs from a blogging company or service.

You can personalize this banner by having a graphic with the dimensions of the banner.  You can also edit the graphic so that it will also include the title of your blog.

In this case, you can create your own graphic or you can purchase professional looking graphics online for less than $10.

Personalizing photos

Of course, most of the photos that you will be posting will be your own.  However, if you don’t customize the photos before posting them, you may miss maximizing the enhancing benefits graphics can add to the page.  Adding photo borders can help the photo stand out from the page.

It can also add to the design of your blog.  You can choose a standard border or you can also create your own border which can be associated with your blog’s templates.

Add a favicon

Don’t you think sites with icons on the address bar before the website’s URL are cool?  Many people do.  These favicons add a professional look to the URL.  These easy to do using photo or graphic editing software.

Check out blog templates, layouts, backgrounds, textures and skins from sites

There are sites that offer free blog templates, layouts, backgrounds, textures and skins.  You can make use of these so your blog will not look generic like most of the blogs hosted by the service provider.

Include RSS feeds

This is a cool way to inform people with newsreaders about your blog headlines.  Tutorials on RSS feeds are available on the internet.

Audio makes your blog more personal

Not only does audio personalizes the blog; it can also keep your visitors coming back.  You can try having streaming radio stations, mp3 file or playlists loading with your blog.

Advertisements

If you have signed-up with Google AdSense, which I am sure you would like to do, make sure that the ads are conveniently placed that these will not hinder your readers’ ease in accessing the information on your blog.

Try using these tips and you can definitely increase and retain traffic on your blog.

• Take a look at the origin of tech companies’ logos and how they evolved.

PsdGator is a new service that promises to code your design into valid, semantic and compliant xhtml/css. They also offer templates, themes or skins for WordPress and Joomla in addition to static xhtml/css. Every page is hand coded and it will work perfectly in Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Safari or any other browser.

The process

The process is easy. All you have to do is to send them your design files in any graphic file format: png, psd, jpg, ai, bmp or archive zip, rar, etc. and then they are going to slice it and code it into valid xhtml/css in just 2 business days.

The Cost

The cost of the coding is 99$ for static sites, $199 for Wordpress and $299 for Joomla designs. Moreover there will be a 25% discount for all the succeeding pages that you order. So if you’ve got a great design and you want to turn it into a website, send it to PSDGator, sit back, relax and just wait 2 days. If you want to learn more just read their frequently asked questions.

Why PSDgator?

• Loyal customers get up to 10% Discount
• Really fast delivery times
• Best price/quality ratio
• Money back guarantee

What you get!

• Valid CSS & XHTML
• Semantic & Compliant XHTML
• Cross browser compatibility
• SEO structure
• Well structured CSS
• Optimized and sliced images

Who’s it for?

• Graphic Designers - No need to worry about the technical side of coding
• Busy Web Designers - Speed up your projects by outsourcing xhtml/css coding

Charl’s post on bandwidthblog.com showcases some really innovative workspaces at some of the hottest Internet companies today. These workspaces are generally informal and designed to bring people together rather than keep them locked away in their small, grey cubicles.