You know the scenario: you land on a website for Business X and beneath the logo is a banner that fades from a slogan over a flat color to a pair of suits shaking hands with big ear-to-ear grins. Nothing says “corporate cliche” like bad stock photography. Sigh.

We all know how cheesy this is. And yet clients still ask for it and so many designers still succumb to the pressure to create that corporate stock look. It doesn’t have to go down like that. As the designer, you have the ability to just say “no” to bad stock photography and corporate clip art. A little creativity, and you can create a web presence for your client that will actually set their company apart from the boring template web design look. It just takes a little extra push, and a desire to get beyond.

We’re so used to seeing the same stock photos on everyone’s site - I’m convinced that there are only 100 people who pose for stock photography, but they are featured on probably 200,000 homepages each, working on a laptop, sitting at a conference table, talking on a mobile phone. Everyone knows they don’t work at this company because you’ve seen the same people on dozens of sites the same day. Doesn’t it make more sense to do something to set your client’s company apart a bit? Maybe create something a bit more personal and original?

Make it Custom or Don’t Bother

I’ve always been a fan of the Ellis Labs solution to the company homepage. The illustration of the founders looking geeky in their lab coats with beakers makes for an amusing and stylish sense of humor about themselves. Friendly and cheeky, it makes you feel like you know these guys, and doing business with them and supporting their products comes natural. They’re the geeks next door, and you dig ‘em. At least I do.

Another site that makes great use of graphic illustrations to set themselves apart from the competition is YoDiv (otherwise known as You Design They Develop) - most outsourcing firms have really bad faux corporate looking sites, but these guys have the right idea - They are marketing their services to designers after all…

Investing is Simple (IIS) has a great homepage graphic that sets them appart from the usual investment website - I think investment and banking sites use more crappy stock photos and corpo clip art than anyone usually. I’m not sure pink was the best color choice, but the graphic definitely adds a spark to investing, an activity most people think is about as exciting as watching grass grow.

As of late, Jeremy and I have been working on some pretty neat illustrations for a variety of websites, including an online poster art contest for STD awareness.

As well as our sweet-toothed logo for our new side project Popwit, an online arts and culture magazine we’re working toward launching in teh next month or two:

(note: we’ll be looking for contributors in the areas of art, sound, architecture and design, but I’ll make a formal announcement later on when we’re nearing public launch).

Anyway, my point is simply please, for the love of God (or whatever greater power you believe in) - DON’T MAKE ANY MORE WEBSITES THAT LOOK LIKE THEY CAME AS PART OF THE CORPORATE STARTER KIT. This is not a way for the client to come off as conservative and business-like, it’s a way to look cheap, dated and unprofessional. It’s up to you to tell them this - to give them something better for their money. Illustration is only one component - original photography, custom icons, product demos, typography and graphic treatments can all play nicely together to create a visually distinct web presence.

Additional Inspiration

Can’t get your creative juices flowing? (ew…I hate that analogy…sorry) - Anyway, here are some illustrators’ sites I dig. Maybe they’ll inspire you as they have me:

The Alamo Basement - Kelly Korvec’s illustration portfolio.

Kev Adamson - An interesting mix of hand drawn and digital illustration

Kun-Sung Chung - Digital Illustrator’s portfolio

Alberto Cerriteno - Digital Artist

If you have any other illustrators you like or illustration inspiration resources, feel free to add them into the comments section (yes, it’s okay to link yourself as an inspiration resource - if you’re good I would love to see your stuff).

As entire frameworks and bundled Web 2.0 applications are becoming abundant on the open source front, the assumption that only profit-earning businesses can have the luxury of functional application add-ons to their sites such as social networking features, blogs, and wikis is quickly dissolving. This article is geared toward providing some uses for these frameworks for nonprofit organizations and a few resources for free (or cheap) out of the box solutions that can be integrated or even become the backbone of a nonprofit site.

At Object Adjective, we’ve been working to develop such components for some of our nonprofit sector clients. And as awareness of the accessibility of web 2.0 application frameworks is becoming abundant, more non-profits are beginning to ask, is there something out there that could benefit my organization at an affordable rate? In most cases, the answer is yes. Both prepackaged frameworks and sites that host these featured services are readily available, and there are solutions to meet nonprofit initiatives, regardless of organization size.

Prepackaged frameworks can be easily installed by a web developer and can decrease costs enough to allow nonprofits to extend their sites to include new application functionalities and features without breaking the bank. Someone still has to install and customize these packages to accommodate the specific needs and objectives of the organization, and design the front end visual elements/UI, so it’s not a freebee, but development dollars are significantly cut down. Many medium to large size organizations stand to benefit greatly from putting some funding into extending their site: with an enhanced web presence, comes more recognition and more public involvement, and can be a great tool to grow a non-profit organization and increase donor awareness as well as program awareness. Read the rest of this entry »