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Frontpage Web Designs
Some award winning and well designed Frontpage templates can be found at Frontpage-Templates.org. This site categorizes and ranks other sites that have Frontpage templates available for free or to buy. These designs are varied and include personal, business and professional web designs.
However, because Frontpage is a proprietary piece of software, the availability of award winning templates that are free is severely limited. Usually, you will have to pay to get a Frontpage template that has won awards or that has been written by a firm or person that has received awards in the past. While the downside is that you will have to pay to get an award winning web design template, the upside is that it will be professionally designed and implemented by an award winning web designer.
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352 Media Group Tip: Earn Recognition for Your Web Design Skills
Do you want prospective employers to recognize the quality of your work? It's one thing for you to tell them that your design skills are outstanding; it's another matter entirely when a third party validates the excellence exhibited in your work. That's why its a good idea to enter your best work in web design awards programs and showcase any recognition that you earn on your resume and in your portfolio. When you are able to earn recognition as an award winning web designer, your credibility as a professional and your appeal to employers is likely to rise!
Choosing Web Design Awards Programs
Before you can be recognized for your award winning web site design, you first need to enter your work in appropriate competitions. Be sure that any contests that you enter are truly competitions, not pseudo-awards programs that simply trade recognition for payment. Those who employ web designers are likely to know which programs are valid and which don't really mean anything, so focus on recognized programs that will have a positive impact on your professional image. Examples of reputable website design awards programs include The Annual Interactive Media Awards (www.interactivemediaawards.com) and the Web Marketing Association's WebAwards (www.webaward.org) programs.
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Wordpress Web Designs
Wordpress, the popular open source blogging software, has different designs (known as 'themes') that can be applied to drastically change the look and feel of the pages.
Some of these designs have won awards, such as the Connections theme and the Red Train theme (both of which are available at themes.wordpress.net). These themes are clean, fast loading, visually appealing and conform to international Internet standards. And because Wordpress is an open source, the themes are free and can be modified however you see fit.
This is useful for a wide variety of users, since some wordpress web designs can be used for blogs, some for eCommerce sites and some web designs have been created for professional and business websites. Wordpress web designs are available for nearly every conceivable application and are easy to implement and use.
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352 Media Group Tip: Entering Web Design Awards Programs
Are you proud of the web design work that you do? Are you ready to take a step forward and earn the recognition you deserve? If you want to become an award winning web designer, the first thing you'll need to do is start entering your work in competitions that are designed to recognize award winning web designs.
How to Enter Web Design Awards Programs
The first thing you'll need to do is identify the best web design awards programs for the type of work that you do. A good starting point is to review the sites of award winning web design firms that you admire and look for the names of the awards they have received.
Once you have an idea of which programs you want to enter, you'll need to find out what is involved in earning recognition. Research the individual programs to identify the criteria, application process, and other relevant information that can help you determine which programs are a good fit for you.
Once you have selected one (or a few!) web site design awards to enter, you'll need to decide which of your works to submit and take care of completing the application process. Follow the instructions for each program to the letter, being certain to meet the deadline and provide all information requested in the specified format.
Keep in mind that you aren't likely to win or receive recognition every time you submit an application, so you may want to apply to several programs. Earning recognition as an award winning web page designer takes time and diligence, but the rewards that recognition can bring to your career are certainly worth the effort!
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Free Award Winning Web Designs
Free award winning web designs can generally be found from organizations or sites that create and host open source designs. Pages like Studio7Designs.com have designs that have won technical and non-technical awards, and that are free to use and modify as you see fit.
If you download and use a design from such a site, then you will be able to either use it in the form that won the original award, or you can change it to suit your individual needs. Such web designs are useful if you want to be quickly indexed on a search engine or want to readily attract new users with a great design.
Some designs are also useful for certain applications. For example, some types of free award winning web designs are perfect for blogs, eCommerce sites or business websites; it just depends on the design.
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352 Media Group Tip: Working for an Award Winning Web Design Firm
Do you want to work for one of the best award winning web design firms? If you are a gifted web designer, it only makes sense that you'll want to associate yourself with a company that is recognized for the quality of its work. Keep in mind that if you want to be considered for employment with a top firm, you need to be prepared to market yourself as the "best of the best" among web designers who are seeking employment.
Tips to Position Yourself as a Top Web Designer
Web Design Awards It stands to reason that firms who've earned a number of best web design awards want to hire award-winning web designers. Showcase recognition you've earned in your resume and portfolio. If you haven't earned any awards for web design work yet, get to work submitting applications to appropriate programs!
Create an Impressive Portfolio Create your portfolio with the same care you'd take when designing a website for a client. Make sure that it showcases your best work and firmly positions you as the job applicant of choice. Remember that employers who are interested in you will look at your portfolio to get a sense of your marketing savvy in addition to your design skills.
Demonstrate Results The best web design companies are looking for designers who understand that results are the true measure of whether or not a website is effective. When sharing information about your work, talk more about how the site had an impact on the client's bottom line than on the design process itself. Both are important, but what will separate you from others seeking the same jobs you want is your ability to speak about your work in terms that speak to client needs and objectives.
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Award Winning Web Designers
Some award winning web designers come from firms like 352Media.com, Coding Monkeys and Falcon Visual. These web design firms have employees that have won the firms both technical and non-technical awards.
By searching for web designers on websites such as DesignFirms.org, which gives out web design awards, you can be reasonably confident that the individual or firm that you are employing has adequate experience and technical expertise to design your website according to the latest international Internet standards, and that the quality of the work will be high.
These types of web design firms will not re-use web designs, but will instead create a completely new design for their clients should they wish it, which leads to higher quality work and a more unique experience for the people who will be visiting the websites. Have a unique design is also good for companies, since they'll be able to project a professional image to their customers that is different from their competition.
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2006 Web Design Awards
Several 2006 web design award winners came from the DesignFirms 2006 awards website. They include 206 Studios, Cellar Door Creative and dik.media. Other sites that are not web design firms that garnered awards include Anna Griffin (a stationary products website), C1s Design (a website about lighting designs) and Channel M, the homepage of a non-traditional marketing company.
DesignFirms gives out awards based on site design, compliance with international web standards and site loading time. Originality of the site design is of extreme importance, since many websites are designed with cookie cutter methods of using free templates or templates that come with popular website building software( such as Frontpage or Dreamweaver).
Compliance with international web standards is necessary for reliable access to a website. Sit loading time is also important because many people do not yet have broadband Internet access.
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Award Winning Web Design Firms
Some award winning web design firms include DesignWorks (founded in 1990 in the Silicon Valley), Evenson Design and 352Media.com, a design firm that has won numerous technical and non-technical awards.
The awards these firms have received are based upon their experience in the business of web design, their customer service record, their level of expertise and the quality of their website along with the websites or print media that they produce.
Generally, award winning web design firms can be found by doing a search online or by looking for them in the local yellow pages. Things to look for when searching for award winning web design firms are awards that have been given by other design firms, websites that clearly demonstrate why they won the awards and an easily accessible portfolio for you to browse through.
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The Purpose of Web Design Awards
Web design awards were created in the early years of the Internet as a way for people to showcase their websites. Because personal websites were just coming into popularity, people enjoyed having ways to show off what they had designed to other people.
Early websites were also often roughly designed, so any new sites that were aesthetically pleasing were deemed worthy of an award. The awards served as a way to mark that their pages had good designs and to serve as a way for people to find websites that were considered good enough to receive an award.
In more recent years, as personal websites have become extremely common, most of the early web design awards no longer hold the same meaning as they used to. The commonality of software like Frontpage or Dreamweaver, which can be used by anyone to create websites, has also contributed to the lessening significance of the web design award.
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Web Design Awards
Two of the first popular web design awards were the Golden Web Award and the Diamond Web Award. These awards have been around for several years, and have become so common that their presence on a website is no real indicator of the quality of the site.
Other, smaller awards have taken the place of the larger web design awards. These awards come from places like ComputerArts.co.uk and GAWDS.org. These sites have monthly awards where the code of the competing websites is available to be viewed by voters. Because of the openness of the awards, they are thought to be more meaningful than other, more traditional awards.
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Award Winning Web Design
Award winning web designs are usually designs that show off proper coding techniques, color coordination, adherence to standards, are easy to navigate and are aesthetically pleasing to the eye.
The website DesignFirms.org awards monthly and yearly awards to websites that it considers to be well-designed or that conform to standards set down by international Internet organizations like WC3.
These sites are varied and come from different genres, such as FairwayLife.com (a site devoted to golfing), Artage-Design.com (an interior design website) and LoftStyles.ca (a website devoted to providing real estate advice in Canada). All of these January 2007 winners have websites that are well-designed, clean, fast-loading and conform to XML, CSS and HTML standards, which makes them award winning web design.
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