NJ Web Design Company | New Jersey Web Development | LFORM

I'm happy to announcement the launch of our new site, truly a labor of love! I first want to thank Jordyn Ferri for her fresh, clean design, Ji Sohn for her blog design and html coding, Brandon Fenning for his robust and state-of-the-art content management system, and last but not least Tiffany Liou for her superior text editing. This is the fifth iteration of the site and absolutely our best, bringing together different facets of design and technology. Several components of the site are database driven (e.g., portfolio, careers) allowing for easy updates. The portfolio can easily by sorted by categories (tags) and cross referenced with testimonials and case studies. Initial client homepage designs are viewable on the bottom of portfolio detail pages. The site is fully cross-platform function (e.g., iPad, iPhone, PC, Mac) utilizing Jquery for user interaction. Construction criticism is greatly appreciated so reach out to us with ideas, glaring mistakes or a simple question.

Ian Loew (A'99) is a designer and entrepreneur who credits the vibrant faculty and creative environment at CMU for his success. As the founder of Lform Design  in Montclair, New Jersey, Ian recently became a member of the Andrew Carnegie Society to honor the university that helped him jumpstart his career.

"If it wasn't for CMU, I would not be where I am today," he said. "The School of Design really taught me to understand the process of how things work in business — from people skills to understanding the marketplace."

Ian, a scholarship recipient during his time at CMU, decided to support a young artist in the School of Design by creating an ACS Legacy Scholarship, which provides support to an individual student for four years.

"The scholarship that I was given allowed me to earn a wonderful education," he said. "Carnegie Mellon faculty care genuinely about the students, and I believe that my professors gave me vision, support and trust that still benefits me today. I'm giving back because I'd like to create that same opportunity for another young person."

"There are so many talented individuals at CMU," he explained. "Being given the opportunity to learn from them was the greatest gift."   

Related Links:
ACS Legacy Scholarship

Lform Design, a Montclair-based Web service company, received two graphic design awards from Graphic Design USA and the International Academy of the Visual Arts, which gave Lform an Award of Excellence in the Visual Appeal category, the academy's highest honor.

Lform won for the website designs it devised for the Cornell Council of the Arts and for a restaurant. Annually, thousands of professionals are recognized as design's best and brightest during national competitions held by Graphic Design USA, a news magazine. To view the winning entries, visit gdusa.com.

Congratulations to Ian Loew, the winner of this year's REI's "Spirit of the Outdoors Film Festival" for his video short called "Oktoberfest".

Stop by our booth at the 2009 InBIz Expo next Wednesday, November 19th from 4:00pm - 8:00pm @ The Wilshire Grand Hotel (350 Pleasant Valley Way, West Orange, NJ). Click Here for directions.

Graphic Design USA, a monthly news and information magazine for and about the professional design community, has honored the Montclair Art Museum with an Award of Excellence for its newly launched website. The site went live last December.

For four decades, Graphic Design USA has sponsored national competitions that spotlight the most important areas of design. In 2009, it added the American Web Design Awards. This newest annual competition celebrates the power of well-designed websites and other online communications to attract audiences, generate engagement and response, and promote products, services, and ideas. In selecting winners, the competition emphasizes visual design and aesthetics.

Lform Design (www.lform.com), based in Montclair, created the site for the Museum. The principal of the firm, Ian Loew, was the art director and designer; Edward Knittel was the programmer and web developer.

The inaugural competition generated more than 500 entries from around the country, in categories running the gamut from websites to enewsletters to blogs to banners, and from companies ranging from independent design firms to ad agencies to corporate and nonprofit in-house departments. Of the hundreds of entries, 60 were selected as winners, representing a highly selective 40 individual companies and organizations.

Winners are published online, with images and full credits, in the American Web Design Awards Web Edition (www.gdusa.com) for the entire calendar year of 2009; the site attracts 100,000 visitors a month. Winners are also listed with links to their winning work in a special article in Graphic Design USA magazine and in a special enewsletter sent to the entire creative community.

Besides winning the award, the new MAM website has won over the public as well. In the first three months of 2009, the site has attracted more than 10,000 unique visitors per month, a 32% increase over the previous highs in the same three-month period in 2004.

http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=11&int_new=30463
 

More businesses and organizations than ever before now have websites to provide marketing and promotion of goods and services and to open the lines of communication to a virtual 24/7 reality. Ian Loew, founder and president of LForm Design, listened to the complaints of his clients concerning website designs before they became his clients, of course and decided to share his knowledge of effective website design so that others don't start out with the same frustrations.

A new company based in Verona, NJ, Wildflour Designs, recently launched a site that had to meet unique requirements. "It had to have a very personal feel, because the cakes we design are very personal," says owner Bonnie Samberg. "I want people to feel like they're sitting with me in my office and have the comfort to know that by selecting Wildflour they're selecting the kind of individual service they won't get elsewhere. I didn't know if that could be done, until Ian shared his knowledge with me that it could."

Loew based the creation of his "Do's & Don'ts" list on the fact that businesspeople have so many different (and sometimes differing) notions and ideas about what it takes to build an effective website.

"I unofficially call it pre-emptive knowledge because I'm simply trying to help point out to prospective clients not only mine, but those of my colleagues in the field that when expectations are based on sound thinking, the easier it will be for the right decisions to be made at the initial design phase. Getting it right the first time will save clients time and money, and it will also help them reap the marketing benefits of effective web design the moment their sites go live."

DO's

• Keep the homepage simple. Avoid placing dozens of items on that all-important opening page. Remember: in web design people do judge a book by its cover. A homepage does not mean that everything in the home has to be there. What it means is that you simply want to invite people to come in.
• Keep the domain name (the website address) simple, too. It does not have to duplicate the name of your company or organization word for word, especially if the name is very long. It has to be easy to remember, easy to share with others, and easy to write down.
• Keep the navigation structure of the website consistent. In other words, if the navigation bar is at the top of the homepage, it should remain there on all interior pages. Also, the text of the navigation bar must be easy to understand. A long string or phrase will be confusing, and visitors to the site may not want to hang around.

DON'Ts

• Don't use stock photography. Spend money on a professional photographer or, if you insist on doing it yourself, a high-quality digital camera. Nothing beats originality. Stock photography tells many people that you've taken the cheaper and easier way out and they may think that's the way you run your business, as well.
• Don't accept an eccentric or convoluted logo or corporate icon for your company. Just because it means something to you doesn't guarantee it will mean anything to other people. Logos and icons should be bold, simple, instantly recognizable and they should make sense as they relate to the name and the function of your company.
• Don't allow bad or mediocre text (called web copy) on your website. Even a gorgeous website, graphically speaking, will never make up for text that rambles, uses poor grammar or tries to be cute and quirky.

WHAT I DO: Define, develop and build effective, solution-based Web sites for companies

"First, I stay on top of the industry periodicals and constantly surf the Net to see what people are thinking and who's doing what these days. But what's equally important is to find ways for new ideas and inspirations to come, and I find that happens when I get involved with enjoyable, stress-relieving activities, such as mountain biking, rock climbing and listening to music."