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Opinion: The Rise and Fall of Sharing Content
This week Abduzeedo will celebrate its 7th anniversary. Our first blog post was published on the 19th of December 2006. It was a difficult time back then. I had recently lost all my gear and backup disks, the same with my friend and business partner Fabiano Meneghetti. With that unfortunate life event, Abduzeedo was born as a simple blog where we would share our learnings and inspiration. The goal was to join the burgeoning blogosphere. After 7 years, the landscape has changed immensely, Abduzeedo has grown and matured. We have learned by trial and error. Mistakes were made and we always tried to be transparent about our decisions and the direction of the blog. We shared tutorials and source files, never charging for any of our content. We also have been using ads since day one and to be honest with you, our main goal was just to be able to use the web services that were available. We wanted to be like the other blogs we love and admire. Like a kid playing dress up. Abduzeedo also gave us the opportunity to meet a lot of designers, artists and photographers that inspired us, which for me, has been the most invaluable outcome of all. Amazing people like James White, Trey Ratcliff, Vitor Lourenco, Radim Malinic to name only a few. We post about them frequently and we will keep posting about them and anyone that has done something that really moved us. Photo taken by Trey Ratcliff Nowadays, though, things have evolved. The internet is changing, more services are available and sharing inspiration has become much easier than when we started the blog in 2006. I love all of that, however some things are truly disheartening and make me rethink what we do here at Abduzeedo. Things like what happened last Friday when we received a copyright infringement notice from a photographer. We featured a beautiful photo in a post, giving full credit and linking back to the photographer and his work. We also saved the the image on our server for caching and speed issues only. We loved his work, it was on 500px and featured all options of sharing including on Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter and even an Embed Code. Maybe too used to the idea of sharing and fair usage, we included his image. Unfortunately, we received a series of requests, like removing the content, which we did right away, a demand for public apology, which we more than happily did on the same blog post and a penalty fee. We apologize for featuring his work on our blog. Our one and only goal was to share what inspired us with others. We are truly sorry. After 7 years, as I said, we have been learning by trial and error, just like any other blogger, artist, designer or photographer. If we were able to have success I believe it was because of our hard work, dedication and care to our audience and creative industry. We shared what we learned and what inspired us. But maybe it’s the time to stop. The new year will tell. Meanwhile thank you for visiting the site and apologies once again to those we featured and talked about. You inspired us, but maybe we should have kept that to ourselves.
The Importance of Asking Questions
We live in a world where everything is moving at an incredibly fast pace. I've talked about it before, and I will say it again, 3 years ago we didn't have tablets, I wouldn't be writing this on my Nexus 7. With constant change, we see trends coming and going at at warp speed. It's interesting to see that we designers seem to just follow trends without even questioning why. Being curious is the most important thing for a designer, it is so important to challenge the status quo, like being a child again. The only way we can do that is by asking questions. It is understandable that it is cool to show off skills or that you are up to date with the new trends. When creating a visual design, however, do you understand exactly the problem, the brand and the audience? Do you also ask yourself questions like: Why am I doing this? Is it really necessary? How can I simplify? In my opinion the difference between design and art is the need to make something for others and not for yourself. Unless, that is, you are designing a personal project or a product that is for your demographic. Otherwise we end RHINOS HUNT IN PACKSDesign by Aled Lewis So think about it and start asking more questions. We live in a era that sharing is super simple and easy, we are creating more which is fantastic, however, as you move forward in your design career make sure that you keep the curiosity as a high priority. Try to understand why you make the design decisions you make before embarking on a new project. "Who questions much, shall learn much, and retain much". - Francis Bacon
Is it the end of RSS?
The past week was very interesting, we saw big announcements; we have a new Pope, Samsung revealed the new Galaxy 4 and Google killed Google Reader. The last one of these announcements is the one I would like to talk about because it represents and reflects the changing times we are living in right now. Abduzeedo started in 2006, it was the boom of the Web 2.0. Social sites like Slashdot, Digg and Delicious (del.icio.us), Flikr were the king. Twitter was 2 years away from really becoming mainstream and Facebook was still cool. I remember that the most important thing at that time was to have an RSS feed on your website so people could subscribe and receive news automatically. It was like magic. RSS was the most important way to share your content. Apple and Firefox proudly announced that their products could easily subscribe and read RSS feeds. We over at Abduzeedo, were on the same boat, we were fans, and Abduzeedo had to have RSS for everything. RSS Rich Site Summary (originally RDF Site Summary, often dubbed Really Simple Syndication) is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works—such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video—in a standardized format.[2] An RSS document (which is called a "feed", "web feed",[3] or "channel") includes full or summarized text, plus metadata such as publishing dates and authorship. - Wikipedia Most of our traffic always came from RSS readers, it helped us to spread the blog to more people that kept receiving our new posts. That wasn’t only with Abduzeedo, other blogs were doing the same, especially in the design community. PSDTuts, Smashingmagazine and others were feeding the needs of millions of designers and enthusiasts around the world. It seemed perfect, endless amount of information automatically delivered to your computer. What could be better than that? After almost 7 years a lot of things have changed. Twitter, Facebook and Google+ allied with Flipboard, Feedly, Pulse and other news app became the RSS of this new era. Some of these apps still rely on RSS to get the info and I think that won’t change but what changed was that people are not subscribing to RSS feeds are they used to be. When was the last time you subscribe to a RSS feed, and what was it? Think about that for a second. I believe some people reading the blog won’t even know what RSS is, but that’s the reality. Things keep evolving and so do we, and when Google said that they would shutdown Google Reader, that was those milestones that we have in history. In my opinion RSS will be around for a long time because it’s really simple way, as the name says, to share content. However with phones and tablets, companies are able to deliver the content in much better and more beautiful way, look at Flipboard, Currents and Feedly. The biggest problem for me is that will limit the possibilities to discover new things. We will be always followers of what people curate to us. It’s understandable with the overflow of information, but it’s dangerous because at the end of the day, Abduzeedo and other amazing sites were borne and flourished because Google Reader and other RSS readers. Anyways, I just wanted to share my thoughts about this subject. It’s been a long time since we talked about the blog and how things are changing. We will start doing that more often because once again, more things are changing especially the way people consume design content, but that’s for the next post. What's your opinion about the future of the web and RSS? Share with us.
Abduzeedo 2010 in Review
Another year has passed, 2010 is about to end and I will try to summarize the year in this post. I think that is a good way to share some experiences so we can learn with each other, as that has been the whole idea of Abduzeedo since the day one. There's also a post at Seth Godin' blog called “#YearInReview What did you ship in 2010?” which motivated me to do the same here in this article. So what did I ship? Well I have to say it’s pretty hard for me to say what I shipped, I could list a bunch of sites I did, freelance projects and presentations I delivered, however I will share with you some things that happened in my life in consequence of the decisions I make in the beginning of 2010, it’s much easier since my whole idea for 2010 was stay on the road as much as I could and meet new people. The last year started with a big change, I decided to go to San Francisco in mid January with the Wellknown.as team, which I barely knew them, in order to finish and released their app. It wasn’t an easy decision since I had just come back from another trip and the right thing to do was to settle down a little bit, but I decided to take the plunge. The idea was that we would go and work on that project 24/7 in order to finish it, however I ended up doing much more than working, I’ve visited new places, met people I really admired and made new friends. Meeting New People In another post I wrote called What I have learned after almost 4 years of Abduzeed I mentioned about the importance of traveling in my life. This year I spent 6 months away from home, I haven’t planned none of that the only thing I did was say yes to the opportunities I had and because of that, a whole new series of opportunities were created, and with them new things happened. I had the chance to meet some amazing people, guys like Vitor Lourenço (Designer at Twitter), Everaldo Coelho (Designer at Apple), the mighty James White, Bert Monroy, Trey Ratcliff, Zorana Gee (Adobe), Rodrigo Mazzilli and Divoxx (Wellknown.as), Demian Borba and family, Jacob Cass, Francois Hoang (AoiroStudio) and many others. With James White in San Francisco at the FITC Abduzeedo Meetup São Paulo I also had the chance to speak in design conferences and universities in Brazil and USA, which was simply awesome! I am really thankful for that because that led me to a whole new direction in my life and gave me much more motivation to do what I love, and everything only happened because I decided to go to San Francisco even though that decision didn't make much sense back in the day. Future Out goals for 2011 for Abduzeedo are the same as the day one, keep sharing things that inspire us and also share as much as we can about things we learn. We are also increasing our team of contributors with Nathan Weller and Marcos Torres now and others I’m sure in the near future. Besides that we have a big surprise scheduled to May, but we still cannot talk much about it, so stay tune. Another goal for Abduzeedo is a revamp in its design, as you have already seen, I’ve been posting some new designs like the new logo that can give you a hint about the direction we are heading to, so we are going to a much more minimalistic approach in order to focus even more in the content. 2011 Poster Google When I started Abduzeedo 4 years ago I didn’t plan anything, I never imagined it would grew or have the amount of traffic it has today, I did because I love to talk about design and also I had to do something after losing everything in my office’s robbery. Today I can say that what started as a side project has become the biggest promoter of my work changing my life completely. If I hadn’t started the blog I’m sure I would have never gotten the chance to work for the clients I worked, met some people I met and also gotten a job offer from Google. Back to the beginning of this post, lots of things happened in my life in 2010 and with all this things came more decisions to make. One of them was a very important one, that was working for Google. So in 2011 I will be leaving Zee and moving to California where I will be joining Google as Senior Graphic Designer. I'm just waiting for my VISA :) I’m sure this decision I made is just the beginning of a series of new things that will happen in my life and that is what makes life so exciting, I know I will love some and must regret others things that will happen but I will have to go through them in order to learn that. So I'd like to thank all of you for the amazing support you have given to Abduzeedo and I wish you all a fantastic 2011 and don’t be afraid of change, embrace it. Follow your passion but always remember what Barry Schwartz says in his fantastic book The Paradox of Choice: “The secret to Happiness is low expectations.” Happy 2011 to all! 2010 in Images San Francisco Apple Event at Yerba Buena San Francisco @amlight and my new baby, MacBook Pro 17 SSD in Raleigh, NC Photoshop Battle Abduzeedo Porto Alegre Meetup Speech in Canela, RS With Alexandre Keese at Photoshop Conference 2010 in São Paulo Zorana Gee at Photoshop Conference 2010 in São Paulo Pacific Highway 1 Waiting in line to get an iPad After spending the night in line for the iPad launch in San Francisco With Vitor Lourenço at Dennys in San Francisco Visiting Adobe HQ in San Jose, give a little presention over there :) With Vitor Lourenço, Rodrigo Mazzilli and Rodrigo Divoxx Visitng Macworld With the master Bert Monroy Poster of the Photoshop Battle in Porto Alegre, Brasil With my parents in San Francisco With Everaldo Coelho in San Francisco Speech at the Platt College in San Diego, big thanks to Demiam Borba With Francois Hoang in NYC Abduzeedo Meetup in Curitiba, Brazil At the iSeminar in Recife, Brazil San Francisco, the city by the Bay
What I have learned after almost 4 years of Abduzeedo
It’s been almost 4 years since I started Abduzeedo and my life has changed in ways I could never imagine. In particular when it comes to meeting new people and learning new things. Because of the blog and its visibility around the world, I have been invited to talk at many universities and conferences worldwide. I'll be the first to admit that I am far from being a good public speaker, but to get an opportunity like that is really cool. I'm always learning from these experiences, and that in itself is awesome enough. When I ask people what they want me to talk about at these events they always say, "Talk about how you made the blog popular", or "Talk about how you make money from the blog". That leads me to think that all everybody wants is fame and money. Well… what else might you want? I can tell you one thing, if you do something just because of the money and the fame it’s pretty hard to get both because your decisions are made based on this logic and by this logic we sometimes close doors to greater good. There's this really good book by Malcolm Gladwell called Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. It talks about this: Gladwell's conclusion, after studying how people make instant decisions in a wide range of fields from psychology to police work, is that we can make better instant judgments by training our mind and senses to focus on the most relevant facts—and that less input (as long as it's the right input) is better than more. Perhaps the most stunning example he gives of this counterintuitive truth is the most expensive war game ever conducted by the Pentagon, in which a wily marine officer, playing "a rogue military commander" in the Persian Gulf and unencumbered by hierarchy, bureaucracy and too much technology, humiliated American forces whose chiefs were bogged down in matrixes, systems for decision making and information overload. But if one sets aside Gladwell's dazzle, some questions and apparent inconsistencies emerge. If doctors are given an algorithm, or formula, in which only four facts are needed to determine if a patient is having a heart attack, is that really educating the doctor's decision-making ability—or is it taking the decision out of the doctor's hands altogether and handing it over to the algorithm? Still, each case study is satisfying, and Gladwell imparts his own evident pleasure in delving into a wide range of fields and seeking an underlying truth. Why do I bring this up? I have some examples in my life that might enlighten you further. The Robbery In 2006 I was just a graphic and web designer doing my best to deliver good quality work. I noticed that the blogosphere was getting bigger and that this social media thing was the future. But I always had some excuse to not get into it…usually external factors such as, I don’t have time for such a thing, or nobody will pay attention to what I say, or there are guys much better than I. My brother had a blog back in those days and he kept asking me why I didn’t and that I should start one. I was very stubborn until something happened. Towards the end of November 2006 my office was robbed and with that I lost my laptop and backup disks. That was a key factor that led me to start Abduzeedo. This whole thing made me forget those excuses and simply do something…which is exactly what I did. First logo I learned that sometimes we have to think less and do more, because when we have too much information it’s pretty hard to make a decision. And also, this information might suffer the influence of other people’s opinions as well. Doing what I love helped me improve my skills Because of the blog some great opportunities started appearing. One in particular helped me to evolve a lot: writing for PSDTUTS. When Collis invited me I accepted on the spot and was pretty happy about it, but when I talked to some friends they always asked, "You're going to write tutorials for a competitor?" Well, I didn’t even think about it that way. I just wanted a motivator to push me to explore and learn more about Photoshop. Plus, they were also paying me for those tutorials, so that was amazing. I learned Photoshop so much in those days and it was so much fun. I loved writing those tutorials especially trying to simplify effects and share with the community. Writing for PSDTUTS turned out to be one of the best things I’ve ever done for Abduzeedo. After the few months I wrote for them the traffic on Abduzeedo grew considerably and besides that, more people got to know me. As a result, I was invited to write for magazines and other publications as well. Digital Arts Tutorial Traveling Well this is something that doesn’t make much sense at first, so let me explain. In 2008 I decided that I would go to the US for the summer. I told my business partner, Fabiano Meneghetti and he understood and totally supported me. However some people thought I was crazy simply leaving my company here and going out there. Even though I thought it was the right thing to do, those bad comments got me thinking and sometimes made me a bit unsure and insecure about my decision. Nevertheless, I went. After those 3 months in the US I got the chance to meet so many people, and even got a job which ended up paying for all my traveling expenses. But the most important thing was that I learned so much from that experience. I also was able to improve a little bit of my english with the help of my amazing cousin Amanda Macedo AKA @amlight. The same happened in my other trips, and in the last one it was no different. I had just gotten back to Brazil when some guys invited me to join them in this new venture: an american startup with a mobile platform project. So, we went to San Francisco. While planning the trip I was kind of scared after looking at rent prices. Nevertheless, I went…again. And thank God I did. Going to San Francisco was incredible and once again the experience I had was gold. If I had stayed here and done the right thing in terms of logic, I never would have visited Adobe and talked about my work to the Photoshop engineers or shaken hands with Russ Brown. I never would have met Trey Ratcliff and seen him speak at Google, or hang out with Vitor Lourenço one of the mighty designers behind Twitter. Rodrigo Mazzilli (wellknown.as), Vitor Lourenço (Twitter) and I at Twitter HQ With Bert Monroy, the master of the masters :) As you can see a lot happens when you make a decision. Of course there’s always a downside. Nothing after-all is perfect. Life would be boring otherwise. Also, everything takes time. It’s sort of like planting…you'll never get results right away, because you need to get experience, learn and be prepared. We have to persist if we believe in what we’re doing. At least it was like that with Abduzeedo. It took over one year for the results to start appearing. I believe the most important thing in life is to do what you like and make decisions based on your own opinion and not based on what other people think. I know that's pretty much what Steve Jobs said in his commencement speech at Stanford and it makes so much sense. Or perhaps it makes more sense now after these almost 4 years of blogging, because that is the most important thing I have learned. In other words, put yourself out there, have passion, confidence, and persistence. Recommended reading Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose Rework Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality Crush It!: Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
Unique Style: A Designer's Perspective
One of the greatest challenges when you are starting a design career is the pursuit of your own unique style. As designers, we sometimes think that having a unique style may be the only way to achieve success in the design world, but is that true? In my opinion, having your own style can help, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s the only way to succeed in the design business. However, if you want to be known as an artist or a digital artist it might be the best way to go. My idea of a designer is a professional that has the skills to interpret the necessities of an audience, and the goals of the project; to create efficient products. This professional has to be very versatile and able to create all sorts of styles depending on the target audience his design was created to reach; but also able to add a bit of his own style to this mix. This question still lingers in my head without a clear answer and I know that lots of designers have the same doubt. Because of that I decided to ask the real pros in the field this difficult question. In this post we will hear from designers and digital artists such as James White, Tom Lane, Jonathan Wong, Rik Oostenbroek, and many others their point of view on the importance of having your own style. Also I’d like to ask you to leave a comment with your own point of view. Your opinion will help us to understand our profession a bit better. A BIG thank you to Justin Maller of depthCore and superlover, without whom this article would not have been possible. Tom Lane - www.gingermonkeydesign.com I think it's important to be known to do something well; like working with type, championing products, drawing beautiful people, photographic montage/manipulation etc. so that you're recognisable within the industry. Have a stand out approach that art directors and other clients can be confident in. Have confidence that you can fulfill their requirements with experience and a proven track record. Additionally, your unique talent is something you can monopolize so you can see increased financial gains from your whole skill set. However, I think it's important to not have a style that simply gets applied to a different product, brand, person or whatever. When that happens, regardless of the quality, I feel all the pieces just become too much of a reincarnation and they loose their power to communicate as I can't see past the style. James White - www.signalnoise.com Style should not be about the destination, but rather the journey. I think it is more important for artists and designers to try new things and follow their own path in terms of evolving their work. Touching on something unique happens naturally through trial and error, so I think it is more important for designers to push themselves to get better at what they do, and how they do it. Guilherme Marconi - http://marconi.nu/ I think it's important for designers/artists/illustrators to have their own unique style. Thats why clients, agencies and the people that buy art always choose you. You have created a style that they want for their next ad, or on their walls at home. Besides that, there are more advantages. People see your work and they recognize that it is yours. Magazines want to publish your work because it has a unique style. That's my opinion. "Go and find your style because that will define your position in the market". Radim Malinic | Brand Nu - www.brandnu.co.uk/ There seems to be a think line between understanding of styles and work signature. One can find themselves using tool 'invented' by someone else and developing that further. In the tutorial generation, people are hungry to know how this or that is done, striving to know the technical solution to the visual outcome. Designers are like musicans. They play by scales, we work by CMYK. If you love Jimmy Page it may inspire you to play guitar and but somehow differently. Later on you're developing your own style. Same could be applied to the designer's styles. When you learn to walk the designer walk, you might look around and absorb the finesse lurking out there. It's then up to you how deep you make your own mark. You could mimic others or just invent your own. Inevitably, if you wish to be successful it's essential to stand out from the crowd ... that's the most important factor. Jonathan Wong - www.artofwong.com It is important in that is pays to be original and to be able to design something in a style that is completely distinctive to you. Eric Sin - www.projectsd.net Not important to have a consistent "Style", so to speak, but a good flow of unique ideas and a bit of distinction within your work. Brian Smith - www.skynerve.com A designer's style being important is totally irrelevant. The importance of the designer to express his or her self supersedes any particular style he/she chooses to adopt. David Mondou-Labbe - www.m0oo.com I believe it's the whole point of being a designer, giving perspective by showing different avenues of the same medium. Karan Singh - www.wakeupmrsingh.com It's essential to have your own style. Whilst it's cliché and marginally corny to say everyone is unique, your style translates this and sets you apart from others. Christopher Haines - www.neondistractions.com An artist's style is important in the sense that he or she doesn't fade into the background with every other artist out there. That being said, being able to constantly innovate and try new things is also the sign of a great artist. Ehren Kallman - www.nnuvo.org/ I read somewhere that perfection is a cheap rip off of style? This is true. Perttu Murto - www.perttumurto.com I don't really believe such things like "style" when it comes to designers. I think designers should try to produce something what looks good to to them in that time of their life. It might be same "style" in some time period. However what's more important for designer is to produce designs which follow the client style/brand more than designers own style. That is a important skill. I am talking about designers here, not illustrators. It's bit different when you are going to produce personal artwork. Kai Isselhorst - www.dopaminart.com Its important to be able to adapt anything to the clients wishes. Sometimes that can be harder than being original in style. So in my opinion its both equivalent. Rik Oostenbroek - www.secretshowcase.com I guess the feeling for style is more important, the flow, feeling for composition and colours are the major things I care about whenever making something for a client or for someone else, most of the time they tell you what kinda style they want ( if it's your own style or something they saw somewhere else. ) For Personal works is your style really important I guess to show off( on your online portfolio ) a bit. To show people you could give them something unique, to be different from all the other designing people around. Alexander Radsby - www.aeform.net To be stuck with one unique style is for the most part a bad thing. I think that a good designer should be able to express his thoughts using the style that you've gained through experience. Always be open minded, open to new ways of thinking, new ways of working and be adapt to the current situation. If you are open minded, your ideas and influences will change and you and your style will change with it. It's all about experience. Versatile designers are the interesting designers. Mike Harrison - www.destill.net It's not too important, reason being that after a while a designer will achieve a style that they enjoy creating the most, and that is unique to them. But it's also important to experiment with many styles to keep you on your toes so you don't get too comfortable in one area. Kervin Brisseaux - www.brisseaux.com I'm starting to discover more and more these days that for the designer in general, the concern should be less about style and more about the concept. If you have an innovative way of thinking, the style shows through via the conceptual process. Nick Delaney - www.vandal.nu I feel like a unique style is important, but the way people think they develop one is completely wrong. A unique style in my opinion comes naturally when the designer has a unique concept/idea. A lot of designers feel the need to force a style, by trying to approach their design differently and non-traditionally after the concept has been decided. This however in my opinion is the wrong way to go about it, a unique style typically comes naturally and subconsciously when the designer has developed a unique concept/idea. If the designer has what it take's he or she should be able to develop that unique idea into a a visual which in turn takes on its own unique style. All in all though, having developed several unique concepts and styles makes being a designer easier because if not you'll be just another fish in a small pond which is already packed - and instinctively competing to be the best and most recognized of all the designers using and repeating that specific style. Leigh Flurry - www.fontdeli.co.uk To create something that is unique and has come from the soul and mind, means the world of difference in this ever evolving industry in which competition is stiff. Ee Venn Soh - www.behance.net/vennsoh I do think it is important for designer to have their own distinct style. The designers can try different approaches and techniques when experimenting. But eventually, the designer will find something he likes best and create something that can uniquely identify himself from others. Bruno Fujii - http://illustplosion.com/ Reaching a level where your style becomes unique is very important. When the designer reachs it, he end up being a reference and he got known by it - that's a good thing, but it can be a tricky thing at the same time; since it's important to be versatile and able to analyze the project and create something good, regardless of the style. Editor: David Parrott
Presidential Candidates Design | Barack Obama
In a period that people like to say "there's no such thing as bad publicity", I tell you people that if there's no bad publicity, I'm a 100% sure that there's is awesome publicity. US Elections will soon be arriving this year, and we got to see same great publicity from some candidates, but one of 'em deserves a special look: Obama Barack. Let's just get clear here for one second: this is not a political post or anything, 'cause i'd rather vote for Paul. Web 2.0 is all about social networking right? Right! And some of the US Presidential candidates got right the feeling of it and saw a great opportunity of taking the most of it from the beginning, and are using some of the big social networking sites like MySpace, YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, just to mention a few. Paul is a good example of how online community can help grow funds for campaign. Obama got that right too, and his online campaign deserves an A++. His staff created even his own social network. His graphic design is pretty impressive as well... you might compare his site with other candidates such as Rudy Giuliani for example. Barack Obama's website Everywhere from flickr to facebook His logo and its several variations deserve attention as well... it has been under the design spotlight. It was created in partnership between mo/de and Sender LLC, and it changes depending on the subject. Another variation is the use of the american flag element among names of states. Congratulations for the US candidates... we hope to see some good political publicity as well in our home countries too pretty soon. And if you want to take a look at the candidates' websites, visit the Best CSS designs on the web | Presidential Candidates. Author: Paul Antunes | If you want to write an article and have it published here send it via email to abduzeedo[at]abduzeedo.com