Here’s a great post on the patent design Michael Jackson submitted in 1993 for shoes which enabled him and his dance troop to lean forward 45 degrees during “Smooth Criminal”. Very cool!

Publishing customer stories on your website is a great way of building trust, credibility and persuading people that buying your product is the smart thing to do.

Here are a few websites which show how customer stories can be harnessed as a powerful part of your marketing:

http://www.acsysinteractive.com/ – eye catching visuals place customer stories centre stage on the website for this digital marketing agency

http://www.microsoft.com/dynamics/product/casestudies.mspx – never one to shy away from publishing information on their website, Microsoft offers over 200 stories on how its dynamic software division has solved real life supply chain and business management problems

http://www.sun.com/customers/index.xml – Sun Microsystems actively request stories from its customers as part of its ‘customer reference program’. Its website also offers videos and podcasts for insight on how Sun helps customers overcome challenges in the IT world

http://www.sybase.co.uk/about_sybase/customer_success_stories – Sybase’s website is a great example of how you can harness video to enable your customers to share their stories on how you’ve helped them solve problems

http://www.nationalnumbers.co.uk/customer-stories.htm – the very nature of a personalised number plate means there’s often a story behind why people buy them. The stories on this website also provide inspiration for visitors on why they should buy one for themselves

http://www.colourfulcoffins.com/customer_stories.html – literally any product can be given emotional impact with a personal story. Many people prefer to treat funerals as a celebration of a person’s life, and you can’t get much more personal than the reasons why they’ve chosen to buy a custom designed coffin

http://www.stannahstairlifts.co.uk/en/customer-stories-transcripts-2.html – sharing the experiences of your customers can give a competitive advantage. If you’re shopping for a stair lift then you’re more likely to give Stannah a call after reading feedback from some of their customers

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BDA (Buckingham Design Associates) blog – real people giving real opinions, and a complete lack of agency waffle. BDA deliver an exciting blend of design and creative marketing for the Oxford, Milton Keynes, Northampton and London region.

Have you heard of Delicious? It’s a great way of organising bookmarks and memorable sites so that you can easily access them no matter where you are, what computer you’re on or what browser you’re using. We’ve created a bda work account, which makes things more fun because we can discover sites that other people here have tagged which we might otherwise not have come across.

For example, I might find a site with a heap of free icons; I can then tag it with ‘icons / resources / whatever’ and then when someone else is looking for some icons, they will (hopefully) see the site I’ve tagged. Likewise if someone is reading a site about bullet proof rounded corner methods, they could tag it with ’roundedcorners / tutorial / whatever’ and when I’m feeling a little bit nuts, I can see the site and voila! Rounded corners! :

The easiest way to start using Delicious is with the firefox add on. Tagging / bookmarking a site is then as easy as either a) right-clicking and choosing ‘bookmark this page in delicious…’ or b) hitting the big ‘tag’ button next to the address bar.

If you think we’ll enjoy the site, tag it with for:thinkbda and it’ll show up in our suggested sites list.

If Firefox isn’t your thing, or if you don’t want to install the add-on, there are other tools you can use.

Happy bookmarking!

Our series on beautiful website design wouldn’t be complete unless we made a special mention on the most popular blogging platform around – Wordpress!

Downloaded millions of times and with a massive fan base of developers supporting it, Wordpress is an open source publishing platform that’s growing in popularity all the time.

Content management systems are designed to be easy to update with new content, and using Wordpress to build an entire website offers many advantages, including:

Ease of use – posts and pages can be added without any complicated coding language

Free plugins – Wordpress’ functionality can be extended with over 5000 free plugins. Popular plugins enable you to optimise your content for search engines, to add social bookmarking buttons and to record stats on what your visitors are looking at

RSS – visitors can subscribe to your site’s feed and keep up to date on your latest content without having to revisit the site, great for relationship and trust building

Interactivity – visitors can comment on your content, ask questions and interact in an open format

SEO – in basic terms, Google ranks websites based on how regularly they’re updated and the number of links from relevant sites. Regularly publishing useful articles people want to share can achieve both these aims

Easy to use and easy on the eye

Whether it’s powering an online portfolio, a news/magazine style site or an online shop, Wordpress can be used for a wide variety of purposes.

Here’s our top ten of beautiful sites built with Wordpress:

1. http://www.enroutefilm.com/ – an online showcase of Canadian short films which are also screened on Air Canada flights. So grab some popcorn, grab a notepad and decide which short firm is a worthy winner.

2. http://www.blup.fr/ – this smartly designed personal blog of web designer Dew illustrates its pop culture focus through its beautifully designed header. The blog design also provides an attractive frame for his photos and posts on what’s interesting in the world of Dew.

3. http://www.jrvelasco.com/ – this blog offers a ‘veritable panoply of literary, visual and aural diversions’, with an intro that’s as long as a post on its own. The unique, personalised header and navigation gives this website the impression of being an interesting place to spend some time, if you speak Spanish.

4. http://www.homedesignfind.com/ – if you’re fan of Grand Designs or Property Ladder you might want to have a read of this interior design online magazine. The authors provide a daily guide to the latest furnishings, trends and ideas that can give your home a unique look.

5. http://ecoki.com/ – if you aspire to live a greener lifestyle then this site offers organic recipes, eco-fashion and an online community sharing their passion for all things eco-friendly. The front page is divided into clear categories and the strong visual element makes it easy to find topics of interest.

6. http://icondock.com/ – if you’re a designer and would like some interesting new icons for your print or web projects then this site offers icons galore. You can buy icons in sets and subscribe to their blog for the latest in all things iconic.

7. http://www.45royale.com/ – this web design studio loves Wordpress so much they’ve used it to power their own website. An eye catching banner, prominent hero text and clear links to their latest projects and blog makes this a great showcase of their talents.

8. http://anidea.com/ – don’t like this website’s theme? Then change it simply by selecting a different one from the dropdown box. This digital advertising agency promotes their expertise by offering insight and smart thinking, rather than with a boring online brochure.

9. http://www.gomediazine.com/ – this art and graphic design magazine offers helpful tutorials and a range of resources for the digital artistic. You can easily wile away some time watching videos, entering polls and engaging with its enthusiastic community.

10. http://www.twiistup.com/ – this bright, vibrant website presents the online portal for an LA based Dragons’ Den for startups. You certainly get a feel for how Twiistup can be a bit livelier than traditional stuffy conferences. Let’s hope it makes its way to this side of the pond.

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BDA (Buckingham Design Associates) blog – real people giving real opinions, and a complete lack of agency waffle. BDA deliver an exciting blend of design and creative marketing for the Oxford, Milton Keynes, Northampton and London region.

This week we’ve been welcoming Lee Williams, a design all-rounder, to the bda team. So we’ve been making sure he knows how everyone has their tea and when it’s his turn to buy the cakes. But on a serious note, Lee is a bit of a whiz with Flash. So you can expect to see plenty of snazzy Flash driven websites trundling out of the bda labs very soon.

Now, when I say Flash I know many of you think of sitting impatiently, twiddling your thumbs and debating whether to boil the kettle whilst waiting for a website to load. Well, Flash has grown up a lot since its misspent youth in the 90s, when it was misguidedly used to create firework displays of animation despite the wheezing data rate of dialup.

Ten years on and Flash is now a respected and versatile programming language. Rather than just for intro videos, Flash can be used to create interactive websites and the quality of applications you’d normally expect to be on your desktop. With people’s expectations of websites growing all the time, Flash is becoming the language of choice for many developers wanting to create richer online experiences.

So, to clear up some of the misunderstandings on Flash (and because it will please Lee) this week we’re focusing on beautiful Flash website design.

Google CAN now find Flash based websites

One of Flash’s Achilles’ heels used to be that Google had trouble reading it, which meant Flash sites struggled to be found in the search results. But as Flash has advanced so has the ability of the search engines to read it, and now Flash driven websites are becoming just as easy to find as their html cousins.

The advancement in Flash has freed developers to become ever more creative in the sites they can create. Flash can be used to graphically present complex concepts, and being able to create interactive animations means multiple layers of info can be easily navigated at the click of a mouse.

Here are 10 of our favourite beautifully designed Flash websites, which illustrate how Flash can be used to create interactive online experiences that enhance brand engagement:

1. www.m-prism.com/main.htm – navigating this site is like exploring a map of the cosmos. To delve deeper you simply click on the central planet before zooming in on its orbiting moons

2. http://www.samsungcamera.com/st50/ – they say every picture tells a story, and this website provides a series of narrated mini-stories displayed through pictures and videos captured on a digital camera

3. http://www.gtiproject.com/ – if you had a toy racing car track as a child then you might want to whiz over to this site. After gaining entry to a secret lab and taking a tour around the track you can have a go at setting your own fastest lap

4. http://www.mono-1.com/monoface/main.html – members of this advertising agency have all contributed their facial features so you can have fun mixing and matching to make your own creation

5. http://okaydave.com/ – this website makes a portfolio of pdfs as sophisticated as a cave painting. You can enjoy a pleasant journey trawling through Dave’s scrap book of past design projects accompanied by his narration and video diary

6. http://www.gettheglass.com/ – making sure the kids drink their milk can be a hassle for any parent. So send them to this website where they can play games and learn more about milk at the same time

7. http://www.subspecies.co.uk/ – what better way to sell T-shirts than using monkeys with machine guns? Opening to a hail of bullets and parasailing chimps, this website is certain to be a hit with those who take choosing their t-shirt brands seriously

8. http://www.sectionseven.com/ – websites are often designed to act as an online portfolio, and in this case it’s meant literally. Click to open their workbook as you would in the real world, and sift through their samples to see what this design agency is all about

9. http://www.goblincreative.com/en/ – dressed up as a trendy iPhone app, click around each room to discover more about this web marketing agency. Learn more about their services, sit down to watch a movie or play a game of darts if you want to

10. http://ff0000.com/ – why wait for people to find you in Second Life when you can create a virtual world of your own? On the Red Interactive you can create your own avatar, fly around and chat to other guests. Just remember to play nice

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BDA (Buckingham Design Associates) blog – real people giving real opinions, and a complete lack of agency waffle. BDA deliver an exciting blend of design and creative marketing for the Oxford, Milton Keynes, Northampton and London region.