Naija Designers --- Top Ten

Do you know of any website listing nigeria's top designers?

If you know of any then contact me on www.christopherkalu.com if not i will make one so we can set the record straight and you'll will have people to look up to, plus we will all strive to do better to get listed.

Take care and hear from you guys soon,

Kris.

One ironic thing is that people that know the stuffs they do don't talk.

Give me one example of people who know what they do and don't talk! For example, which of the telephone companies in Nigeria do you take to be the best? Now tell, do they advertise they are the best or not? And don't get me wrong i'm not trying to get any job from nobody by posting this. But we need to set the record straight and wake Nigeria up to good designs.
Take a look at your T.V stations, Ugly designs. The only thing cool i saw was on a music show on sundays, i can't remember the name right now, with world standerd graphics and animation. Apart from that there's nothing else!

But i guess you don't know of any site, well i'll wait to see if there's any. And by the way if you took the time to check out my stuff, you'd know that i know what i do with many years ahead of most!

And soon i'm coming up with an Ajax web site. Google it up so you know what i'm talkint about!

Peace in the middle east!

kris.

I take it that you are not dissin me with that last post of yours, are you?

For the record i started the thread that talked about "The worst Nigerian site" here on Nairaland.

What i only know is that good and bad designers can co-exist in the market, it's only left for clients to determine the bargain they want to get with their money.

Am sure in no time some people will flood this thread flexing their design prowess , thanks to templates.

No dissin meant! I'm hear to spread love! Well the site i'm talking about will not really be about finding clients.

But just something by us for us. Just a place to chill at, compete and by so doing we get better at what we do. But the main goal is to list the best designers. Check out www.newwebpick.com or www.cwd.dk to have a feel of what i'm talking about. Only the one i'm thinking of might be just abit more interactive.

I think it is a good idea. i design websites, i don't think i have hit that sublime peak of perfection, but i do get a few kudos from clients.. I hope to do better websites that can take on the Standards Internationally and excel beyond those standards.. probably set new ones.. (in your dreams) but i am okay with satisfied clients.

HOWEVER.... however. just as philips consulting came up with webjurists for financial services companies.. i think there should be some clearing of the Ozone... (Templaters like me and half-breed web-designers,cum programmers who incidentally grab good jobs with whiz-bangs rather than functionality) so that clean, serious and practical web designers can truly rise to the top.

I thought about this idea 2 years ago.. some independent rating agency that showcases best websites and their designers and ranks them accordingly.. points given for toe2toe livingup2global standards type of thing.. (don't mind the grammar; think of the context)

In the end you get a ranking that allocates some baseline budget to designers, the best get bigger budgets so clients can fall or rise to the level they can afford.

and designers are gingered up to get better and better.. making life all the more better for clients, Nigeria, West africa, World, Milky way, Cosmos... maybe them get web designers for heaven.. cannot imagine no websites in heaven.. no footy.. no bballing.. just eternal singing and rejoicing.. no nairaland forums either..

hey kris? are u a friend of illalliance?

yes i'm friend with tech of illAlliance, and i made the site for them.

i figured. u won't remember me but i met you once. i was with tech's bro, shane. he's always looking up to you . nice sites you've got. keep it up man.

Do you know of any website listing nigeria's top designers?

If you know of any then contact me on www.christopherkalu.com if

When you say top designers, are you referring to page layout, or web application programming?

I don't care much for graphics laden, and hence slow-loading sites, no matter how attractive they may be.  I don't care for sites designed in flash either.

I care more about what search engines care about.

A good website has the following xteristics:

1. Design your website for easy search engine indexing.
2. Have useful content.
3. Use simple navigation method, that is always available at the same spot on every page.
4. Focus your website on a particular goal.
5. Build a fast website! People are in a hurry, and don't want to wait for flash or heavy graphics to load.  If your site doesn't fully load in 20 seconds on a 56K connection, you have a problem. 

Your site www.christopherkalu.com for example is not search engine friendly at all.  Type the following into google, and you'd see that your website is not indexed.

site:www.christopherkalu.com

Now do the same with my site:

site:www.oasisoflove.com

Consider ebay, yahoo, google, etc.  Those sites are nothing to look at, but they're focused, mainly text-based for fast loading, and they sure are raking in the dollars.

So I ask again what you mean by top designer.  If you're referring to programming and SEO, then add me to the list of php programmers.

oasis:

Your site www.christopherkalu.com for example is not search engine friendly at all. Type the following into google, and you'd see that your website is not indexed.

site:www.christopherkalu.com

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=www.christopherkalu.com&btnG=Search&meta=
or do you mean something else?

well ... i think he's referring to designers not coders.

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=www.christopherkalu.com&btnG=Search&meta=

As you can see, the site is not indexed on google. 

An indexed site means the search engine spider has crawled the site and cached all pages on the site into its database.  That's not the case here.

Hi Oasis, thanks for your post, but i think that isp is just showing the old stuffs still. I did the search on google and i've save images of my result, which i will post below. The result i got for mine is just the same for yours.

I've been in the game for a while and i know what's up. If my site are not fast, they don't go online. Infact i don't even make sites that are not fast. check out www.sexynaija.com there we have speed and clean look. You've got to have an appealing to the eyes. Yes google and yahoo has little graphics, but you know what? they are well designed. Design is not all about graphics. It has to do with placement of things on the page.


But well the site i'm talking right now is a combination of the two. Though no matter how tight your php is you must have a good level of graphics design. They go together man!

Hi c0dec,

You know i've been around some of their friends, so i really can't say which of them you are. Maybe you can give me some more tips.

So how are you doing by the way?

Well, we'll talk more later.

Peace!

@kris. what do u mean in web designers? graphic designers? project managers? information architects?

these days, top rate websites are designed by teams as it is increasingly difficult for a single person to have all the skills needed to deliver a top rated website.

Well, i guess the focus will be graphic design mixed with we designer. Take a look at newwebpick.com
I'd prefare to focus on individuals though, but of course teams will be listed too.

Hi Oasis,

I browsed around your site for a while, no dissin meant but you have way too much information beign thrown at a brother at the same time. I really advice you to re-design it, even cnn or yahoo don't give you that much information at a time.

good luck,


kris.

@kris, i wouldnt regard your request that much because your kind of limiting the skill of the rating as regard your own level of design, you're making referals to your own portfolio wich does go well with me, a designers skill should be judged by general standards not skill show off, from your portfolio, u dont seem to even be an awesome designer, you use inline frames like **** and your desines are more of the xtrimly graphics oriented, ur html designes are poor, but your graphics are intresting, that showes youre not yet a complete web designer..

{im not hatting oh, im only gearing my own views too}

Timmy, please feel free to say what you feel. The only thing bad about my html is that it's not xhtml, and that's all. Apart from that there's nothing else. Or what exactly in my html is bad? Using iframe is not bad, even google indexes my page well, and i only want it to index the front page, so what else!?

What i ment was that your HTML based designes (http://www.door-dacht.com/ for an example) arent to intresting, i still dont feel you should be the one to anchor this rating... another cool designer should do dat

if im to rate you wouldnt be in to top 10 of nairaland designers.. (joking but serious)

Ok top ten is just a name to make it more interesting. But anybody will be hard pressed to find 10 nigerian designers to knock me out of the box! I don't claim to be the best nigerian designers, but i'm one of the best! Straight up! I've seen some good nigerian designs, but they are very few. And i'm still thinking of how the rating will be, maybe have like a panel or something. But yes i'm not trying to make it my thing alone, but a community type of thing.

Fellow Nigerians please stop bragging about your AWESOME SKILL in web design. Its becoming an irritation already.

Hi Oasis, thanks for your post, but i think that isp is just showing the old stuffs still. I did the search on google and i've save images of my result, which i will post below. The result i got for mine is just the same for yours.

It's not the isp.  You just did not type the command correctly in google.

You typed
www.christopherkalu.com

instead of:
site:www.christopherkalu.com

You see the difference?

Your site is listed on google, but it's not indexed at all.

@Kris, are u sure about your skills, you had better take back that phrase and dont make me start dissing your immature designes, i dont like it when guys can diffrenciate between a sliced poster and a designed webpage, your designs are only cool with photoshop, and wen you dont use photoshop they look like my grandmothers teethless smile

Hi Oasis,

I browsed around your site for a while, no dissin meant but you have way too much information beign thrown at a brother at the same time. I really advice you to re-design it, even cnn or yahoo don't give you that much information at a time.

Unfortunately, you're a rookie in the world of web engineering. Nothing on my webpages are there by accident. They're either for human consumption, or for search engine optimization. SEO is a completely foreign term to most webbies. Until you can build websites with search engines in mind, you're just a kid playing with a toy.

Timmy, please feel free to say what you feel. The only thing bad about my html is that it's not xhtml, and that's all. Apart from that there's nothing else. Or what exactly in my html is bad?

Go to http://validator.w3.org and correct the html errors on your webpage.  You're using doctype HTML 4.0 Transitional, and you still don't pass validation.  Check the doctype on my website.

Using iframe is not bad, 

Problems with iframe:

1. Not very well supported by older browsers.
2. Not search engine friendly.  SE's can't navigate inside frames.

even google indexes my page well, and i only want it to index the front page, so what else!?

Nope, your site is not indexed by google for the following reasons:

1. I don't see a <meta name="robots" content="none" /> on your inner pages.  So your claim that you only want google to index the front page is incorrect.  Google didn't pick them up because there's no information on them.  To google, those pages are blank.

2. No meta keywods.  Bad.

3. No meta description.  Bad.

4. No text on the pages, just a huge graphic.  Very bad!  There's no way to find your site online without text on the pages.  I typed christopher kalu into google, and your site is nowhere in the results.  You should be the first.

5. You have frames on the pages.  Very bad for search engines.

Bottomline, get rid of the frames.  If you want remote navigation, use <DIV> tags instead, and use the STYLE property overflow:auto in it.  That way it'd be scrollable.

Get rid of the monster 115K graphic.  A graphic should be a max of 15K, or the SE's will run for the hills.  Unless of course you have plenty of text.

Fix your metatags.

Get text on your pages.  No text, no search engine, period.

The best is mikebuddy joo.

www.mikebuddy.8m.net
4get the sub-domian name na style

when I checked your website I gave kudos to Myself when it comes to webdesigns, I was thinking I know nothing about website design.

@ mikebuddy, dont worry , your good ok? am not against you oh!, just against your words

oasis:

Unfortunately, you're a rookie in the world of web engineering. Nothing on my webpages are there by accident. They're either for human consumption, or for search engine optimization. SEO is a completely foreign term to most webbies. Until you can build websites with search engines in mind, you're just a kid playing with a toy.

i think kris is refering to design not engineering. and to be honest, first time i checked out www.oasisoflove.com, i don't think i spent up to 15 seconds on it. too much colours are poor? way too much info thrown at me at the same time. the back-end might be solid but the front-end looks way amateur.

www.sexynaija.com on the hand may not be as properly engineered but i'm sure people actually spend more time on the site. it looks more professional.

this is an un-biased view. any neutral would agree with me. no need for beefing here - you guys should encourage one another.

i think this is his emphasis here.

"oasis":

No dissin meant! I'm hear to spread love! Well the site i'm talking about will not really be about finding clients.
But just something by us for us. Just a place to chill at, compete and by so doing we get better at what we do

play nice.

first time i checked out www.oasisoflove.com i don't think i spent up to 15 seconds on it.

Thanks for the feedback.

My log analyser gives me all the info about user-behavior on my site, including how long they spent on the site, and what page they exited from.  Most visitors actually stay long, so I'm not concerned.  Perhaps the reason that you didn't stay around was because you weren't looking to use the service I provide in the first place, rather you were looking to see some exotic design.

www.sexynaija.com on the hand may not be as properly engineered but i'm sure people actually spend more time on the site. it looks more professional.

I agree it looks professional.  I could grab a template myself anyday and have a better jazzy, pizzazzy look.  But I don't care.  Beyond the first page, www.sexynaija.com quickly falls apart.   Why would anybody hang around on a featureless site?

In the dating industry, it's not so much the looks of your site, as it is the effectiveness that'll gain people's loyalty.  What would you say about the design of this site plentyoffish.com?  Poor right? Yet, it's the fifth largest dating site in the world. 

Maybe you guys just don't know what really matters online.

you guys should encourage one another.

i think this is his emphasis here.

That's exactly what I try to do, by pointing out changes that need to be made to a site that is not search engine friendly.  Sometimes people hold erroneous believes strongly.  And unless you knock them over the head with the facts (which may seem harsh at times), they'd continue to think they're the best.

The best is mikebuddy joo.

www.mikebuddy.8m.net
4get the sub-domian name na style

Alhaji mikebuddy, what's with the self-aggrandizement? 

www.mikebuddy.8m.net?  Please! 

I enjoy the comedic relief though...

what r u guys griping about? boys, grow up.

timmy, you are a trouble maker and stop dissing other ppl's sites. I have been there myself. even parts my present website use tables (from the blogcfc engine am using). i have done terribly horrible sites before.

but we need to move on. especially nigerians. we need to start doing ground breaking designs. and for those who think websites is about fotoshop/imageready/fireworks, you need a rethink. sites are designed from different points of view now. has any of u dudes heard about AJAX? you should go to www.37signals.com. ppl r talking about usability and accessibility.

and for the SEO junkies. we all know the SEO market is 'oja okunkun' without a definite answer. you need multitude of strategies to be able to achieve anything.

for an idea of where websites are going, go to http://www.webaward.org/winners.asp