Presentation and Design

With all the focus on programming, developers often lose focus of presentation and design. The two most important factors when considering the marketability of your applicaiton is graphic design and usability. Ultimately your applications need to have a nice look to them and this often starts with a simple design and elegant graphics to enhance your design. Too many graphics or large graphics can easily distract from the presentation goals of your application. It's best to start simple and build from there. This also helps greatly with usablity as well. The simpler the better.

One of the best places to start with creating a very well presented application or web site is with a logo and color scheme. It's usually best to start with the logo because this will define your product branding. Once you have your logo it will dictate your colors. Try to incorporate your logo colors into your application color scheme. It will look more seamless and present very well. Nonetheless, for programmers and developers, graphic design is not a strong suit. Programming and other complex tasks are most well suited for the expensive time demanded by a programmer. Thus, it is best to outsource this and luckily it is quite cheap. Here is a list of vendors who will be happy to design logos and color schemes for your application. A small investment in your application can pay off big from a marketing standpoint. After all, you just invested a massive amount of time and expense developing the application, you should try to present it well.

Logo Maid (starting from $19)
Sure Logos (starting from $29)
Pixel Logo (starting from $29)
Sky Logos (starting from $49)
Logo Loft (starting from $69)
The Logo Company (starting at $75)
Biz Logo (starting from $95)