New Template Design Kit!

Posted on February 15, 2007
Filed Under Template Design Kit |

What is the template design kit?

Some of you may recall my Template Design Kit v1.0 that I released free about two years ago on my old site. For those who didn’t see it, the Template Design Kit is a design tool for newbie Photoshop users breaking into the web design business and provided a sort of quick start guide. The kit basically included flash video tutorials built using Macromedia Captivate® and a few hundred support files, actions and other Photoshop elements wrapped into a nice download package of about 50 meg. It was intermediate, quickly assembled, and far from truly complete and would have likely been abandoned had it not been for two important reasons I demonstrate below.

I hate when things disappear

We’ve all bookmarked something we intended on visiting again and again only to discover that the site is gone, the resource has been removed or the account has been suspended. I kick myself many times for not just CTRL + S and saving the page in a folder. Well JaredsDesigns.com has fallen to similar fate now that I accepted an offer to stop using my former site from a large jeweler of the same name we turn a lemon into lemonaide and move on. So that was my first reason or motive to keep the Template Design Kit available. Tossing JaredsDesigns.com I can live with even though it had a high PR rank but the one thing I knew I’d regret if I tossed was the Template Design Kit. So, two of my associates and I decided to rework the original concept and build the kit into something all together new or should I say newer yet. With an estimated final release being VERY LARGE in size, my major concern was how to distribute such a large inventory of thousands of files and videos effectively, or should I say CO$T effectively.

What I’ve done is ask Mark Panovia, my friend from Washington State University, agree to help me build the new Template Design Kit into a more complete and intuitive resource for entry level to intermediate level designers. The rework now occupies my weekends and evenings with no definitive release date.

NEW Template Design Kit Released!

So why announce a release with no pending date? Well, I’m using this as motive to get it completed and out the door by spring. I have this nasty habit of getting side tracked on projects leaving my own things unfinished. A common pain really when you consider that most web designers often have crappy or no web sites at all for themselves. We’re all busy working for someone else, right? Since the Template Design Kit is essentially Photoshop related resource, I’ve temporarily scrapped the plans for free photoshop tutorials on Open Source University and purchased 7 new domains to accommodate marketing the new Template Design Kit as a commercial product. Commercial but not expensive! This new release will be available only through the mail because of its large size and other features I wish not to disclose at this time.

Thus we arrive at the second reason or motive which is the LARGE volume of downloads of the first kit from my site in a 9+ month period of time. This to me was really the strongest motivator for publishing a new release. If people find it useful enough to download thousands of times then its got some utility value. Enough value in fact to make it worth while to students and entry level designers to get a jump on the design business. Even the 20 or so free templates I had published didn’t out perform the downloads of video tutorials which I published on many applications. From my perspective, people love tutorials, and as a motivation for re-creating the Template Design Kit, that is a realtiy as to the point and blunt as it gets.

A little sub note, Open Source University will be online eventually, or I could just simply donate it to someone who wishes to have it and babysit it. "Hosting Included". But until then, this kit is the direction I’m heading with my video tutorials for Photoshop in between client design jobs. I’m so far behind now on posting up a design gallery, my old tutorials and resources and some personal projects that I’m working round the clock to make it a realtiy.

UPDATE! I have fully canceled the plans I had for Open Source University and have subsequently migrated all materials to our new domain which I’ll announce later.

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