Traditionally, the footer is a very boring part of a websites layout, containing things like a contact link, privacy and legal links, and copyright information - usually run very plainly along one line, trying not to get in the way of the more ‘important’ parts of the site. This style of footer is common as it’s the last thing on a designers mind when making a website and is about as far below ‘the fold’ as you can get.

The whitehouse’s footer in 2007

The footer has far more potential than just plain text links and legals however. Luckily, many designers have noticed this and taken to a whole new method for creating footers. These footers are generally a lot bigger than the classic one line minimalistic approach - some even filling an entire screen. They are brilliantly designed to fit in with and cap off the website.

The whitehouse’s footer today

One argument for footers built in this way that i read all the time is that when a user has scrolled to the bottom of the page, a plain footer will often leave the user with no obvious place to go next - either scroll back up to the header or leave the page. A content rich and well designed footer will make it very clear where to click next and will increase the time the user will spend on the site, and how deeply into it they will navigate. Here are just a few methods for creating an effective footer:

Sitemap Footers

It’s very common in modern web design to place the website’s sitemap in the footer. If layed out well, the sitemap will give the user easily readable options for where to go next - though one could argue that with larger sites, having all those links could just get confusing and do just the opposite of what is intended. Here is an article discussing the SEO issues arising from using many links in the footer space.

Apple’s Mac footer

Informative Footers

Footers can also help to inform or solidify a site’s message or purpose. Some good features to include might be:

• An ‘about’ section
• Social media links and streams
• An in depth contact form or map if appropriate
• Photos relating to the site’s subject or author
• Recent posts

It never hurts to recap important information from the top of the page in summarised form at the bottom, like a conclusion to what the website is trying to tell the user. A simple way of doing this is to just repeat the header nav as part of the footer. A ‘back to top’ button is also a good idea.

Ectomachine’s footer

Illustrative Footers

Depending on the websites intended audience, faster internet connections will allow for more complex use of design without having to worry about slower loading times - as is always the case. The footer can be very illustrative and become an integral part of the site’s overall design. Large and nice looking icons make it clearer where to go next than just using a text link.

kulturbanause.de blog footer (German)

Paired with the benefits offered in usability, it’s a waste not to take advantage of the possiblities offered design-wise by a nice big footer - there are hundreds of examples of how it can be incorporated to make a well rounded, high usability page - and though there’s still a lot of different methods i haven’t mentioned, the creative possibilities are very open ended.

Further reading:

• Footerama: a gallery dedicated to footer designs
• How to build a footer that doesnt stink
• 10 techniques for a fantastic footer
• 29 websites having admirable footer design
• Big, informative and creative footers

BWM has edged out major competition to win the coveted AdNews Creative Network of the Year, beating BMF, Clemenger BBDO and DDB Group.

Here’s a few the key points from the AdNews article from 26 February 2010:

BWM’s strong financial performance and client stability saw the agency win from a quality field. The agency’s success followed a string of new business wins and revenue growth in a year of difficult economic conditions.

- BWM raked in $114.5 million in new business and achieved a 25% rise in revenue

- Lowest level of staff turnover down to 18%, while the digital department grew from 17 to 28 full-time staff

- Creativity ramped up across big brands including Telstra, BigPond and Sanitarium’s Weetbix

Congratulations to everyone involved - we’d show you the celebratory photos but they could come back to haunt us.

What better way for him to make up for a bad year than to give away free gifts at Christmas? This stellar campaign worked its socks off and was a fun new twist on Christmas giveaways.

Who could forget a goat with a frog on its head and together they say “Bargain! Reckon!”? The teaser began months ahead of launch with a talking goat blog including a viral video, leading to the anonymous goat and frog before the full campaign was launched upon the unsuspecting public.

With the increase in the volume of shared, social content, making sense of it all will be an increasing challenge, particularly as brands are starting to join the conversations.

Mashable refers to the Phone app, my6sense, as a “perfect example of semantic intelligence applied to social media streams. The app functions as an RSS reader, but you can share stories with Twitter, FriendFeed, and Facebook. The stories you read and share are then used to recommend articles, and the more you use it the better it works.”

I’ve just registered and downloaded the app to my iPhone and you can import your existing RSS feeds from a variety of readers (mine are all in Google Reader), which I’ve done and this tool is fantastic, all my feeds are there in my hand whenever I need & the more I consume content via this application, the more the app learns about my content interests. I’ll keep you posted.

The Optus Family Communication Survey released this week has revealed that over half of Australian children out-smart their parents in technology knowledge before they are 13 years old.

When questioned about their understanding of a range of technologies, the survey revealed that children (10-17 years old) already know more or about the same as their parents about bluetooth, blogging, cloud computing, mobile phone applications, Twitter, visual voicemail, social networking and MMS.

Read a summary of the Optus Family Communication Survey at the International Business Times.

If you are still in doubt, have a look at the ease with which this toddler uses her father’s iPhone: