A new .tel design for a new decade!

.tel, the communications-focused domain, from Telnic, the Registry Operator

A .tel name is a quick, low cost and easy online presence that anybody can setup in only a few minutes and update at any time. .tel names are sold through a channel of distributors around the world, but the platform is run centrally at present by Telnic, providing everything needed for a .tel owner to store, manage and publish information through their .tel. Everything is included in the price of the domain including hosting and publishing templates.

The unique .tel publishing platform automatically optimizes information for mobile devices and structures it for better search engine rankings. As a result, tens of thousands of businesses and individuals across more than 180 different countries have already setup their .tel pages as online business cards or complementary web resources, storing millions of items of contact information.

All .tel pages currently look the same on mobile/cell phones and smart phones, but may have customized colours and designs when shown on a computer browser. To find out more about the .tel platform, please visit http://telnic.org.

We have a global community and support .tel names in 16 different languages today including Traditional and Simplified Chinese, Russian and many major European languages.

A .tel name can be owned and used by anyone, from a gamer such as http://eliw.tel/ through to a lawyer such as http://rikfarrowlaw.tel. Anyone can access a .tel domain, either by typing the domain into a browser or coming across them in search engines (for example, type Henri Asseily into Google, Yahoo! or Bing and you will find http://henri.tel).

Individual professionals can use them to market themselves to prospective employers or as a part of their role, small businesses can utilize them to get better visibility in search engines and minimize costs when printing business cards and stationery.

Additionally, large organisations such as retail franchises can use them to quickly put up a mobile-optimized site and show their stores in different territories (see http://schuh.tel for example).

We’d like you to design a universal template that reflects the spirit and purpose of .tel as the super-fast online presence that is global, efficient, easy and accessible. The winning design(s) are intended to be incorporated into the template gallery that .tel owners can choose from.

Your design may be strictly corporate, awesomely funky or anywhere in between. You can re-use as many elements of the existing templates as you wish, or create an entirely different design - the sky’s the limit!

The width of the page is 728px and the information is displayed in two columns with the Left Column being 450px and the Right Column being 256px. You may provide a design with an alternative layout if you wish. Similarly, the current design has the owner’s image at 78x78px in size, which is customary for an online avatar.

Ideally, it should support the ability for the .tel owner to change the colour scheme in line with existing options.

The submitted design should not include any video, flash-based or other interactive media or widgets that aren’t supported on existing .tel templates today or that cannot be visually represented in the submitted static design. it should be as lightweight as possible to maintain speed of delivery over low bandwidth connections.

You may wish to suggest additional features such as social sharing tools, etc.

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A successful submission needs to include design support for all of the following elements that .tel owners need to display:

- Page heading
- Description (text header)
- Image (the owner’s avatar or logo)
- Contact information of various types (phones, email, generic web links, IM handles, etc.)
- Embedded Google Map showing a geo location
- Various structured and free-flow text information
- Adverts in different parts of the page
- Status bar with links (“Login to see private data” / “Logout”, “Manage”)
- Actions block (Print, Download, Share, Connect)
- Search box with additional toggles
- Breadcrumbs or similar type of navigation through .tel directories
(if using non-standard icons) a complete set of icons for all types of contact information (excluding trademarked icons for specific services like Facebook or Skype)
- .tel logo

Currently, all contact items are shown in full (i.e. no masking of contact information) so that visitors will know what they’re clicking on, as well as providing information for search engines to index for businesses that wish to be found online. .tel owners can make any sensitive or personal contact information private and share it with only those they trust.

To see some examples of .tel domains used by their owners, take a look at some selections at http://telnic.org/community-weeklytel.html.

To see a .tel with all of the elements possible displayed, visit http://nowthatwasfast.tel/