Over the past month, I’ve had a couple people in my personal network approach me about how to go about launching Web sites. In both cases, the individuals’ have had a vision for how they wanted the Web site to look, and both times it was based on other designs that had struck them. Having helped develop an enterprise-grade Web site analysis product, has taught me a valuable lesson that I communicated to both of my friends: before you start thinking design, sit down, and on a piece of paper write down the top three goals you want to accomplish through the site. Everything else – the architecture, design, and content - should be framed by these goals.

At any rate, I digress…the point of this was that after sitting down and having my friends commit to goals, I was able to then help them create a roadmap for the development of their site. Actually, I’ve been doing this for about seven years and what has struck me as of late, was that ease and cost efficiency that has become associated with the development of high-grade content.

These days, professional-grade templates are now available to consumers for marginal costs. Over the past couple years I have become increasingly dependent on the templates offered on templatemonster.com. Most recently, I’ve used a template from this site to help the Advertising, Marketing, and PR society (AMP) at the LSE, develop their Web site.

Also, anyone can pull professional-grade stock images from online respositories like iStockPhoto.com. The main image in the AMP Web site was pulled from iStockPhoto (and edited by Simon Ong). Recently, I found out that you can even pull stock video from iStockPhoto. I pulled three or four clips from iStockPhoto for the v-Fluence holiday greeting card.

Finally, audio content has become increasingly accessible. The Internet Archive project has a vast store of music that is attributed with non-commercial licenses. As long as you don’t profit from these works, you are free to share and remix these works as long as you attribute the work in the manner specified by the author. My recent short, the Lion and the Phoenix, uses a great deal of music from the Internet Archive project.

I believe that from its formative years, the Internet has been about global access to the tools of media distribution (and reception). These tools have become easier to use and more accessible over time. A large part of what we are witnessing with the whole ‘Web 2.0’ thing is based on the increasing accessibility to these tools. What has gone largely unnoticed, is the increasingly accessible means through which we can gain access to professional-grade visual content.