Anyway, I have always been a typeface nerd. I used to go to the annual Antiquarian Book Fair down at the Armory to admire old pages. I would read Ben Franklin’s correspondence with Giambattista Bodoni and avidly follow Franklin’s argument as to why typographers should retain the “long S” in their type styles. (Look it up!) Back then, typefaces used to have a lot more passion about them. (“Hey, you kids! Get off my lawn!”)

So, I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised by the fascinating work of a young Dutch type designer with a passion to solve a problem. Check it out and enjoy: http://www.studiostudio.nl/project-dyslexie/

http://www.powells.com/images/campbell_blog3_block480.jpg

For those plugged into the digital world, we’ve been noticing a shift in how websites are planned and built. Sure, it’s been slow, but it’s been necessary and deliberate. It’s something called Content Strategy, and it’s been around for far too short a time. It really got going the last few years @ SXSW, as per the norm. Anywho, for those that are not as plugged in, what is this concept, how does it effect them, and how do we as service providers bridge the gap?

We’ll get there after the design

This is the traditional view of those wanting new/updated websites as well as many of those who are making the changes. I have to admit when I was a wee webbee, this was my approach as well. I was too busy worried about getting things done, and making sure I gave the client the best I could to realize this was a foolish way to work. But, all too often this happens and then the project just hits a metaphorical wall; what do I put in here to fill these lovely pages?

Whose responsibility is it?

I’ve always been of the opinion that this is the client’s responsibility. But, I have been wrong before, so I may be wrong now. As I see it, they do have the most intricate working knowledge of their business, their logistics, and most importantly their customers. That said, I don’t know too many people that are good writers (myself definitely included), so the likelyhood that a client is going to be a good writer is not great. So, what are we to do then?

Walk the line

Obviously if your contract dictates that you (as the design firm) are on the hook for content, then you gotta do it. But as with most of our clients, we prefer to work with them. We take our knowledge of how effective web copy is written and apply that to the content that a client supplies to us. Most clients don’t have a great understanding of SEO and user-friendly copy techniques (nor should they; as they have enough day-to-day issues relating to their business to deal with), so this is how we can really show benefit to our clients.

The term ‘blast’ to be removed from all marketers / users vocabulary

I know I sound like a nitpicky whiner when I say this, but it’s because I am, and that makes it okay. Or, more importantly, it’s an antiquated hit that just dates all those who use it. It also implies a complete lack of respect for the recipients on that list. Consider yourself in their shoes; how does this sound to you. Your favorite company, that you shop at every now and again, blasts email to you once every few days. They don’t segment or target their lists, they just take a giant swab and hope that a few people find the content relevant and buy / click / or take some desired action.

I’m not saying that all companies who use this term don’t do any kind of advanced email marketing, I’m sure lots do. But it’s just rubs me the wrong way — and it makes you sound very out of date. Or, it makes you sound like a bad jargon marketer who just cares about buzz words. Either way, it’s not showing respect for the recipient, and that’s what all email marketing is really about. Sure, you want to get money out of it, and I agree with that 100%, but without thinking about how email campaigns are beneficial to the recipient, you’re just asking for trouble.

The phrase ‘above-the-fold’ to stop being used for web design

Enough has already been written about this topic, including a great info-post about the history of said term. The term is from the print industry describing how newspapers place their most important content in the top half of their pages, the front page most notably. This makes complete sense, as being a print piece, it’s a fixed medium, and regardless of the reader, the content stays in the same place. On the web, we’re not nearly as lucky.

With the huge pick-up in mobile technology, there are so many devices that are web-accessible now it’s literally amazing. A website simply cannot cater to all of these devices unfortunately. Thus, there is no fold per say. I am not suggesting that we do not plan to have the absolute most important bits of content at the top of the page. But, too often we as designers are asked to put every bit of content in this small space, and that just doesn’t work. It crowds the content, makes it tougher to read, and reduces the effectiveness of a good Call-To-Action.

A dribbble invite

This one is a bit more personal, but I’d love to hand my hands on an invite to dribbble. Dribbble is a design community that is invite only, and thus keeps quality of design at the front and center. It’s really become quite a huge hit in the design community, and there are some amazingly talented designers on there. It’s become quite a hit that design association AIGA just ran a post poo-pooing the site; citing it’s lack of privacy for client work and over-sharing-ness. While I completely agree with the privacy concerns about sharing client work (again, why this want is for personal use), I just don’t agree with anything else said in the post. All the pieces I’ve seen on there have been personal, and the feedback has been very constructive. Just seems a bit under-handed to me, but that’s just me.

Most importantly, of course, I wish for all to have as warm and safe of a Holiday Season as possible. Cheers.

So, onward with what I’m thankful for:

#1 — Our Wonderful Clients

In this day and age it seems that no one’s job is safe; especially in the design / marketing field (typically what’s cut first in a clients trimmed budget). And with that, we have no one more important to thank these days than you all. The trust you place in us day after day to get the job done, done well, done quickly and effectively is the most important thing to us. Though it may not always be smooth sailing, the great two-way communication we helps to foster new ideas and new outlets for us to help with all your needs.

#2 — Advances In Web Typography

As I wrote about before, this year has seen leaps and bounds in the field of web typography. With Typekit and Google making it very simple to add hundreds of new fonts onto your sites, it’s really opening the doors to expanding web design to where it’s never been before. Too long had designers been limited in their type choices, and having to settle for what comes standard on your grandma’s Dell; not anymore!

But, as I stated before, this doesn’t mean that fundamentals of typography are necessarily being explored more than before. So, while this is generally great news, it doesn’t mean that typographic principals will be upheld as well.

#3 — WordPress.

I’m not sure what else I can say but I’m very thankful for the simplicity of WordPress. Especially with version 3, it’s as much of a CMS (define) as most anyone would need. Major kudos to the Automattic team.

#4 — The [Slow] Death of Internet Explorer

As I tweeted about a few times, our site visitors usage of Internet Explorer is really starting to take a down turn. And that is not a good thing. It’s a great thing! Over the last month, IE has only accounted for 12% of visitors, whereas Firefox and Chrome account for 41% and 36%, respectively. Plus, of those using IE, 72% are using IE8, 22% are using IE7, and only 6% are using IE6 Obviously Internet Explorer isn’t going to die, and that’s probably not a bad thing. Without it, we wouldn’t be where we are today. Plus, Internet Explorer 9 is out (though only in beta), but it is looking much, much more promising than older iterations.

The reason why I’m particularly excited about older iterations of IE dying out is because they significantly limit the browsing experience that can be delivered to an end-user. While most people may not notice subtle differences between a modern browsers rendering of a website and older IE versions, it’s these subtle differences that often separate a great web designer from the pack. Plus, the older versions have many security* flaws that can easily be exposed by any hacker who’s worth his or her salt.

So, when you sit down to dig into your yummy feast next week, what will you be thankful for?

* I realize this is far more important to the general public, but not to me =)

More importantly, it’s going* to mean A LOT to search engines.

Almost every element in HTML5 has a more in-depth semantic meaning than in previous iterations. So, what this means is that paired with high-quality content, a site built well in HTML5 is going to be super-sexy to search engines. Currently, most sites markup their content in <div>s, which are great for sectioning content, but have little semantic value to a search engine. Designers and developers [most often] do their best to assign meaning to each of these with ID and class names, but it’s still pretty much a crap shoot.

Plus, the way most sites are now, it’s almost more uncommon to run into a site that doesn’t have divitis rather than one that does. Basically, this means a lot of sites are coded with a bunch of unnecessary elements due to the fact that the designer or developer didn’t use the brilliant inheritance of CSS to define content areas, or the design was just so complex that it required extra elements. Either way, it’s a common problem, and it leads to code bloat; which in turn leads to a slower page load; which is bad for search engines. If your site loads poorly, even if you have great content, you’re going to have trouble ranking well for it with search engines nowadays.

But I digress, HTML5 is here, so it’s ready to use with everything right? Not necessarily.

Our good friend Internet Explorer (8 and below) don’t recognize these new elements, therefore we have to call a bit of JavaScript to give them a little catch-up lesson. This isn’t a big deal, it’s not a very heavy file, but it can be disabled, and thus, some people might not be able to see the site as intended. Fortunately, the number of users with JavaScript disabled seems to get fewer and fewer each day. But, this is something to think about before diving into this. If your client’s users are heavy into IE, then it might not be time to do so. If it’s a mixed bag, then it’s worth thinking about it at least. Luckily here at Thinkdesign, IE is now our third (soon to be fourth) most popular browser, so if we were to switch, it wouldn’t be much of an issue.

Finally, if you’re anything like me, you love WordPress. I mean really love it. I haven’t met a job it wasn’t ready (maybe with a bit of tinkering) to handle, and to handle it well. So, working on a few side projects, I decided to add HTML5 into the mix. What I found was a mixed bag**. As of now, any HTML5 elements that I’d insert using the WordPress admin area (as a a true CMS) would get bungled on the output. So, I had to make a bit of a compromise, for any content that needed wrapping elements, I’d just use a <div> instead <article>, <section>, or any other new HTML5 element. With a good bit of planning and template structure, this didn’t amount to many of these older elements, so all in all it worked out pretty well.

Are you ready to mix HTML5 and client work? I think I’m going to start pushing this fairly soon, but with everything web-related, it all comes down to knowing your audience and weighing the pro’s and con’s. But, if you’re user base is heavy IE, especially heavy with IE6, I’d say it’s not the time yet.

* going being the optimal word there. ** there are plug-ins that can quasi-handle this conversion, but I always strive to reduce the amount of extra code & plug-ins used, so for me this was not an option.

http://www.pantone.com/images/pages/20710/2010-02/index.html

Endive, Lipstick Red, Lagoon, Pantone’s Fall colors. The colors look warm, cozy and uplifting to me. A brightness to inspire shopping, motivation, anything to drive you to the mall to spend money and boost the economy.

It makes me wonder how much the name of the color adds to the allure of the colors for the new season. If Endive, was actually named pale yellow, and Lipstick Red, named hot pink, would I still embrace these colors? I doubt I would be as interested in them.

This reminds me of how important presentation is when unveiling a new creative concept, ad campaign or Web site. Since design is so subjective, almost as important as the strategy behind it is how you sell it. Don’t get me wrong, I am all about reducing my ecological footprint, but with everything being sent electronically and businesses trying to save money by not printing as much, or in color; we have to remember the importance of the fresh, new idea appeal, the inspiring taglines and motivating concepts would fall flat without a strong presentation and a good sales pitch. Adapting print designs to be presented in a stimulating way to clients over their computer screens is a new challenge.

I’d like to see Pantone try and come up with such catchy, inspiring names for all of those swatch colors. Now, that would be entertaining.

http://blog.mailermailer.com/2008/12/email-marketing-ebook-2/

Email marketing is awesome.

I love reading (maybe more like skimming) as many emails and newsletter as I can get. Although I don’t subscribe to that many, I follow Twitter & Campaign Monitor closely for what other designers / email marketers deem as worthy emails. But for as much as I love it, it has some falsities attached to it: it’s free and it’s easy. Too often C-level folk just assume this and want to get their email marketing going and expect the $$$ to roll in.

It just doesn’t work that way however.

It’s Not Free

Strike that. You can get an account (thanks to the folks at Mailchimp) and send up to 6,000 emails a month without paying a dime. So, in that sense, it is free. However, it takes an employees time to do all the things necessary to create a successful email marketing campaign. From the content creation, to list building & segmentation, to the design, to the build (or updating templates), to testing (via my fav Litmus App), to sending, and finally to reputation management; there are clearly a lot of moving parts for sending one email. Sure, you batch & blast (fyi, I HATE that term!!!), but any returns you see right away will quickly was away with each subsequent send. Plus, what happens when you get labeled as a spammer and you account gets shut down. Try moving to another reputable ESP; not gonna happen.

It’s Not Easy

Getting great, good, or even a decent ROI with email marketing is hard work. This, and the items above are pre-supposing you actually HAVE a list that you can send to. But how do you go about getting that list? That also takes time and effort. You need to setup an account, setup your website so users can join, create a welcome email (or series if you rock), and then you need to start segmenting. Who’s opened what? What gets clicked on? How many people are actually receiving your emails? Just because you push that shiny ‘Send Campaign’ button doesn’t mean that Recipient A got the email.

Don’t get me wrong however, I really believe in the power of proper email marketing. Done right, it can give you some, if not the, best ROI of any of your marketing efforts. But, it not only takes money, effort, it also takes time.

DO NOT BUY A LIST

It can’t be stated enough. Just don’t do it–it’s a waste of money. Best case scenario: you’ll have wasted the cash you spent to buy it. Worst case scenario: you’ll look like a spammer and have to spend thousands to rebuild your reputation with ISPs and ESPs. Does that sound like a good idea just to boost revenue for a week or two (also, best case scenario)? To me it does not.

Take the time to get all the pieces in place, don’t bite off more than you can chew, and really think about how your marketing efforts would be benefiting you if you were to receive them. If you can’t answer that, then it’s not time for you and email marketing to get acquainted.

But what to change? And what to highlight? I struggled a bit with this as I am not any kind of contract subscription service customer, except with AT&T and my iPhone, so I wasn’t sure how best to communicate this. I first thought that tailoring the content would be a good enough solution–who knows when the last time a person was made aware of all the benefits their membership affords them? Thus leaving in the same visual highlighted benefits seemed to make sense to, but not to the client.

I searched numerous times on Google (note I didn’t verb google) for some decent examples, but time after time I came up empty. I tweeted for some references, but also came up empty. I searched for retention marketing and found a slew of info for this, but this isn’t REALLY retention marketing. All the good info I found was tailored to outreach to customers, not those who happen to land on this page.

After much contemplation, and thinking about what I would find useful, I just reused the content from the new members page, but remove all the micro-copy detailing what each benefit included. I’ve also included a link to view a snippet of each of the latest benefits–i.e. a chapter of recent book, an article from a magazine, the slides from a webinar, etc. To me, this would be a good value add-on; most likely I recall all the things I’ve gotten (at a high-level), but giving me recent samples would be very helpful as well.

Once the pages are built and live, I’ll post a picture and include a link.

Update

We decided to scrap the two versions of this project and combine the differentiation back into the landing page, something I was hoping for.

Photo: http://feedingthepuppy.typepad.com/feeding_the_puppy/music/

It’s been stated, and re-stated, and then beaten to death, that content is king. And while I do agree that good content is key to helping to A) get good organic traffic, and B) turn new visitors into repeat visitors. A good website, nay, a decent website, isn’t just a brochure site anymore. It’s not enough to tell your visitors repeatedly how awesome you are and how great your stuff is and how no one compares to your X, Y, and Z. The average is user is getting more comfortable just tuning that non-sense out nowadays (to you it’s not non-sense, but to them most likely it is*). And this is why good content, updated regularly, is fundamental to a successful website today. But, just having good content is not enough anymore.

Hierarchy #Fail

Too often sites fail to address the needs of their users, and not just the people designing / building it. One of the most common mistakes I see is failing to address visual hierarchy. Hierarchy is a design principle that lets a user know what is the most important aspect of a page, all the way down to the least important. This sounds simple enough, and it’s actually not that difficult to do. Take a step back and think about what is the most important piece of the page you’re looking at. Theoretically it should be the page title, but often times it’s not. This is usually large, but there are usually many other competing elements on the page, images, navigation, ads, logos, you name it. Not only is this sort of the page layout necessary for good search engine optimization, but most importantly, it helps a user get through your content easily. Well done  visual hierarchy can make a long page of content be easy and somewhat fun to read. Of course, good hierarchy with poor content isn’t going to help either.

Poor Readability

Piggybacking on the visual hierarchy bit, having good content that’s mashed into small columns with poor styles can ruin a site’s effectiveness as well. I’m still flabbergasted by the number of sites I visit that fall into this trap. A few easy additions to your CSS (cascading style sheets) can easily help fix this problem. As more and more designers are beginning to realize, you almost cannot have too much white space. White space (or negative space) is nothing new in design, unfortunately it’s just sort of new to web design. When the web first came into it’s own, every web designer / developer tried to cram as much content into the top 400px or so of a page, and with good reason. Users were not accustomed to the web, and not accustomed to scrolling with their mouse to read. In 2010, users are much more akin to scrolling, if they are shown reason to, adding white space helps to do this. It also increases hierarchy, so it’s a double whammy.

Too often web designers over design sites, and one of the issues is using fonts that are too small to read for a vast majority of users. If your site has any decent amount of copy on it, it’s got to be at 13px or larger. Unless you know your users are under the age of 25, don’t make anyone squint to read your content just because it looks ‘designy’.

Another issue sites run into often is poor use of line-height, or in the print world leading. Line-height defines the space between lines of copy–setting this to too small for body copy is a no-no as it can make even a short paragraph feel a lot longer than it really is.

Ad Overload

Anytime you have trouble picking out the content from the advertisements on a site, it’s suffering from Ad Overload. I’m not suggesting that advertising is evil and should be done away with, it’s a great revenue stream, and it can provide great benefit to users, but it has to be done carefully. There are numerous (thousands even) of web design blogs that just exist to make money. Normally I wouldn’t have any issue with this, business is business, every knows that. But when you put your advertisements front and center rather than your content, I just think that’s showing a lack of respect for your users. A lot of sites segment their ads into a sidebar, and this is a pretty decent compromise. Often times when this layout is used, the main content still features a large ad at the top of it–this is something I still just can’t get behind. I’m sure it’s great for advertisers, but as a user, this really bugs me.

Design + Content = Perfect World

These suggestions / guidelines listed above are just part of what a site can do to help the content be more accessible. User testing and a hard focus on usability are also required for an optimal balance between content and a user-friendly skin, so to speak. What have I missed here?

*What businesses need to really understand is that [for the most part], people don’t give a hoot about your company, unless you give them tangible reasons to.

Photo: http://www.toothpastefordinner.com/archives/2008/Feb/

We’ve all been there; the deadline looming in a day or two, any time not spent on the project feels like a complete waste AND an eternity for that matter. So, of course, social media and blogging go the way of the dodo for a week or so. Or worse, maybe they just start to fade a bit overall in your overall goals.

It’s just to easy to let things go too often I find.

And this is perfectly justifiable and understandable. After all, client work is why we do what we do. We love the challenges, successes, and ups and downs (although not down time for a website). And, even to some degree, we enjoy the failures of our work, if we are able to learn from them. Moreover, this is what pays the bills of course.

So why then am I complaining about this? Because it’s my firm belief that social media is great break from the nuances of coding. Or templatizing, or strategizing, or anything we might do day to day. I find that it’s a great way to not only interact with those I might not normally, I also learn a lot more when I’m active online as opposed to sheltered with my headphones and snapping at anyone who walks in my general direction. I guess that sounds kind of obvious, but for me at least, not making time to stay active (mostly Twitter, although since I got my iPad, Flipbook sucks a large amount of my time) is really detrimental to my overall ability to give our clients the best.

I guess this is basically just a challenge to myself to not not make time for social media / e-learning, even when I’m swamped.