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02.16.2012

The Link Economy vs The Ink Economy

There are two types of economies I want to talk to you about, the Link Economy (online) and Ink Economy (print).

In the Ink Economy the only patronage you might give tabloid journalism is perusing through a copy of The National Enquirer at the supermarket check out counter. You wouldn’t buy the magazine, because you wouldn’t want to give the magazine your money.

In the Link Economy people give patronage without even thinking about it. When you click on a link of a headline that is too good to be true (most like a tabloid link), you give that website a pageview. Pageviews in turn are used to measure the success which is used to attract advertisers. The more pageviews, the more ad revenue.

In the Ink Economy it was harder to get your message out the door. In the Link Economy
it’s not hard to get your message out the door, it’s just hard to get it noticed. It’s why tabloid journalism will flourish in Link Economy. If you don’t think this is true, just look at one of the top online news sites Huffington Post and read some of their tabloid-like headlines.

What’s this mean for you? It means that temptation to go the easy route and create
tabloid like links and content will be even stronger than before. It will be easy, cheap and more than likely in passed on to you via email from co-worker with the word viral somewhere in the subject line. However, the enjoyment will be shortlived and an empty creation the long run.

It also means that originality will be in even more greater demand and harder to find. However originality can provide true fans, long shelf life and other avenues of long term growth. Then again one would hope it would provide all that, given all the work that goes in it.


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Posted in business
02.09.2012

Making the Pitch

Making a design pitch can be the most nerve racking thing in the world. I don’t care who you are. If you have put your heart and soul into a design, there is nothing more emotionally dangerous than throwing that idea out in front of a group of people and hoping they don’t kill it right before your eyes.

I have come to realize that when pitching a design, it sometimes does not matter how much market research I have done or how much I have studied the customers needs. What seems to matter most is how the pitch is done. I am referring to everything from what I am wearing to where we are meeting. If I looked lost or too corporate it won’t matter what I am saying (even if I am smooth as Don Draper). If we are meeting a cramped space with florescent lighting, everything else will feel and look like junk.

Think about it, we are in an increasing image driven world and how you deliver a design pitch is just as important as the design itself. That’s a hard truth, an ugly truth at that.


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Posted in business
01.20.2012

Face to Face

It has become easier to send creative work to others for approval via electronic means. As bandwidth and storage costs drop, we can send out our beautiful pieces of work around the world for clients to see. For a lot of us, we enjoy that expediency, the quick rush we get when ship something out the door and cross it off of our list.

But when it comes to your most important work, you need to learn to master the art of the face to face. The ability to look someone in the eye and convince them that your idea is the right idea. Email and the web just can’t do that. Eye contact, body language and vocal tone can’t be read without physically seeing someone react to your work.

Face to face is all about timing, inflection, warmth, sincerity and humor. Those things can’t be encapsulated in subject line or your ten line email signature with your Twitter name and Facebook link.

Face to face is where the amateurs and the professionals are separated. The professional understands why he has to be there to hand off the design and then tackle the questions as they come in.

Face to face is not covered in design school nor is it the latest craze. In fact, more tools are being developed every day to help you reduce the actual face time you will have to spend with someone you are designing for.

If you are an introvert like me, face to face is your worst nightmare but a necessity nonetheless. One that I have to work at everyday. It is skill that when honed right can shave hours, if not days off of a project. It can add dollars to a budget and even get the money you want for the project you want.

Email can’t do that and never will.


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Posted in freelance
01.06.2012

Fear and Creativity

Fear. We all deal with it. However, it becomes to more real to us when it begins to effect what we create.

I think fear is one of the things that plagued Apple when Steve Jobs left. They didn’t know what to do, so they panicked and allowed their software to be put on clone machines following the Microsoft model.

I think fear is what happened with Speilberg when he created Indiana Jones 4. Fear that the fans might not like it, or fear that they were told old to recreate what worked for the previous three movies.

I think fear is why the church has lost the art of creating beautiful things. It is being driven by fear of alienating attendees and fear of upsetting the current structure.

I think fear is what happens to good artists when they think they have arrived. Take a look at any band’s sophomore effort, it was usually made in half the time of first album so the band wouldn’t lose “momentum”. Instead they created mediocre work that is rushed.

I think fear is why we take the crayons out kids’ hands and try to get them learn “real world” skills. We fear that if they try to be artists they will fail, so we need to ground them in reality as quickly as possible.

Fear is why people create art they think everyone will like only to have no one like it. Instead of creating something that few people might love, they try to create something for the masses. Good luck with that.

Create out of fear or make decisions on based on fear and it might work in the short run. However, you can’t run off of fear, eventually you become exhausted and creative work becomes a chore, not work you love.

Fear is real. Acknowledge it, move on and create out of a better emotion, love.


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Posted in creativity
12.15.2011

Not All Clients are the Same

Not all clients are the same. You know that and I know that. So why do we say “that we treat all clients the same” when we know that we don’t?

I think of one the greatest disservices we can do to a client that we are working with is give them the impression that we we are going to treat them like everyone else. We can’t do that. Yet, we still tell people that we do.

We don’t treat all clients they same because they’re not. Some have a great grasp of their brand, some have a good sense of their current market and some are just completely clueless about what they want. In other words, they might require more work than you able to give.

That is where the rub comes.

There are sometimes where you just can’t work with certain clients. As appealing as a project might sound, if the client is a hassle to deal with, our intuition is to run like the wind (note: follow that intuition). I am not saying turn down projects that might be challenging, but when you get a sense that your costs (long term and short term) far outweigh the benefits, then it is time to pull the plug.

The key here is to be honest on the front end. You can kill your reputation by pulling out in the middle of a project. Instead, if you and the client establish a very matter of fact relationship then it will quickly appear whether or not you need to working to together.

I know this sounds crazy that I am advocating turning down work in a down economy, but bad creative always eventually comes back to haunt us. The money may be good right now, but at what cost?


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Posted in freelance
12.10.2011

The Saturday Seven

Here is list of links that have inspired us this week:

1. Paul Sahre Redesigns Malcolm Gladwell’s Books :  First, take my favorite writer and bundle his books.   Second, redesign them into beautiful book set.  Going on the Christmas list.

2. JPEGmini:  JPEGmini lets you take your large photos and reduce their size for the web without losing quality.

3. The Verge:  My new favorite site for gadget lust.  Looks fanatastic.

4. Children’s Paintings Reimagined by Illustrators:  What if you took a kids drawing and had an illustrator redo it? Awesome is what you get.

5. Roboto Font: Check out Google’s latest creation.

6. Urbanized:  Check out the lastest documentary from Gary Hustwit, who brought us Helvetica.

7. Page One: Inside the New York Times: Watch this fascinating film on how the web is changing the standard bearer in news. (Warning contains language).

 


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Posted in creativity
12.08.2011

Thrashing and Fine Tuning vs Tinkering

If there are two things I wish I understood earlier in my creative career, they would be the process of Thrasing and Fine Tuning vs Tinkering.

Thrashing

If your work grows, you will inevitably have a new set of problems that arise with growth. With the growth comes more voices and more ideas. There is nothing wrong with new ideas, however with all the new ideas it can become increasingly hard to vet the ideas before they get to far down the track.

This is where thrashing comes in. Thrashing is the process of exploring whether or not the idea really even worth doing. The trick is to do this early and often. By thrashing a idea early you save yourself the headache of spending countless hours on something that won’t come to fruition (and yes, I am guilty of this). By thrashing often, you can create a culture where you instinctively do this when the opportunity rises.

“Can I tell you if your baby is ugly?”

That is the phrase we use when we are in the thrashing process. It might get a laugh, but I say it for reason. We’re trying to point out that we know that ideas are like babies and everyone thinks theirs is special and unique. Well they’re not and that is why we thrash them. Thrashing is not easy. In fact, it can be painful and often is, but not thrashing is even more painful.

Fine-Tuning vs Tinkering

Apple fine tunes products. Just take a look at the new iPhone. They spent hours figuring out which glass to encase the phone in. The user interface icons were painstakingly chosen and refined. Everything is fine tuned and you can feel it. This fine tuning is possible due the fact that Apple just focuses it efforts on a few projects and sets it’s own internal deadline for releasing a product (in other words only they know the release date).

Microsoft tinkers with products. Just look at the amount of money they spend on R&D ($9.5 billion). Why do they get so little return on that money? Because more than likely they have hundreds if not thousands of projects going on at the same time. At that rate you really can’t fine tune anything, especially when you announce products almost a year in advance. This of course throws a public deadline around your neck, which has Microsoft rushing to get it out the door. Too many products, with a lot of tinkering and public deadlines is a complete mess.

Tinkering is okay in the creative process. Sometimes by tinkering with something you can make a new discovery. However, tinkering doesn’t need to take place when you are trying to get something out the door.

Fine tuning though, is a must towards the end of a project. Fine tuning provides the user the feeling that what they are experiencing has depth and was carefully thought through. Fine tuning is what separates the amateurs from the professionals.

So tinker all you want on the front end, just make sure you fine tune on the back end.


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Posted in philosophy
12.03.2011

What We’ve Learned about Blogging and the Saturday Seven

Darrel and I took a break for Thanksgiving (obviously) and decided to rethink how and when we post.

First of all, this blog, in general, has been a (healthy) challenge. For years, I’ve consulted clients and told friends and co-workers how to manage an online presence. In theory, I know how everything works, but I wasn’t actually taking my own advice. This site is just as much about proving what I know to be true can and does work. — It just takes a little more effort and intentionality than I originally anticipated.

Wednesday, Darrel and I took a step back, divorcing ourselves from the work. What posts were the most successful? When are people visiting our site? Where are they coming from? How can we keep them coming back. (Google Analytics is a beautiful thing).

We were able to determine a few things.

Tuesdays and Thursdays are high traffic days. So, why are we posting Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays? Smarter not harder.

We also had a lot of success the one time that we posted on Saturday. Most people aren’t creating content on Saturdays. So, if we can set ourselves apart by being one of the few that do…

Lastly, we made a list of our most popular posts:

Did you notice what 4 of 5 of these posts have in common? They use the word “I.” I could be wrong here, but I think people want to hear about my experience. They don’t want to know a theory or a method, but how I was able to practically get the job done. The irony here, is people can argue theories and methods all the day, but they can’t deny my personal experience. My experience is unique to me and worth sharing.

So… there will be more —more personal experience, more on work flow and the creative process, and more practical application on how we can make each other better, stronger creatives. Everything passes through this filter: would I want to read what I wrote?

Which brings me to this Saturday’s post. As I mentioned, we want to start posting on Saturday, but it will be the week in review (the Saturday Seven). What were the things that we found interesting and helpful this week? What were the things that pushed us to be better?

  1. Perfect Beginner Tips for Branding your Startup
  2. Respond to Questions about Your Hourly Rate
  3. Stillpower: The True Path to Flow Clarity and Responsiveness
  4. 2011 Gift Guide
  5. Video: Jonathan Hoefler
  6. Best jQuery Plugins of 2011
  7. Focus on Design Trends in Mobile Aps for IOS

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Posted in blogging
11.16.2011

Links from Our Last Talk

This post is for everyone who attended Amy and I’s talk entitled “All You Really Need to Know About Social Media You Learned in Kindergarten” at the National Women’s Leadership Forum.  Here is the list of resources that we talked about throughout our talk.

Blogging Tools:
Twitter/Facebook Management:
Twitter/Facebook Guides:
Remember attendees if you have questions, feel free to email Amy or I, thanks for attending!

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Posted in philosophy
11.14.2011

Working with Clients (Part 5)

I’ve been writing a multi part series on how I work with clients:

Today, is all about programming.

Coding

I get a certain amount of pleasure when I’m coding a site and one of my friends walk in the room, looks at my screen and says, “What’s that gibberish?”

“What? You don’t understand what that says?”

“And you write that?”

“Sure! Why not?”

While, this post is about process, I realize some of you may be asking, “Where do I even start?” I’ve written a couple of posts on my personal blog that you may find helpful:

Slicing and Dicing

Once I’ve received approval from the client on the design, I’ll “slice and dice.” Essentially, I’m taking the design that I created in Photoshop and putting code to it: HTML and CSS.

As I mentioned in the design phase, I start with Google’s Blueprint Framework. There are plenty of options out there, if Blueprint doesn’t suit your fancy.

NOTE: If you’re interested in learning more, Speckyboy.com and Divito Design both have some excellent tutorials on getting started with Blueprint.

When you download Blueprint, you’ll get 3 CSS files: screen.css that contains a browser reset, a print.css file that generates a more printer friendly version of your site, and an ie.css that corrects some of Internet Explorer’s “features”.

Instead of having to set up my file structure and link CSS files and jQuery scripts each time I create a site, I have a template folder set up. You can actually download it here. I keep my folder stored on my Dropbox account that way I can access it at work and home. Plus, changes are automatically synced.

Folder Structure

My files are really quite simple, but again, it’s one less step. I end up doing it for each site I create, so why not save myself some time?

The other thing it does is create standards within my projects. There are certain classes and naming conventions I’ll use in all my projects. If you’re collaborating with other programmers on projects, this makes a world of difference. When you open a project, it doesn’t matter if you worked on it or not, site structure is similar and so it doesn’t take long to familiarize yourself with how the site was built.

Connecting to a CMS

Once a site has the HTML and CSS written out, I can start connecting it to a CMS, or content management system. The benefit to using a CMS is that it allows the client to make changes on the fly (which can be both a blessing and a curse).

I’ve used several different CMSes: Tumblr, Movable Type, Expression Engine, WordPress, Mojo Motor, SquareSpace and Shopify. Of course, there are plenty of other options out there. (The 10 Best Blogging Platforms in 2011 , as named by Practical eCommerce)

The benefit to having experience with all these platforms is that it allows me to determine which option best suits the client’s needs. I know that they can be overwhelming at first, so just pick one, become an expert in one. Then, if it’s not meeting your needs, add another to your toolkit. My suggestion: start with Tumblr. It’s probably the easiest to start templating. However, if you find yourself limited in functionality, look at WordPress. It will definitely get you the furthest. In fact, I’ve found WordPress solves 95% of my client’s needs.

NOTE: If you’re looking at getting started with WordPress, check out Chris Coyier’s book, Digging into WordPress. It is by far the best resource I’ve found. Plus, Chris is a super nice guy. I know because I’ve emailed him (once).

Again, when I’m working with WordPress, I have a starting point. I use Chris Coyier’s Blank Wordpess theme. I can copy and paste a lot of his code into my HTML and CSS.

Tools of the Trade

As I mentioned in my 25 Tools I Use to do My Job post, I use Textmate to code, Navicat to manage my databases, MAMP to develop locally, and Transit to FTP.

SO, I turn the table. What tricks do you use when you’re coding out a site?


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