Design Archive
Commentary by blog and social media consultant Josh Hallett on the use of blogs for public relations, media, marketing, communication & branding and from time-to-time the unsolicited opinion.
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"Does Design Matter?" That's the question I asked during my presentation with Matt Jones from Dopplr at the Sarasota International Design Summit this past Tuesday.
Before I was crucified by the audience, I quickly said it still does, but perhaps not as much.
Why? I threw out the concept last week, asking, "when so much of a brand's content is consumed via RSS, Facebook, Twitter...does design matter?"
Sure you can design a good looking blog, but if a large percentage of the readers use an RSS reader, does the design matter? Also, what is going to keep you coming back to a corporate blog? It's the content, not the design.
Many organizations are realizing the interactions they have with customers on sites like Twitter and Facebook are very rewarding, however you have very limited design flexibility on those sites. In the case of Twitter you can tweak some of the page settings, but your primary brand-design element is a 48 x 48 pixel avatar.
We recently dealt with a client that had a logo that didn't shrink well, that is when it was 48 x 48 you couldn't really tell what it was. It sounds funny, but things like that are now a design consideration. I remember a while back when a brand was always worried about how a color logo would transition to black & white for print purposes, now it's shrinkage :-)
In a post over on the Mplanet blog I touch on some of these same subjects. However one point I made was that perhaps in this new world of distributed content that small branding you can supply (even if it's 48 x 48) might help you stand out in the crowd. Those that are customers or evangelists can look for that 'official' seal.
As I said at the Design Summit, I don't have the easy answer. But, it's an interesting issue that I think that every organization that engages in social media will have to deal with.
Cross-posted to VoceNation
With the launch of the eBay Ink blog we (meaning Voce and cnp_studio) had a nice hat trick on the WordPress.org site. The screenshot below shows the 'Powered by WP' in the lower right. I'm proud to say that they're all ours :-)
CNN.com is teasing a redesign link on their home page. Currently it directs you to http://beta.cnn.com/. It's a big change, and I like it.
The primary navigation has moved from the side to the top (it was at the top before, I just remember the side for some reason) and the entire content area is now centered (rather than left-aligned). The entire look is cleaner and does reduce the amount of content on the home page.
Kevin Dugan posted some thoughts about the unusual design of the Urban Outfitters blog and asked David Armano and I what we thought. What's unusual about it? It features a horizontal scroll.
Well I have a bit of a soft spot in my heart for horizontal scrolls. After all, my photography blog uses a horizontal scroll. That said though, you need to consider the audience, the type of content and how you want people to interact with the content.
One of the issues with a horizontal scroll is that you want to keep the content height short, so you don't introduce a vertical scroll as well. Now you're limiting the content you can display based upon a design limitation. The beauty of a vertical scrolling blog is that each post can have a different height. Sometimes you might post a single sentence, other times a long article.
With a horizontal scroll, every post needs to fit in an imaginary box. With my photography blog that's not an issue since all I show are photos with a brief caption. With Urban Outfitters it's similar. They have a photo and then some brief text, but they can't expand upon this.
However, most blog and web site readers are used to a vertical scroll format. While a horizontal is a unique design twist, will it annoy people in the long term? I don't know of any sites that I visit frequently that use this format. My thoughts are that the initial 'hey look at that' functionality of the Urban Outfitters blog will give way to usability issues.
But you might say, why diss that format if you use it? Well I do use it, but my photo blog is not meant to be something you look at often and it isn't a major content piece. It's more of a gallery format. I would venture to say that Urban Outfitters intent is to constantly engage the readers with new content.
Of course if the majority of your blog readers are RSS subscribers, then your design is a moot point :-)
Yes I am an Apple fan-boy, but I have owned my share of PCs in the past decade. One of the most lauded aspects of Apple is their product design...they just make things that look good. So here is my challenge. Show me a 17-inch PC laptop that doesn't look like an overweight hunk of plastic?
For the record, the only PC laptop design I've ever looked at and said, "wow, nice lines" is the IBM/Lenovo Thinkpad X-series.
Scrapblog has their preview out in the wild. I first saw the product a month or two ago while visiting the Scrapblog gang down in Miami. The preview version is the same thing, but de-bugged. They opened things up for testing a day ago and I was impressed that the few issues I found have already been fixed :-)
So far I've created a few Scrapblogs around my photography, you can view them here and here. You can also export your finished Scrapblogs to a blog or Flickr (like I did).
However, the Flickr version does not do the product justice. You really need to play around to see what it can do. You can jump right in, or check out their quick demo video.
A project I was involved with just launched this week, the revised Yahoo Search Blog. I provided design and MT support/implementation on the project in conjunction with VOCE Communications. For the re-design they wanted some simple and flexible that would scale well on various resolutions.
The switchover had a few short-lived DNS related issues, but everything is up and running now. This is the second project I've worked on with Yahoo, last year I helped launch the Yahoo Search Marketing blog.
For the RSS readers out there, I have slightly tweaked the hyku.com design. I had planned on doing a complete revamp, but I have too much client work going on to get a complete overhaul done. With that, I just tweaked some things and adjusted the nav a bit. As such, it's not v6.0 it's v5.1. More details below the photo.
The changes are very slight and many people won't be able to tell much of a difference, but here they are:
- I moved the primary navigation from above the photo to below it. The old location always felt disconnected since it was so far away from the primary content space. It also required a bit of mouse-travel to move around.
- I updated the primary navigation links. The wiki is gone, but I added speaking, travel and photography. The new items are a part of what I do and who I am.
- I wanted to put more emphasis on my original photography at the top. To do this I increased the size of the photo slightly. The rotation is still there and currently features 70+ unique photos. More coming soon.
- On the blog I revamped the the entry listing, specifically removing all the linking, digg, etc. items. I felt they cluttered the content and didn't add much functionality.
- Another major issue was Flickr integration. Currently the medium sized photo on Flickr is 500 pixels wide. The previous blog design couldn't handle a 500 pixel wide image in the entry body. As you see, the screen shot above is 500 pixels wide.
- The overall design features some new fades and highlights to make the design more current.
- The CSS is cleaner and I cleaned out a bunch of old files from the server - yay!
There are a number of other slight changes in the works for when I get some time to do them. Specifically, I will be updating the blog sidebar and adding a revised footer element.
One more thing...this blog runs on MovableType, although I am always asked if it's on WordPress. I work frequently in both platforms and I have no real preference.
Fred Wilson puts a shiny new thing on his blog and asks readers for their opinion. The result? They hate it.
It's far too easy to junk up your blog with all the widgets and other 'shiny things' that are out there. Before you put something on your blog template think:
1. Is it useful to my readers?
2. Does it look good/fit with my design?
I would say that #1 always trumps #2 but an ugly eyesore with usability issues can ruin a good idea.
Look for widgets that offer a number of design options or allow you to customize the design via CSS. For example Plazes offers a number of options for their badge.
This is funny/sad depending on how you look at it. Jeremy Zawodny notices some similarities between Yahoo! and Google's promotion of IE7.
Many moons ago I had a designer apply for a job at my web firm. When they sent over their work examples two of them were complete rip-offs of designs that I had done. Small (and sad) world.
Needless to say the guy didn't get the job. I was tempted to bring him in for an interview and say, "I really like your stuff......where do you find the inspiration?"
Disclosure: Yahoo! is a client.
If you look at the very bottom right of this site you'll see a small amount of text that says 'hyku v5.0'. That's because this is the fifth version of the site/blog. One of the things I plan on doing the first week of 2007 is redesigning hyku (again).
Part of what I do is design, so I need to keep my site sharp/current. Don't get me wrong I like the current version, but I have some new ideas that I want to implement (plus my CSS skills are much better now than they were in early Jan, 2006).
One of the things I plan to continue is integrating my photography in the design. If you didn't know, I have taken all the header shots that are featured. If you want to look through the rotation you can click here.
As I work through the process I'll be documenting it and will post a recap once the new site is live.
The new 2G iPod Shuffle started arriving yesterday which means only one thing....unpacking photos. A quick search on Flickr for the tag 'shuffle' shows over 120 photos posted yesterday alone. There will probably be more today and an bunch over the weekend once the new iPods hit the retail shelves on Friday.
You have to hand it to Apple, they always benefit from the positive vibes generated by the design of their hardware and the packaging. If you were on the fence about buying one of the new shuffles, the onslaught of photos are probably pushing you over the edge. Apple has to love that.
You can check out some more unpacking pr0n at Unboxing.com. You'll notice that Apple products are often featured....wonder why?
Brian Oberkirch uploaded a pair of podcasts that I participated in over the past few days over at Weblogswork.
First up is a design discussion that Jeremy Harrington and I had with Brian: Weblogs Worknotes: Blog Design.
The next podcast is a continuation of the PR-Gang we assembled at New Communications Forum in March of this year: Weblogs Worknotes: PR 2.0 Group on the Social Media Services Gap
Dave Coustan over at the Earthlink Blog has added a script to randomize header photos on the blog template. It's a simple little thing that I've done for quite some time with this blog and with client blogs.
I love good, simple photography as a component of design, mostly as a background element. The random aspect always gives the user a fresh look for each visit. The photography you use should also be original stuff and not stock.
All the shots I feature on my blog are pictures of places I've been. The photography is a bit more personal in nature and also helps connect with users in certain markets. I've received quite a number of e-mails from people saying, 'saw your picture of XX, I was there last year.'
I think I am going to start posting small items about the new shots I am adding to the header rotation.
Orlando is where I have a few clients but I really don't get too involved in the local politics/issues. With that, I don't know all the details about the simmering battle between two children's hospitals but I did find one aspect interesting. In one corner your have Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children & Women, the established player in the market, in the other corner you have Nemours Children's Hopsital, the new 'kid' on the block (bud pun I know). Nemours is trying to make the case that Orlando needs another children's hospital, while Palmer is attempting to protect their turf.
What I find funny are their two billboards along Interstate 4 in downtown Orlando.
Palmer's billboard says they are 'Built for Kids' while Nemours says they are 'Dedicated to children'. Obviously Palmer can make their claim and Nemours can't since Nemours hasn't been 'built'. On the flip side Nemours focusses on their single dedication to children rather than 'Women & Children'. Which is better?
I'm not sure who copied who, but either way I think the similarities make both billboards look silly.
I've added seven new header graphics to the rotation. The shots are from my recent trips to: Animal Kingdom, Sanibel Island and Captiva Island. First person to e-mail me with the names/descriptions of the seven new shots will get a modest prize :-)
I love my Timbuk2 Commute XL bag that I use to carry my 17" PowerBook. It's got a clean black look with a splash of yellow on the interior. But, if only this bag could carry the 'big aluminum' though...
Black is good for conservative business, but I just love all of Timbuk2's new spring stuff....might need to pick up a wallet or a small messenger bag.
A while back Steve Rubel pointed the way to Iconize Me. It's a service that will create an icon from any photo you supply them. There are three artists with varying styles doing the work. I preferred the look that Paul Sahner provided, but alas he wasn't taking orders at the time.
While traveling today I received an e-mail from Paul that said he was taking orders again! I quickly sent over a headshot and received my icon tonight:
I recently completed a new blog design for Steve Rubel's Micro Persuasion. Steve wanted a simple, clean design that worked within TypePad and still allowed him to use their TypeList features. The new design is a CSS update that is pasted into the Custom CSS screen on TypePad.
The original idea was to use TypePad's advanced templates and expand some of the blog's functionality. Unfortunately, when you switch to advanced templates in TypePad you lose the ability to easily manage and re-order your TypeLists. You can include a basic set of TypeLists in an advanced template, but you can't re-order them without editing the HTML of the template. Anybody have a solution for that?
