During the 2010 SXSW Interactive Festival designers debated whether or not WordPress is killing web design. The idea is that WordPress and other CMS are constraining designers to think outside the box and turning them into lazy designers. I was quite pleased to hear that no one on the panel agreed with this statement. Brendan Dawes, one of the panel members pointed out that WordPress is simply a tool that manipulates data. Said in another way, Gina Bolton confirmed what I believe, which is that WordPress is highly customizable and can be made to do whatever you want.
One of my latest project consisted of converting a design provided by Mizu Creative into a WordPress site for Paul Sangha. The site included a photo gallery which required jQuery animation, a few different templates, random background images and flash on the home page. I’m very proud of this work, but more importantly, by the fact that it looks nothing like a WordPress site.
I’ve worked with many graphic designers in the past and when asked about constraints, my only suggestions is to keep the width of the canvas to 960px. This constraint is only there to ensure that the site will look good on most browsers, but even this is debatable and will depend on the target audience.
The Paul Sangha website is a great example which demonstrates that designers should not be constrained by the CMS.
I read an interesting article a few days ago by Johnathan where he examines the dark side of content management systems – CMS for short. His arguments focuses mainly on the markup and the aesthetics of the site. Once the site is live and you’ve provided the client with the ability of changing content, images and copying and pasting from Word, then one must face the fact that it’s now out of your hands and God knows what the site will end up looking like.
I’ve been developing websites for over 5 years now and find it amazing how everyone now seems to want a CMS. Additionally with the use of WordPress, I no longer desire to create static websites. The issue that I have with CMS is that damn “copying and pasting” and I put 100% of the blame on Microsoft. Super bloggers and geeks aside, most people I know use Word to write their content and rely on it for formatting and spell checking. Unfortunately when it comes to incorporating it in WordPress, copying and pasting leads to strange formatting which ends up ruining the aesthetic of the site and adding extra code.
If “Free is the future of business“, then the folks at Backstage have created an interesting marketing tool for all the Radiohead wanna-bes out there. They offer musicians a platform for sharing free music and gathering a database of interested listeners. For the rest of us, it means a few free tracks in exchange for our e-mail address and for recommending the page to a friend. You fill out a quick form, and the downloads are yours.
At first I was irked by the requirement to give a friend’s e-mail address in the form. But then I realized that’s the hook their model is hanging on. You probably have a friend who likes the same music as you, and since you’re recommending a freebie, and Backstage promises not to spam them, they’ll probably forgive you for sharing their address… Probably. There’s a bit of a leap of faith in that assumption. I think this requirement to share a friend’s address will affect their uptake on the offer somewhat but it also makes viral marketing more effective than it would be otherwise. So the net effect is probably a positive one for them.
I’ve never called myself a graphic designer. I’ve designed business cards in the past, but I don’t think that any of them would win awards and I only ever did these once the logo was supplied. I curse every time I open illustrator and I’m convinced that I only ever used 20% of the Photoshop features. I consider graphic designer, people who know their Pantone colours from their CMYK and care passionately about paper and print material.
Don’t get me wrong, I love printed material, but I wouldn’t know how one goes about selecting the right paper and ink. As a result of “lacking” this skill, I’ve been very opened to working with other graphic designers. Usually they will approach me in the middle of a project and say something like this:
“We’ve been working with company ABC and did a bunch of printed material for them and now they want a website. Can you help us?”
In the past few years, I’ve been working more and more on other people’s design and have learned a great deal. It’s simply staggering the number of different approaches to web design there are. I must be missing something about Illustrator’s capabilities, because it seems to be the favourite tool amongst graphic designers.
I recently finished a project for the BCRPA’s Physical Activity Strategy (PAS) initiative. I had the pleasure of working with Dean Kujula from Kube. Dean created the icons for the PAS website and prepared a website design. Once approved, Dean asked me how I would like to receive the files and what version of Photoshop I was using. I was quite impressed with the result. The file contained multiple folders, each carefully labeled and ordered. I don’t think that I’ve ever worked with such well organized material.
I constantly meet newbie web designers who want to do it all; logos, branding, brochures, cms, web design…. I’ve come to the conclusion that working with experts and people who are more talented then you is a much better way to expand your knowledge.
Jared Spool of UIE has written a little case study of how the company Pure Digital has captured 13% of the video camera market in just a few months. They designed the Flip Video camera with 4 principles that really made a difference:
Think like a minimalist. The camera has just a few buttons to do what the vast majority of users want to do: record, play, delete, zoom, scroll through movies, and control volume during playback. Compared to multi-level menus in most cameras, this minimalism creates an ease-of-use that sets them apart.
Remove your customer’s worries. Their different approach to batteries means the camera owner doesn’t have to think so much about the batteries and is more likely to use the camera as a result.
Eliminate that which has no value. They loaded the software onto the camera instead of a disc, so there’s no need to install software on any computer you go to. The camera does it all seamlessly.
Integrate the next step. Realizing that the next logical step after making a movie is to share it. so, they made it easy to email your video or share it on YouTube
I think these principles are great ones to keep in mind whether you’re designing a website, a physical product, or a service, and especially if you are designing an end-to-end customer experience that may include all of these things.
One of my New Year’s resolution this year was to deepen my yoga practice and integrate yoga philosophy in my daily activities. I was already practicing 5 times a week, so I’ve now increased to 6 and sometimes 7, I attend workshops whenever I can with visiting teachers and went to my first yoga retreat a few weeks ago. I feel better than ever, but I still haven’t found an way to involve yoga in my Web work.
Ideally my goal would be to develop and create sites dedicated to yoga. I’ve had the pleasure to work with Barbara from Bluecitrus for many years now. When I first met her, she had just launched Chakravibe, an e-commerce website selling yoga jewelery based on the chakra colours. Built using OS-Commerce platform, the website functioned very well, but was difficult to update and maintain and the code was a complete nightmare to decipher. When Barbara approached me earlier this year and asked me to help her move the static pages to WordPress, I decided that if I wanted to get involved in the yoga community, this was a great first move.
Joseph and Ben took responsibility of the OS-Commerce component and moved everything to a sub-folder. I took care of re-creating the design using up-to-date HTML/CSS and removed all of the tables and set up the WordPress templates. I doubt that many people have noticed that the website has changed. Except for a few pixel adjustments here and there and the changes in url, the website is identical. We’ve also added a blog allowing Barbara and Teresa, to write posts and tell us what’s new. So far the results have been very positive. Barbara is very pleased that she can update the content and post new images and Teresa has been writing great posts.
Back in the summer, we were asked by Rob at Techvibes to come up with a mini website with a Map of the Web 2.0 companies of Vancouver, aptly named Techcouver. Darren drew up the map mimicking the Transit Map and we went ahead and created this mini website over the course of a weekend. It was very well received, but hardly “Web 2.0″ material. The site consisted of a static image which was impossible to alter.
Following a meeting with Cameron, we discussed the idea of creating a map to which companies could be added easily. Cameron worked on a flash version of the site and came with with version 2.0 of the map. Although much improved, the map did have limitations and grew crowded very fast.
Techvibes has also been growing rapidly these past few months and in an effort to cover more cities and different technology, we knew that a better solution was needed. The idea of using Google maps had been mentioned from the very beginning but we never had the time to implement it – until now.
This week we launched version 3.0 of our map. The title “Techcouver” has been dropped and we’ve added different technologies. Techvibes goal is to provide visitors with the perfect tool for locating technology service providers across Canada and eventually the US.
If you’d like your company added to the map, fill out the request form and we’ll get you on there. If you have any feedback on the process, please report back and we’ll continue to make improvements.
There are many reasons why one should attend conferences. It’s a great way to meet new people, share ideas, learn from your peers and see what everyone else is doing. But more importantly, for me, the main reason is to convince myself that I’m not alone. Others have had the exact same problem and may have a solution that they can share. This year’s Web Direction North conference did just that.
At the start of the New Year, I mentioned that we would be inviting guest bloggers to share their knowledge. Isabelle, Co-founder of Leapzone Strategies is such an expert. A brand expert. Over the next months, hopefully she can answer some of your branding questions and dilemmas.
– Christine
Before answering this question we need to establish what branding is not.
Branding is NOT a logo and it is certainly NOT marketing.
Successful branding is a combination of an authentic promise with a clear, aligned and consistent delivery. Why it is needed is because the promise and delivery are what build trust in your company and increase customer loyalty.
A great brand is earned.
Building a great brand takes time and needs constant attention. What you promise and deliver directly affects your customer’s experience. From the feeling generated by a brochure to a conversation with a customer service rep, each and every encounter a customer has with your brand needs to be considered, evaluated and aligned with who you are as a company and where your company stands in the market.
One of my latest project consisted of converting a design provided by Mizu Creative into a WordPress site for Paul Sangha. The site included a photo gallery which required jQuery animation, a few different templates, random background images and flash on the home page. I’m very proud of this work, but more importantly, by the fact that it looks nothing like a WordPress site.
