Effectiveness
Dec 4, 2008 General, Page Layout
First off id like to say that this blog entry pertains specifically to design but I do believe these principles apply to many (if not all) aspects of life.
When faced with huge tasks, effective use of your time is critical. Its probably the deciding factor of whether or not a project turns out amazing or just average. Effective designers usually have a system they follow and these systems allow you to follow a routine with your workflow. What’s great about having a routine is that it takes the guesswork out of the process and allows you to free your mind up to concentrate on being creative.
Without any question the place where I developed my understanding of the importance of this concept was while working at snowboarder magazine. Here we had a small crew that consisted of a photo editor, two editors, copy writer, and an art director. it allowed us to move quickly and make our own decisions but there was no room or time for mistakes. each month we delivered a 200 page book (magazine). The only way were able to achieve this was through strict teamwork and effective use of time.
The term effective is very critical here. To be effective you need to measure twice and cut once. Get the best photos on the page, place them so they have the most impact, then set the type around them. Photos create the visual impact so they take priority over the words. Once you have the items in place and the type is set…….bring in some design elements, align everything and hit save. Now move on.
Move on? thats right. this is what being effective is about. Don’t tinker with it. The fact is - the page has its pictures in place and the type is set with a basic design underway. So basically the article is 90% done. At this point you should hit save and move on to the next article. This way you can get more pages out the door and as you get closer to your deadline you can gauge how much time you have left go back and hone your designs. Once you have a great deal of the articles assembled and saved it frees up your mind up to come up with cool colors schemes or layout styles knowing the nuts and bolts of the project are in place. I cant tell you how much time this system saves and it allows you to produce great work at a fast pace.
Earlier on I mentioned that these principles can be applied to many (if not all ) aspects of life. Take golf for example, every exceptional golfer has a rock solid and identical pre shot routine. It takes the guesswork out of preparing for the shot and frees up your mind to focus on the task at hand which in this case is making a great shot. This applies to personal habits as well. your morning routine if its evolved enough becomes automatic allowing you to plan for the day rather than dig around for your keys. The concept is a simple one but I strongly believe that having a routine is the key to being effective.
The World’s First E-Ink Magazine Cover
Nov 21, 2008 General
I know I’m about a month behind on this topic, considering Esquire released the world’s first e-ink cover in October 2008. But, as it’s an ever-fascinating concept, I feel it’s not too late to join in the discussion. As the age-old saying goes, better late than never. 
“The 21st Century Begins Now” reads the formidable Esquire cover, its bold, flashing text leaping from an edgy, black exterior. The phrase, rotating between soft gray font and stark white text, transfixes consumers as they pass by, both dazzled and confounded by the magazine’s innovative visage. How do I know this, you may be wondering? Well it just so happens that I, too, fell victim to its glossy gaze.
I was at Borders purchasing yet another beloved Margaret Atwood novel when my eyes fell unassumingly upon Esquire’s cover, a postmodern amalgamation of sleek aesthetics and electronic ink. Moving words and flashing images comprise the front cover, its images backlit with e-ink; while the inside display is coated with a moving car advertisement for Ford Flex Crossover, its motion powered by a flashing loop. A Special Collector’s Edition, the experimental cover marked Esquire’s 75th Anniversary Issue, of which only a limited supply - 100,000 - was released.
For those of you unfamiliar with electronic ink and electronic paper displays (EDP’s), I’ll gladly introduce you to the technology. According to leading e-ink developer E-Ink Corporation, EDP’s are high resolution, low power displays, like Amazon’s electronic book reader, the Kindle, or the Sony Reader. These EDP’s, which display a “paper-like high contrast” use electronic ink, which carry a charge, thereby enabling it to be updated through electronics. This electronic ink is essentially the foundation for Esquire’s digital cover.
According to Esquire, its e-ink cover took approximately a year to develop, and traveled about 7,000 miles prior to hitting local book stands. The issues’ display screen, electronics, and batteries were assembled in Shanghai, China, using components from at least 7 different factories. Once activated, the devices were then shipped to Negras, Mexico, via Dallas, in refrigerated trucks, thereby preserving the battery life. Once in Mexico, 100,000 covers were then assembled by hand. From Mexico, the assembled covers found their home in Kentucky, where they were bound to the magazine itself. It’s transnational labor at its finest.
Ultimately, the cover’s small circuit board, which contains six button cell batteries, has a life span of about 90 days - a reasonably long life considering its $6 price tag. Greater longevity can be attained, however, when stored in the refrigerator or freezer.
For the most part, Esquire’s e-ink magazine cover was met with mixed reviews, some lauding Esquire for its ingenious hybrid. Others, however, were thoroughly disappointed, considering the rather bulky issue to be a primitive rendering of the world’s first e-ink cover. Either way, it’s a striking innovation, and I’m sure Esquire is quite content to be the pioneer in the e-ink magazine industry.
To see Esquire’s October cover in all it’s flashing glory, check out YouTube’s video.
Thanks to Amazon, Avid Readers Can Kindle Their Literary Affinities Whenever, Wherever. But, Dare I Beg the Question, At What Price?
Nov 17, 2008 General
Thanks to Amazon’s business acumen, avid readers can kindle their literary affinities whenever, wherever. With the infamous Kindle, Amazon’s increasingly popular, portable electronic book reader, literary aficionados can hold—in little over 10 ounces—upwards of 200 book titles. For any avid reader, this is cause for considerable celebration, as the Kindle remedies the often encumbering task of lugging around a book collection. Unfortunately, in today’s society, where convenience reigns tradition often suffers and, as in the case of photography and written publications, the Kindle might very well prove a veritable threat to more traditional methods of reading.
An article in Saturday’s Miami Herald raised this burgeoning issue, one that has conspicuously affected several older mediums already. The prevalent use of both the internet and digital cameras has nearly extirpated once-thriving industries; older cameras have been relegated to the sidelines, and the publishing industry as we know it may be headed toward a rather grave demise. A tragic trajectory for traditionalists, technological innovation continues to tear at the very fabric of convention. 
Using the aforementioned examples as a paradigm, one may consider books as the next possible victim of innovation. Could a device like the Kindle ultimately trump the very existence of the book trade? For the sake of being, well, presumptuous, I will reference a Miami Herald article to explore the question further.
This particular quandary was addressed and summarized quite well in the article entitled “E-books Bringing New Power to the Printed Word”—though mostly to counter the author’s position that e-books will increase and strengthen readership. Indeed, power they might bring to the words themselves, as the Kindle allows for swifter access to an impressive volume of literary works. Since the Kindle’s wireless activity and link to an Amazon account enable direct purchasing of books, Kindlers can essentially purchase e-books wherever they want, as frequently as they want, directly to the device itself.
Why, then, should one drive to the local bookstore, peruse endless aisles, and wait in queues when he or she can download 10 books in a matter of minutes? Similarly, why order a book online only to impatiently await its arrival? If convenience appeals, as the author attests, and the Kindle coddles readers with convenience, then why shouldn’t the reader opt for a Kindle and forgo the bookstore altogether? Will the sanctity of books be lost amid yet another digital wave?
It’s a concern that, according to the article, already plagues the executive vice president for business operations of Penguin Books, Doug Whiteman. “It’s not so much what these devices will impact in the future. It’s that they are having an impact right now,” he says in the article. “You can fit a year’s worth of books, more actually, onto your device. I predict there will be a flood of these things on the market in coming years.”
So what then, would halt another digital revolution, one that wipes out our beloved paperback? Comfort, asserts Peter Rubie, chief executive officer of Fineprint Literary Management. Though he acknowledges in the article that “publishing is one of those industries that isn’t swift to embrace technology” (and here, one must note the dissolution of Kodak), he purports that the book industry will continue to thrive, thanks to reader psychology. “There is a sensual psychology, a special feeling that comes with being able to hold a book and feel the pages, and so forth. And for people who buy lots of books, that feeling won’t change.”
I think for now, it is safe to say that books aren’t going anywhere. At $359 pop, the Kindle is no minor investment, and only true book zealots or those with an abundance of cash might opt for this pricey alternative. And though the Kindle’s high-resolution screen may in fact resemble the façade of real paper, the general public most likely will continue to purchase the real thing. But if Kindle-like devices do in fact persist, and ultimately plummet in price, then we may in fact have a substantive issue at hand.
Tags: Add new tag
TypeChart: CSS Web Fonts Made Easy
Nov 4, 2008 CSS, General, Web Design Trends
TypeChart is a simple and easy to use font CSS generator which comes in very handy when you need just the right “browser friendly” font. It easily allows you to view all web-safe fonts in your browser and it even renders what they would look like in other operating systems.
Along with simply viewing the CSS font showcase you can download the CSS for various sizes and treatments of selected fonts. Overall it’s an extremely helpful CSS font tool for developers and designers alike.
Tags: typechart
THAT Agency’s New Improved Design Blog
Oct 30, 2008 General, Technology Trends
Here we go. I’ve just installed a new design blog on our servers to better server the viewing public and give us something a bit more manageable to work with. The old blog was built on the Nucleus system of blogging and has become quickly outdated. Well, not that quickly but it was over 2 years old and the system itself had become difficult to extend.
This new blog is built on the Wordpress system, fully widget ready and completely expandable.
Tags: That Agency's New Blog
Google goes mobile!
Sep 25, 2008 General
On Tuesday, Google revealed it’s newest product…G1. Eerily similar in style to Apple’s iPhone, T-Mobile showcased the G1, calling attention to it’s large touch screen, trackball, slide-out keyboard, Wi-Fi connection ability and quick access to Google’s email and mapping programs.
The phone is set to be sold in T-Mobile stores only in the U.S. cities where the company has rolled out its faster, third generation wireless data network. On the planned device launch date, of October 22nd, that will include 21 cities. Included in those cities are New York, Los Angeles, Houston and Miami. The phone will be available in other areas for purchase, and does run on T-Mobile’s slower data network, but it is optimized for the faster networks.
The G1 will retail for $179, which is conveniently $20 less than Apple’s iPhone!
Google believes that in the future, they could potentially bring in more revenue on the mobile front, rather than on PCs, a channel that will generate about $20 billion in revenue this year. Because of this, the G1 features “Android”, a free software, that is a crucial building block in Google’s efforts to extend their search reach and other services to the mobile platform.
In an effort to keep up and prevent Google from extending it’s dominance, both Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp. are also investing heavily into the mobile market.
On the surface, there doesn’t seem to be anything all that remarkable when compared to other phones out on the market. But Google is banking on the device to unleash the creativity of the software developing community, who are free to write applications for it. Developers will be able to submit applciation to an online store, run by Google, which will apply minimal testing and inspections. Apple has a similar online store for their iPhone, but they keep a much tighter grip as to what applications are available to users. Any program that is similar to it’s own, gets blocked.
Similar to how software programmers can write and create programs for their PC, they will be able to manipulate their phone in the same way, allowing them to modify and innovate.
What will Google think of next?!
Tags: google
SEO and Search Engine Reputation Management
Aug 20, 2008 General
I recently heard a story of a guy who went to an interview. The entire interview went great until the employer asked him one last question: “What’s your MySpace page address?” Right there in the interview, the employer took a peek through this individual’s MySpace page. Seem outrageous? Yeah, but this type of snooping has become common, even if it doesn’t happen right during the interview.
More and more, employers are ‘Goggling’ prospective employees to learn more about them. And for a while now, consumers have done the same thing before purchasing a product or doing business with a new company. As a business owner, do you know what your prospects find when they search for you on the web?
If you’re like most businesses, a simple search of your company name yields your website in the #1 organic spot. But what shows up in the #2, #3, etc. spots? Hopefully, it’s something positive like press releases or positive reviews of your business. In many cases though, you may find that negative press shows up somewhere on the first page. Imaging if one of your customers searched for your website and caught a glimpse of a couple of negative reviews that show up in the search results. Do you want to address the same concerns every time a new customer comes across a concerning review? Let’s face it; even the best companies have unhappy customers.
As more and more business-rating websites come online, the potential for other web properties to show up for a query of your name increases. So what can you do about it?
Search Engine Reputation Management
Search engine reputation management is not a new search strategy but is definitely a fast-growing one. It’s taken some time for individuals and business alike to take their online reputations seriously. It’s becoming more of the norm to research products before we buy them and businesses are starting to catch on.
So how does SEO reputation management work? First of all, it’s not about going around the web and making false positive customers reviews about your own products and services. There’s already enough garbage on the internet and there’s no reason to add to it. It’s also not about magically making websites disappear.
Online reputation management is first and foremost about identifying the negative press about your company and fixing it. This involves assessing the situation and developing a plan for addressing negative press. This may mean replying to negative forum posts or consumer groups and doing everything possible to turn the negative comments into positive ones. It may also mean creating content or websites addressing major concerns about your business. A result of online reputation management is improved customer service by actually responding to unhappy customers. For the situations where you can’t make customers happy, and this happens, reputation management is about putting yourself in a better position to promote the positive things about your business.
Search engine reputation management should be an important part of any brand’s marketing strategy. Web 2.0, the ‘social Web,’ has transformed the way consumers get information. Online reputation already has a profound effect on businesses success and will continue to do so in the future.
Tags: reputation management
Keyboard Shortcuts
Aug 18, 2008 General
I’m a huge fan of keyboard shortcuts. They help me multitask and every program lets you use them. It’s a great feeling to discover one on your own.
For me keyboard short cuts started with Photoshop. I can work on an entire project without once touching the top navigation bar or selecting something I need. I know just about every shortcut, test me. My favorite would have to be ctrl + alt + shift + s (save for web) I think I like it so much because I use it the most. Then of course you have to move to the Tools. Using Tool shortcuts makes image editing a breeze. You can manipulate the image and it’s so fast. The Tool short cuts are a hit of just one letter. Let’s say you need to type something, press T and your new tool is the Character tool, start typing. Need the Magic wand? Press W. How about Zoom, press Z. See the pattern, most of the shortcuts are the first letter of the tool you need. If it’s not a tool but a part of your page setup it’s simply ctrl + the first letter of what you need. Like Ruler ctrl + R. If you need to change the color of your image slightly try Levels, ctrl + L (that is one of the first shortcuts I learned) I also like to close my docs by hitting ctrl + W, don’t forget to save it though… just press Y when it asks if you’d like to do so. The list of shortcuts goes on, try them out and discover new ones, that’s the best part.
A great thing about mastering a programs keyboard short cuts is that it will be the same in their sister programs. For instance all Photoshop shortcuts are the same in Illustrator, In Design, Fireworks, and the other programs use simple shortcuts. Simple shortcuts are ctrl + s (save), ctrl + p (print), ctrl + w (close) you get me gist. Oh design program short cuts are different than development short cuts. I am learning the shortcuts for Dreamweaver. I only have the most important down pat. Like ctrl + shift + U, will Put the file. F5 will refresh your url so you can see the change you made. Then there are different ways of saving your files. So I have found those most helpful. I can’t imagine how many more there are. It will be exciting to find them out.
How NOT to Build Reputation
Jul 28, 2008 General
In an ideal and alternate universe, fame, popularity, influence, the size of your “carbon footprint”, are all a product of what you do, not who you do know. And with the big lean on reputation management, it’s essential that the name a SEOlebrity makes for him or herself is one earned.
In a scene from ‘The Weatherman’, Nicholas Cage’s character, a putzy chi-town weather forecaster, is consoled by his Pulitzer Prize-winning father, played by Michael Caine.
He says, “Nothing that has meaning is easy.”
And when that nugget of wisdom is applied to the SEO community, I think we can begin to cull the glass chewers from the glass jaws.
The how-to for making a name for yourself, well, that one is fairly straightforward—offer something no one else can or already has, create, become and integral part of your community, maintain an amiable rapport, become iconic.
But how not to make a name for one’s self—there’s not an instruction manual for that, until now.
Meet Julia Allison, quintessential fameball and Disney animatron. This former Star-online editor rose up from the dregs of a whimsical Manhattan lifestyle and engineered a fame for herself, one founded on nothing more than showing up to a party in a costume of condoms.
From a surface inspection, it would appear that Allison took the Walt Whitman approach to celebrity-status by fueling her own publicity, but what separates the two is glaring; one had a prowess for creating, the other is simply a lamprey of others’ fame and married to the lens of a camera.
Fast-forward nearly two years. Following a botched six-figure position at Star magazine, a handful of appearances on Fox News and CNN, an expose in Wired, and talks of a TV show aptly titled ‘IT Girls’, there is still nothing, really, to warrant such attention. With any positive press, she attracts twice as much negative. And instead of being proactive about it, managing her reputation, and performing some much-needed damage control, she gets upset.
Present and future SEOlebrities would be wise to use the trainwreck that is Julia Allison’s fame as a lesson on how not to earn your reputation. You have to find your niche, be unique, have something brilliant to offer, serve your time, and become endorsed by the community you serve.
How To: Word-Nerd in 1 Week
Jun 13, 2008 General
As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.
- from ‘The Metamorphosis’ by Franz Kafka
What you’ll need:
(1) Credit Card
(1) Mailing Address
(1) Week
(0) Insecurities
Like Samsa, it became me. Just pure, unbridled word-nerdery.
My first stop—Unicomp Keyboards.
I kicked it back to the elementary school typing class days and purchased an IBM Model-M keyboard. The thing is a tank and features that classic buckling-spring clack-clack-clack sound and feel when you depress the keys.
What could be interpreted as just another laughable case of cultural irony, was, at least for me, a comforting blanket of nostalgia.
My next point of unnecessary spending brought me to Turn Nocturnal for what was quite possibly the epitome of guilty-pleasure purchases over the course of the transformation—a tshirt of San Serifs.
“Not too bad,” I thought to myself. But who was I fooling. It was quintessential word-nerd.
When the keyboard finally arrived, I was fortunate enough to stumble upon this little gem. Type Racer.
Remember those speed typing tests cleverly masked as games to make typing class a little less lame than it already was? Well, they’re back. This time in the form of VW Beetles and excerpts from famous books and screenplays. Nothing about it makes sense, but once you experience that initial crushing victory, you’ll understand.
I’ve yet to achieve the final stage, but I hear it’s exploding all over the Internet and accumulating a large base of non-typographers. FontStruct. It’s free, too easy to use, and available as what I’m assuming to be a plugin as an on-site tool.
Tags: how to
