Here's what we're talking about.

We’re gonna need a bigger boat

So I’m spelunking around the web as I like to do on a quiet Saturday evening after burping up code all day…

I revisited the HUGE website. These guys rock as far as creative is concerned and I feel connected to them in that we chose the same color to represent our brand. It takes a special person to embrace magenta. M=100!

Anyway, I noticed that their website did not scale down for the 1028×768 viewport. I try to stay on top of the design and development best practices and from what I can determine, they made a conscious choice to make those with small (non-widescreen) monitors scroll horizontally. And I am not hating.

I spent a lot of time and vocal chord cells arguing against 800×600 while I was at Bank of America. And I made a fairly public declaration that IE6 users are on their own; I wasn’t considering them when I developed sites anymore. (If I can find that Facebook post, I’ll add a screenshot.)

I have a feeling that the brilliant guys and gals at HUGE, Inc. looked at their traffic and determined that those with old school monitors were either so small a percentage of their audience or there was some other factor that caused them to make the strategic design decision to move past that resolution constraint.

Good for them. I may follow suit….at least for B2B.

It’s a knockout

An often overlooked logo design element is the knockout version. The knockout is the version of the logo that would appear on a dark background. There are many times when a logo cannot be reproduced in full color due to the environment where the logo will be placed or the costs associated with printing in… More

Another gem of an article. http://lnkd.in/dgHftfK

a little something interesting I found: http://lnkd.in/dgHftfK from LinkedIn via IFTTT

Let’s Dance

New client meeting tonight in Bear, and it is a dance of peacocks, preening, spitting and strutting their accomplishments. Each person trying to one-up the other and demonstrate their knowledge of the best way to promote the business in question. Enter the owner, who has spent months or years in the trenches. Enter the marketer,… More

Location marketing on location (Me gusta “lo-sos”)

One of my favorite neighborhood restaurants is taking advantage of location marketing. For those of you that don’t know, location marketing takes advantage of smart phones equipped with GPS. On location-based social sites, also known as “lo-so”s, like Facebook, Yelp! and Loopt, a user can “check in” to establishments near him/her and the savvy business… More

First Contact

This one’s for my creative brothers and sisters, but the small business community can use this one too. I got a call out of the blue from a prospective client that found us on The Google. I love it when that happens. One of the most important conversations you will have with a client is… More

new logo

Heya guys! Here’s a logo that was just approved for a massage therapist client. In my research, I found lots of massage logos to be a little on the heavy side. This logo is meant to convey health, cleanliness and serenity. Tell us what you think.

latest blog post: Some great message gamification. Well executed and extremely customer centric. Try the quiz! What kind of procrastinator are you? check it out.

a little something interesting I found: http://ift.tt/1spo1Oe from LinkedIn via IFTTT

Shock and aww

So I was engaged in a conversation earlier today about User Experience, UX for short. This, along with User Interface (UI) design, are the hot button topics of web design now. Suddenly, companies care about their users now that the web has evolved and flattened so that users have a say in how they interact… More

rose

You know, we humans have a peculiar habit: we like to name things. They give us a sense of order in a chaotic world. Look at the title of this post…it brings an image to mind. A smell. A memory. A Golden Girl. A connection. It’s the same with naming products. Companies have spent millions… More

be brief, be bright, be gone

Check out this article on the length of emails: (It’ll open in a new window) I check most of my emails to get information about the state of the medium. I have found that emails are getting longer and longer and LONGER. They present so much material that my eyes glaze by the first scroll.… More

rules of the road

You know what’s fun? Brand guidelines. Seriously. It’s cool to take a design and develop a system around it. Right now, I am working on brand guidelines for a client that is undergoing a complete rebrand. It started innocently enough…”Hey, can you whip up a sales video for us?” “We need a new white paper… More

Facebook microtargeting

One of the goals of marketers is to create a message that the viewer believes is meant solely for him/her. Considerable time, money and effort is spent developing the right message for the right audience. The smaller the audience, the more specific and compelling the marketing message can be. The practice of delivering messages to… More

strike up a conversation

I saw this article that may be of interest to you: it’s premise is that user like it when companies answer their questions on Twitter. This is also a great opportunity to demonstrate your expertise in your field and make the person who asked the question feel heard. Here’s the crux of their research: “Eight… More

Book Review: About Face: The Secrets of Emotionally Effective Advertising by Dan Hill

I am an avid reader of design and advertising books. As geeky as it sounds, I read those types of books as my pleasure reading. I always want to know more about how to excel at my craft. Every so often there comes along a book that completely changes the way that I think about… More

(free) information is power 2

Responded to an email that came through the site last week (I know, that was a little too long to wait) and a request for marketing assistance for $1000 per year. That’s a very low number, and I told them so. But instead of telling them to get lost, here’s what I did. I gave… More

Branding Brilliance

Brilliant.