Life
Imitating
Design

If you have ever tried to order business cards, posters, brochures or anything else that includes your company logo on it, you may have been asked for a copy of your logo. But where is it?

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A good printer is hard to find. They need to be able to communicate well, understand your needs, deliver promptly and be reasonably priced. Sometimes, printers can speak in their own language and not make the job of getting your own materials printed very straightforward. Some printers just don’t want to help! A conversation I’ve had with more than one printer goes something like:

Me: I need some business cards printed.

Printer: What kind of stock would you like?

Me: I will have to ask the client, but wanted to know what you had so I can give them some options. What do you have?

Printer: We have a large variety of stock. What would you like?

Me: What do you have to choose from?

Printer: What do you want?

Me: Cougar cover, 100lb.

Printer: We don’t have that.

Me: what DO you have?

Printer: What do you want?

etc.

Just imagine my relief when I met Bradley Ball of Mountain View Printing. Bradley has a background in graphic design and knows the printing industry extremely well. This means that he can speak design-speak, know what a designer needs and work to deliver the best product that the printers can produce. It’s my job to design the materials that businesses need and then Bradley’s job to help get those designs onto the right paper or card stock and delivered to your door.

Many years ago,somebody coined the phrase WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get). If you have ever clicked PRINT in any document whatsoever, you will know that this is not necessarily so! Computer screens and printers use different technologies to display colour and each one displays a different range of colours (gamut). These devices can also be setup differently so colours on different monitors will never look the same. Since most printers cannot read minds, or even see the colour that your monitor is showing, it’s important to get a proof first so that you can see the piece ‘in the flesh’ and see colours exactly as they will be printed.

Not only will Mountain View Printing produce a free proof for you, but they will also deliver it to your door in Calgary. All you have to do is approve the proof, and the job will get started. And if you have any questions about the process, or particulars of the job, Bradley can help.

But there’s more! When the job is finished, Bradley will even deliver it straight to you. Does customer service get any better?

I have absolutely no hesitation in recommending Bradley Ball and Mountain View Printing for your next print job. The quality is fantastic, service flawless, and Bradley is a really nice guy too. If you want a quote, give me a call!

Thank you for humouring me and deciding to read this post. You may have clicked on a link on Twitter or Facebook, or you may be scouring this blog to find it. I hope you find this useful.

I have been asked many times about how Twitter should be used. Some people are confused, some think it’s for others and not them, and some people just don’t get it. I also see and read many posts that list the rules for using Twitter.

To clear up any confusion, I have written three rules.

1. Be Yourself

For those of you who want to Tweet to your friends about what you’re wearing, what you just ordered at Starbucks or what your dog just did, it really doesn’t matter how you use Twitter. If you are conscientious at all about Tweeting, you are probably in business. So rule #1 is be yourself. If you are not yourself with your advertising, then by the time people meet you they could be disappointed or pleasantly surprised. Either way, it’s a brand mismatch.

2. Be Yourself

Much like rule #1, rule #2 involves acting natural. Don’t pretend to be more official, professional or competent than you really are. Brand incongruity is a big problem.

3. Be Yourself

Unless your psychiatrist, psychologist, pastor, vicar, counsellor or mirror tell you otherwise, you are just fine the way you are. Besides, if you find that people stop listening and unfollow you the more you tweet, the issue may not actually be with Twitter. Yes, it could be you. If it walks like a duck, etc.

So there you have it. These rules may appear complicated at first, but if you follow them carefully (the order is not important) then you are well on your way to Twitter success.

Good Luck!

When I’m mobile (ie. out of the office) I don’t want to feel that I’m out of the office. I like to have access to information just incase I get a call or email and I can’t get to my desktop in time.

There are the usual suspects, like calendar, email and address book. Those are a given. So when choosing mobile apps, which for me means iPhone apps, being able to sync or take data with me is important to maintain that Office Away From Office illusion. Here are a few applications that have desktop companions to help take the office with me wherever I go. (Note that some of these also have Windows and Android versions).

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If you manage a website with a content management system and need to make a few minor changes to some photographs but didn’t want to spring for Photoshop, I have some good news for you!
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In recent posts, I’ve been talking about how to make your site a place people want to visit. Sounds simple enough doesn’t it? It even sounds really obvious. Who wouldn’t want a site that people want to visit?

Previously I mentioned content and design. Another great way to generate interest is by using video. » Read the rest of this entry «

Your website needs a few cuts. Give it a trim and make it work for you!

Spam Magnets

If you have a link that opens a new email for you (in Outlook, Thunderbird, Mail, etc) then the chances are you spend most mornings deleting invites from foreign dignitaries and shady pharmaceutical companies. The reason for this is that people building spam contact lists will scour websites using mailto links. Talk to your designer and get him/her to use the contact form instead, or just use an image of your email address.

Blur

Damon Albarn can stay, but that lack of focus is going to – hey look, it’s raining outside. I bet the grass will – is that the time, or did I forget to put new batteries in my mouse? Lack of focus will confuse your visitors. Where are they meant to go? What should they click on next? How do they buy right now?

Fake Budgets

Stock libraries are great for adding clean, well lit images of exactly what you need to illustrate your point. But they have to fit! If you are a one person business, it is really obvious that you are not likely to spend thousands of dollars hiring models, renting or scouting a location, hiring lighting and a photographer for one tiny little image. That office space full of beautiful people doesn’t make your website look more professional. It’s just a lie.

Glory Days

You went to school where? I googled it and I don’t think it’s there any more. The chances are pretty good that most of your prospects care less about your schooling than you do. OK, you went to school. What have you done since then?*

You WILL Read the Ad

Many sites, particularly the most prominent technology blogs, feature ads that very cleverly pop-up right over where I’m trying to read. I want to read the article. If I wanted an Audi, I would read the ad in the sidebar. Now, let me read the article!

Bigger is Badder

Websites are clever little fellas! You can upload pictures straight from your 8MP camera onto your computer, upload them to your site and just tell the  browser to display it really small, so it’s fits on your web page. Brilliant. Now you have a picture the size of your dining table being squished into a tiny little space that is going to take the time it takes to read this entire sentence to load. By the time it loads, I’ve forgotten why I was even at this site. All pictures on your site should be ACTUAL size.

Your ‘Puter Sucks

The site looks great. But, the designer only tested it in Internet Explorer because that’s what most people use anyway. Market share says that the vast majority of people use Windows, and all those people have Internet Explorer. So, he/she put a note at the bottom saying ‘This site is optimized for use on Internet Explorer’. Not only does this exclude a LOT of people, it makes users feel that they need a new browser just to view one site. But worse than that, it makes the designer/developer look super lazy.

Web design is not just about making a site aesthetically pleasing. It’s also about knowing what to avoid, and what to include in your site. These are just a few ways you can make your website more honest, clean, efficient and happier in general. If you have any questions about web design and how your site (new or existing) can be build to help your business (rather than hinder it), email me.

*By the way, if you want to know where I went to school and what I studied, just ask. It’s no secret!

Ask me anything. Except whatever just popped into your head.

If I had a dollar for every site that enabled login, profile setup and connectivity with social media sites, I would be signing up for a lot more. But I found one that I think could be interesting.

Formspring allows visitors to ask others questions. About anything. Yes anything! Now, this opens up a whole can of something that could either smell like last week’s diapers (I’m sure I have some somewhere – no, wait, the garbage has already been collected) or be incredibly useful in a social networking kind of way.

What better way to find out what someone is like than asking them questions? We get asked questions everywhere we go, and it’s a great way to understand someone.
People like questionnaires and people like giving their opinions.

So with this perfect recipe of what people like, I have decided to join Formspring to allow anyone (yes even you) to ask questions.See that box on the right, labelled Ask me anything ? If not, click on the logo on the left (the big orange bit) to take you to the home page. There. Now you’ll see the question box.

Relevance and milage will vary, I’m sure. But please, ask away!

Content Management Systems (CMS) are wonderful.
OK, some are.
But they do, at least, allow you to control the content in your website. You can add your own photographs, write as much copy as you want, edit the copy, add pages – in fact, you are completely free to ruin that fantastic design that made your site look so great when it was first launched! Ah, freedom…

So if your site is not exactly doing what you wanted it to do (most commonly, send customers do your door/inbox inundating you with business), what can you do?

1. Call to Action.

This may have been discussed when your site was designed. A call to action is what visitors are to do with your site. Sure, they can marvel at the beauty in the photographs you shot on your family vacation, and spend hours pondering the complex sentence structure in your beautifully written prose, but are they compelled to do something about it?
Look at your home page (or other landing page) and squint. What do you see? A grey blur? What jumps out at you? If it isn’t immediately obvious with a quick (unfocussed) glance, your visitors won’t know either.
Make sure there is a clear, prominent and obvious next step, usually a button that the visitor will click. If you want them to email you right away, make that button take them to a contact form. If your gallery of services or products is what you want them to see, make the link take them to your showcase.

2. Less Copy is More Copy.

People don’t read thousands of words. They read fewer words. You read this point first, didn’t you?

3. The Customer is The Customer.

Why are you writing about you? Visitors, or customers, are only interested in one person, the one in the mirror. Customers don’t want to read an autobiography, they want to read what is in it for them. What will your product do for them? Why is your service the one they need? Tell the visitor about them, engage them, and they will feel compelled to buy.

4. More Choices Delay Choices.

If you have ever sat down in a restaurant with a ten page menu and ordered the first time the server came to your table, you were either very hungry or not terribly adventurous. If you are like most people, you will need time to decide. Simple enough isn’t it? So why does your website have fourteen menu items, with 36 drop down options and 112 text links on the bottom of each page? Wow, that’s going to take me all day to sort through all that to find what I need. I’m going back to Google.

Keep your menu items to about six to make it easier to choose. Choice is good, decision is better!

5. Design is your friend.

Yes, content is important. Without it, websites would just be pretty outlines. But the design is what leads the eye and introduces the brand a lot quicker than words ever can. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but it is also quicker to read. So make sure the design of your site is consistent from page to page. Your CMS may allow you to choose different templates or choose from a rainbow of colours. Consistency in design will not only make visitors feel like they are still at the same site, it will make your business appear consistent, clean, polished and professional.

Keep it simple. Be direct. Get the job done.

We have all had those discussions. Your shirt is blue and she thinks your tie clashes. You argue that it has blue in it – she says that isn’t blue, it’s green. I can’t settle all your relationship issues. For those you are on your own, but I would like to make some suggestions when it comes to talking about colour.

First, a test. I know, very unfair, because I didn’t give you time to study. Can you accurately name these colours?

Fortunately, for the sake of my illustration, your monitor, operating system and lighting conditions will make this particularly difficult. I also happened to choose colours are are in between others on the colour scale.

For some, no. 1 will be grey. Some will see green. Number 2 could be purple or blue. Some will look great on your wall, others will clash with your logo, while the others will either be soothing or sickening.

What makes colour description even more complicated is how we name colours. What colour is grape? At what angle are you looking up when you see sky blue? And is ocean blue Pacific, Atlantic or Indian?

There are a few ways around this issue. One is to ask your designer (hi!) to submit a reference colour chart. Your logo or stationery has probably been designed with a colour palette which your designer has used between various applications to maintain colour consistency. With a copy of this chart, you can both see exactly which grey/blue you might be referring to.

Another way is to download a Pantone chart and refer to colours by their code. Pantone colours are extremely accurate and essential for print colours.

You can also refer to colours by their RGB (red green blue, or on-screen) values, or CMYK (Cyan, magenta, yellow and black, or print) values. For the colours the RGB values would be 1. #E0E6D8, 2. #7523E7, 3. #076297, 4. #E32471 and 5. #E6D24B. Yes, now you know. CMYK colours are expressed as percentages. # 1 would be 12% 4% 15% 0%, or C=12, M=4, M=15, K=0. I’m sure you don’t want me to list off the other codes, so we’ll leave it at that.

When it comes to describing colours, using terms that suggest the combinations you see is also helpful. For example, blue/green is more helpful than ‘mid ocean greenish’.

I hope this helps you communicate with your designer exactly what colour you are seeing on your monitor or in your head.