Passion and Discipline - A LazyTown lesson in branding

May 29th, 2007

In his blog, Own Your Brand, Mike Wagner presents a concise and inspiring case study of the creator and athletic superhero of LazyTown, Magnús Scheving. If you’re not familiar with the inhabitants of LazyTown and Sportacus, the somersaulting defender of health and exercise, it is definitely worth a look.

From a design and business perspective, this is an engaging read on how your passions can inspire a brand and how your continuing dedication to and focus on those passions can lead to your success.

At a personal level, it’s another motivating “kick in the pants” to get out there and do what’s right for you. As Mike so elloquently put it:

Get in tune with what is relevant and useful in your corner of the world. Wake up your creativity. Summon your courage. Find your brand fit!

Enjoy.

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  Design Advice from my Deathbed

July 19th, 2006

In my many years traveling through the professional world of design, I have been called upon to offer advice. Some young hatchling of a designer wanders up to me, all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and asks the one question that will lead them on the path to greatness.

If you had one piece of advice for an upcoming designer, what would it be?

I love being asked that question. Designer’s ego aside, it’s a great opportunity to help others avoid the mistakes I made or at least recognize them when they happen.

And what better place to offer this sage advice than on my proverbial deathbed. So let’s set the scene…

My maroon and beige Victorian bedroom is dimly lit by a few candles. Flowers and food baskets with quickly-written get well cards are carefully placed throughout the room. The air is still. Family members remain in a supportive, yet empty, gesture. Some sit with arms folded while others pace, offering an occasional nod or comforting touch to another’s shoulder. Conversations often break the silence with talk of football, funeral costs, work and the latest Vegas odds on when I’ll bite the big one.

I beckon my offspring to my side. “As you enter the strange and wonderful world of design, I have one piece of advice that I hope you will take with you throughout your careers and lives.”

“Yes, father?” they reply anxiously.

“Trust yourself.”

They touch my hand, thank me with all the love in their hearts and begin to walk away. With a belabored breath, I call out to them. “Offspring?” They stop and turn. “Yes, father?”

“I’ll probably kick off tomorrow. Let’s talk.”

And in the next six hours, this is what I told them. Well, at least the highlights.

Design:

• Take criticism seriously, but understand where it’s coming from and why it’s being said.
• Know the difference between inspiration and plagiarism.
• Design for the client, not yourself. If you’re trying to satisfy your own creative desires, go paint a landscape.

Content:

• Keep it short and to the point.
• Have a consistent message in your content and your imagery.
• Throw “lorum ipsum” in the trash. You can’t design if you don’t know what is being said and how much text is being used to say it.
• Don’t fool yourself into thinking you can write. If you can’t, suck it up and get someone who can.

Usability:

• Give usability your highest consideration, but don’t use it as your sole measuring stick for your design.
• There are standards for a reason.

Coding:

• Don’t be afraid of DIVs and CSS. They can be your best friend.
• Never forget your ALT tags.
• Write your code by hand, not WYSIWYG.
• Even if you can’t code it, understand it. You’ll be able to discuss it and design for it.
• Don’t fool yourself into thinking you can code. If you can’t, suck it up and get someone who can.

Flash:

• If I see a tween in your library, I’ll come back from the grave and kill you myself.

Clients:

• Take what a client really wants and translate it into what they really need.
• Offer your opinion and back it up with proof.
• Remember that you are working for your client, not yourself.

Business:

• Design is a business. Treat it as such.
• Never do work on spec.
• Always have a contract.
• Success is understanding the client’s bottom line as well as your own and how you can benefit both.

Ethics:

• Reputation is everything.
• Ask for help.
• Be honest and up front. If you say you can do it, do it. Otherwise, don’t say it.

As they walk away from my side, overwhelmed and under-impressed, I know I have done all I can do. It’s now up to them. Good luck, my offspring, good luck.

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  Why Users Hate Online Ads and Advertisers Love Them

July 7th, 2006

There has always been a disconnected symbiotic relationship between the advertiser and the consumer. The advertisers spend money on ad campaigns until they hit that invisible, but very solid, wall of the consumer. When the consumer’s had enough, they stop paying attention. Then more money is spent on taking the attention-grabbing to a higher level. The consumers notice and then, due to disinterest or annoyance, stop paying attention and the whole thing starts all over again. Oh, no! Oh, yes! – my School House Rock moment.

And thanks to our old friend, the Internet, this process is growing exponentially. You can see it in the expanding advertising budgets as well as the expanding consumer hatred towards the online ads those budgets pay for.

My case in point. On July 5th, the iMedia article “What Users Hate About Online Ads” discusses the online advertising users despise and why. Not a day later, on July 6th, the eMarketer article “US Internet Ad Spend to Climb by 25%…Or Is That 33%?” charts how Internet advertising spending will jump a conservative 25% to 33% in the next year, compared to the total US media spending of 2.8%. And that doesn’t even include paid search, which jumped a whopping 84% from the same time last year.

Let’s stop and think about this for a moment. At the exact same time on-line advertising spending is dramatically increasing, users are increasingly more annoyed with that advertising and smarter in how they avoid them. Ah, the fond memories of childhood. I remember sneaking the dogs my broccoli at dinner after telling my mom over and over and over and over that I didn’t like those little freaky green trees of goodness. She didn’t listen, so I became smarter (and the dogs became sicker).

According to Cia Romano, CEO of Interface Guru, users equate on-line advertising to “rude behavior”. She sites some examples how users will also follow up their negative feelings with action, including going to the ad’s competition for the same product/service or immediately scrolling past the top banner on every single page they visit.

Jakob Nielsen, resident usability expert, also confirms these types of behavior. While attending his eye-tracking seminar during the NN/g Usability Week in San Francisco a few weeks ago, Jakob presented heat maps and individuals user tests that showed over and over again how adept people were at avoiding on-line ads. It was amazing how their eye movement moved in a “Z” pattern from header to content to footer and expertly bypassed any advertising.

So why is there such a disconnection? Will advertising budgets keep growing in line with the sophistication of the consumers’ avoidance? Are advertisers and consumers in an eternal love-hate relationship? Or am I just reading way too much into this?

What are your thoughts?

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  Is the triple opt-in one too many?

June 27th, 2006

Q Interactive announced today that they are launching a new triple opt-in lead generation service. No, you didn’t hear me wrong and yes, you did just do a double-take. According to iMedia, this new service will provide more safeguards to confirm in 3 steps that someone is interested in an advertiser and would like to be contacted by them. Triple opt-in. 1-2-3.

1. “Let’s see. Fill in my e-mail address and click submit. Easy enough.”
2. “Oh, another form. Full name? OK. Address? Not sure why they need this, but I’ll put it in since they say it’s required. Phone? Job Title? Interests? Um, ah? Ok, I guess.”
3. “I received their e-mail. Click on this link and…done. No wait. Another form. More things required? Oh forget it. I’ll just go sign up for this credit card.”

Now, I am a strong proponent of double opt-in. It insures that an e-mail address is valid and offers a greater chance that the person who’s signing up is real. There are ways around it, of course, but the benefits definitely outway the risks. And I’m sure there are many companies out there that legitimately need this new service for the higher levels of consumer qualification.

Human nature, however, will not stop there. We’ll probably take this opportunity to open Pandora’s box of razor blades. Do 4 blades really shave your face any smoother than 2? Probably not. Are there more bloody faces and beards? Quite possibly.

The same holds true for triple opt-in. Advertisers will think, “Hmmmm. If double opt-in works this well, image how much better triple will be?” But to the time-deprived, security-paranoid consumer, this is just another opportunity to move to the competition or give up completely. A year down the line, I’d love to see their conversion reports. Will advertisers’ ROI increase or will the same unscrupulous users make up more fake information while others simply click away? I’m betting on the latter.

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  Save the Freedom of the Internet

June 14th, 2006

The Network Neutrality Act, the first amendment of the Internet, insures that the smallest blog to the largest corporation all have the same access to content, applications, and/or devices. This on-line freedom encourages innovation, economic growth and a healthy diversity of political and religious opinion.

The telecommunication giants see things another way. These behemoth corporations - including AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, and Time Warner - are intensely lobbying to be the “gatekeepers” of the Internet. They want to control who can be on the Internet, not just maintaining how. By getting rid of the level playing field, they can reserve the fastest connections for their own products and services or whomever can pay the price. And because only large corporations can afford these astronomical fees, smaller businesses, non-profits and personal sites are left out to dry in slow dial-up speeds if they’re on at all.

On June 8th, ignoring over 800,000 signatures gathered at SaveTheInternet.com, the House passed the “Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement Act of 2006″ or COPE Act. This act offers no protections for net neutrality, but brings us all one step closer to losing control to the telecommunications industry.

It now falls to the Senate to save the free and open Internet. Fortunately, Sens. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) and Byron Dorgan (R-N.D.) have introduced a bipartisan measure, the “Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2006″ (S. 2917), that would provide meaningful protection for Net Neutrality. This excellent bill may be introduced as an amendment when the Senate takes up its own rewrite of the Telecommunications Act later this summer. The next key hearing of the Senate Commerce Committee is scheduled for June 20.

Help preserve the freedom of the Internet by signing the petition and adding your blog to their blogroll. We can all make a difference.

Resources:

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  What kind of designer are you?

June 13th, 2006

Since my little workplace venting about web designers and print designers and the responses I’ve received on-line and off, I’ve been curious about career choices. What makes someone a print designer, web designer, etc. and why? Is it an inevitable part of their internal make-up or simply a work/life decision?

There are, of course, people who claim to be “designers”, that overly-generalized label that encompasses almost anything creative. Whether these “designers” admit it or not, there are tendencies towards an area of design. It might be the type of work, client, the tools and software, or unexplained internal drive - but it does exist.

I gravitated towards design as my creative outlet but was destined for web and interactive. I grew up an intense fan of animation and video games. Animation taught me timing and transitions – kudos to Bugs Bunny - while video games showed me the basic understanding of user interaction. Click here and this happens, but click here and something else happens. Very cool stuff.

My mind works in motion and interaction. It’s kind of tough to create a magazine ad when you’re thinking about how the photo and tagline will fade into each other and what the next page will look like once they click. So I wasn’t exactly suited for print. Thankfully, the web was waiting with open arms. That’s my story, what’s yours?

If you’re a designer or if you know one (you lucky, lucky person), please take a few moments to answer any of the following questions.

This is an informal survey, so feel free to elaborate. I love a good story. I’ll communicate the results in a future post.

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  Can’t web and print designers just get along?

June 8th, 2006

Sit back and relax. It’s time for a rant.

Now I know in an ideal world, there would be a truly collaborative effort between all media channels to get the best message out to the target audience, generate the most sales, etc. However, I’m finding more and more - much to my chagrin - that print designers and web designers just don’t mix. Is there a different mental make up because of the nature of the work? Does one feel threatened by the other? What’s the problem?

Research doesn’t help. Print is here to stay. Print is on the path of the dinosaur. Who knows? Anyone can find a study that supports and refutes their position.

In today’s design and marketing world, there is such an amazing opportunity to utilize print, web, e-mail, television, etc. to create an amazing unified experience for your audience that will generate sales. That is the goal, isn’t it? At least I thought it was.

So to all the print designers out there who still look at us web folks as misfits and a “fad”. And to all of the web designers, writers, programmers, etc. who look at those print people as jealously-personified with an expiration date, I have to say one thing to all of you. Get over it!

We are all designers and all have egos by the very nature of what we do. Okay, you’re hi-res and I’m lo-res. So what? Let’s all just shut up and work together. Maybe we if do, we’ll all satisfy our creative needs and make some money while we’re at it. And that should make everybody happy.

Other Points of View

What do you think?

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