Pearls of Wisdom From the Not-so-very-distant Past

The other day I stumbled across this article from 1994. Originally published by an Auckland business (Hippo Marketing Limited) long before everybody discovered the Internet and the World Wide Web, the thoughts on the Creative Industries contained therein are as true now as ever. Kim (Hippo) Brady, thank you for these words of wisdom!

Do It Yourself!

Ahh, good old Kiwi ingenuity! That great Do-it-Yourself mentality for which we are renowned. lt’s a truly wonderful thing – or is it?

In today’s competitive economy, with the pressure on everyone to run an increasingly ‘tighter ship’, many organisations have dispensed with their advertising agency or in-house marketing professionals, seeing them as ‘unnecessary expenditure’. After all, newspapers will design an ad for free, radio stations will write a commercial as part of the overall schedule cost and someone in the office could run up a brochure on their PC with the aid of a photocopier and a bottle of twink. So why pay good money to an outside specialist?

The answer lies in that key word – “Specialist”.

Just as your company employs each worker in his or her most productive capacity, your promotional endeavours be approached with an eye for maximum return. Every aspect of a promotion including research, branding, packaging, quality control and final presentation is designed to showcase your saleable commodity to its fullest advantage and any marketing activity should work towards this.

It’s true that, while most media will offer to produce your ad for free, they’re also doing the same for many other companies in any given week, with the result being your ad will look and sound just like many others. You’d hardly instruct your sales team to tell potential customers your product or service is ‘average’, its price ‘about the same as usual’ and its benefits ‘negligible’. Yet poorly produced advertising and promotional literature can communicate all this at a single glance. Or worse, have no impact at all.

There’s a simple truth about advertising, marketing, promotions and PR. They’re time and labour intensive, and when not done right will reflect poorly on the image of your company and the integrity of products or services. The simplest advertising or marketing job entails numerous steps, each involving various individuals who are specialists in their field.

Fortunately, recent years have seen an increase in the number of these talented professionals working in small collectives or a freelance capacity. People like photographers, designers, copywriters, graphic artists and illustrators and related professionals.

If you were to tap into this pool of talent you’d find that you don’t need to spend big bucks to have a job done right. The money simply needs to be spent wisely, in the right areas, allowing you and your staff to get on with what you do best.

Steve Jobs - Rest in Peace

“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.

“Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”

Steve Jobs 1955 - 2011

IE does it again!

A picture is truly worth a thousand words. And this one cracked me up! It neatly sums up everything that web designers love about Internet Explorer. I want one for the office wall...

FREE FREEHAND (PLEASE)!!

I've been running my own Graphic Design business for the last 16 years. Like many in my situation I’ve upgraded hardware and software regularly during that time but currently I’m still on a Mac G5 tower running OS X 10.4. The reason? My all-time favourite vector drawing programme, Macromedia Freehand, won’t run reliably on newer systems. As I may have mentioned elsewhere I’ve been using Freehand from Version 2 (when it was Aldus Freehand). IMHO Freehand is a superior, more intuitive product than its rival, Adobe Illustrator. While I have used Illustrator when pushed, Freehand suits my work style better, is faster and saves files smarter/smaller. And the ‘xtras’ that I regularly use are not included in Illustrator.

If, after buying Macromedia, Adobe had included some of these ‘superior’ features in later builds of Illustrator I would have thought they were listening to their users. But they didn't. Instead they have simply told Freehand users to ‘get over it’ and come across to the wonderful world of AI. They simply stopped supporting Freehand (though they do still sell it), allowing it to languish to the point where it wouldn’t run a reliably on later versions of Mac OS. And I believe it won’t run at all on Intel-equipped Macs running Apple's new Lion OS.

I recently discovered the Free FreeHand organisation. Free Freehand came into existence to persuade Adobe to continue development of Freehand, or to sell the code to an organisation that will continue to develop what it calls ‘quite possibly the best vector drawing application ever made’. To this end they have filed an Antitrust case against Adobe.

To read more about Free FreeHand and follow the progress of the Antitrust case, visit www.freefreehand.org

Adobe Illustrator barks like a dog...

I’m writing this as I wait for Illustrator CS4 to save a file that I am working on.

Saving a file in Illustrator is a very time-consuming process. The file I am saving is for an A2-size poster, with an overall background image and around 40 smaller images. Every time I hit ‘save’ Illustrator overwrites a 417mb file.

I don’t even like Illustrator. For many years I have been a Freehand user. I first encountered Freehand when it was Version 2 and it has been my vector graphic programme of choice from that time. Sure, I’ve used Illustrator at various times (the introduction of the bezier pen drawing time at Version 3 was a high point for me), but Freehand has always had the edge. Even now.

My regular saving of my work is a reflex action. Whenever I go to open a new document, at the end of a particularly intricate piece of work, or simply every 5 minutes – Apple+S. To me it’s common sense. And for the last few years it’s become essential. Freehand does not really like later versions of Mac OS X. Which is just a sad fact of life. Once upon a time you could always expect older versions of Mac software to run fine on newer versions of System. But not since recent versions of Mac OS X came out. The last release of Freehand was in 2004. Since OS X 10.4 ‘Tiger’ came out in 2005 Freehand’s performance has been, at best, ‘unstable’.

Given the size of the community of Freehand users out there, why doesn't somebody do something about this?

To find out why, it’s necessary to go back to 1995, when Adobe brought Aldus, makers of the popular PageMaker and Freehand graphic packages. While Adobe were very quick to release a new version of PageMaker to fill the ‘document layout’ void in their stable of software (too quick in fact, PageMaker 6 and 6.5 were absolute dogs that frequently shredded files beyond recovery rather than saved them, and by the time PageMaker 7 came out the design community, by and large, had moved to Quark Xpress). They had to rush out InDesign to capture that part of the market and the first couple of versions of that were buggy as well – but that’s another story.

Freehand was another matter. After all Adobe already had a vector graphics programme, Illustrator 6.0, and they didn’t need or want another. So they on-sold Aldus Freehand to the initial developers and Macromedia was born.

The rest is history. Macromedia didn’t stop at creating and supporting new and improved releases of Freehand, they went on to develop new and exciting products for web development. These included the highly regarded DreamWeaver, Flash and Fireworks programmes. They also acquired the ColdFusion development platform. They were so successful and became so big that Adobe eventually brought them out, acquiring Freehand for the second time.

This time they didn’t on-sell Freehand. They didn’t keep on supporting it. Instead they killed it. How I wish they had killed Illustrator!

FIREFOX eats INTERNET EXPLOITER!

I HATE IE! Yep, I’ve said it before, and along with hundreds of others I’ll no doubt say it again... Why do we develop Standards-Compliant websites that work in all ‘standard’ browsers, and then develop separate stylesheets or an arcane series of ‘hacks’ and workarounds to try to make our pages render sensibly in the Microsoft’s non-standard Internet Explorer browser?

Because far too many people believe Microsoft when they say that they control 135.48% of the web browser market, and can therefore call the shots regarding what passes for ‘standard’ on the internet. Their arrogance is breathtaking.

To be fair, Microsoft isn’t all bad. They did bale Apple out in the 1990s and the latest version of IE is a definite improvement on earlier efforts. But there are still far too many old versions of IE in daily use out there, from the why-don’t-my IE-hacks-work-like-they-used-to IE7 to the absolutely non-standard stuff-you-we’re-Microsoft IE6 and the plain awful IE5.

The main reason IE has such a stranglehold is that it comes bundled as part of Microsoft’s ubiquitous Windows OS, and Windows users simply don’t think of upgrading to something better. There’s a lot to be said for an “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” mentality. However this is overlooking the fact that IE is (always was) seriously “broke”.

which is why this graphic I came across today really took my fancy.

For crying out loud people, do yourself a favour and download Firefox! It’s miles better than any version of IE, it actually works and displays websites they way they’re meant to look – and even better, it’s absolutely, 100% FREE!

The dangers of Content Managed (CMS) Websites

Today I read an online article about the dangers of relying on a Content Management System (CMS) driven website to present your business to the web world and potential clients therein. It gave me something to think about. My initial view was that the article would be all about online security, hacking attacks and the like but, in fact, it was really about design and content integrity.

The thing is, setting up a content-managed website nowadays is not the huge financial expense that it once was. There are some great off-the-shelf CMS packages out there now such as Jooma!, WordPress and even New Zealand’s SilverStripe. There are a wide range of template designs available, many for free and others at a nominal cost. There are free blog services (yes, even blogspot.com) which are easy to use and can even be configured to connect through individual domain names. So why do we need to hire web designers? What’s to prevent your average small or mid-sized business downloading one of these packages and uploading the contents to a hosting server or opening a blogspot account, setting all the necessary passwords and permissions and publishing their own web content?

While the obstacles of designing and coding a website can be effectively bypassed, there are still definite security concerns when using an off-the-shelf CMS. The very fact that these packages can be downloaded and easily configured means that hackers can also download copies and look for ‘xploits’ – weaknesses in the code that can be exploited to enable the hacker to take control of installed copies of the software. The companies that write the CMS packages are constantly on the watch for this kind of activity and, as is common practice for software companies, release patches and updates to address new security concerns. However if a site is running on an older version CMS it is are potentially at risk. Do the site owners have the technical smarts to upgrade the CMS to the latest version without losing site content? And if they are running third-party extensions to add functionality to their site, are these compromising the integral security of the site? Are these extensions the latest and most secure versions?

Security concerns aside there are also design concerns. Is there a template available that fits in with the company image and branding? Can the company logo be displayed on the site pages, and can it be displayed ‘correctly’ (note: there is much more to this than simply having the logo appear on a page)? Are the colours a match to brand identity? What about typography? How many other individuals in cyberspace are using the same template? How much time is it going to take to do this work (in business nothing is ever ‘free’), and who is available to do it? Could their time be better utilised? And above all, how many design compromises should be made in the interest of having a ‘free’ website design?

It is here, of course, that the web or graphic designer comes into play. An industry professional can design a website that addresses these concerns for a one-off fee, and connect it to an easy-to-use CMS. They will include the company’s brand identity and logo, taking into account design considerations such as clearspace, typography, use of web-safe colour matches to brand colours, and introducing the special touches that embellish and enhance a brand and make the website a unique and logical extension of the brand. They can be contracted to provide site hosting, take care of security and keep the CMS version up to date. And the business owner can take it from there.

There are other considerations, however. The integrity of site content is every bit as important as the integrity of the CMS or the site design. Writing for the web is an art in itself, it is different to other written forms of communication. Web content should be split in to small, easy to read ‘chunks’. It is often less formal than heavyweight corporate documentation. It should be written in the same ‘voice’ - consistent use of language and written style. And, perhaps most importantly, it should contain keywords and phrases that help in search engine queries.

Site owners editing or changing these keywords and phrases can adversely affect search engine results. Careless editing by inexperienced persons can result in uneven or irregular formatting and paragraph spacing. Images might be uploaded that are ‘cheesy’ stock images used elsewhere that are inappropriate to the visual integrity of the site or that are simply too large (in terms of file size and download times) to display well. New site content should always be checked against the rest of the site to ensure that the writing style and language match it is in keeping with published content. Is the meaning of the content still clear or has it been compromised by excessive jargon or stock industry phrases? Is the subject matter clearly, simply and completely explained? And finally, there’s also grammar to be checked and the essential spelling checks to be made.

Any shortcuts in these areas can result in the design and content integrity of the website being compromised, with the initial investment in the site being drastically reduced. The site simply doesn’t perform as well as it should. It loses value as time passes. And eventually it becomes worthless. Worse still, in time it can actually work against it’s owner. Badly-designed and badly-maintained sites diminish the owner’s credibility with potential clients.

That’s not to say that I am opposed to Content-Managed sites at all. In fact CMS systems are a great tool that enables the site owner to keep their site fresh and current – always important when publishing information online. But appropriate care needs to be taken when site owners assume responsibility for site content.

Finally, it always pays to keep the site designer on-side to perform special tasks that might be slightly outside the ordinary. And get them to periodically audit site content as a ‘fresh pair of eyes’ to ensure that everything is still on track!

CMS or static pages? You decide!

What do you want from your website?

No, really. Do you want an online brochure that presents your company and its services? Are you more interested in featuring current news and events? Are you planning to frequently update your content? Perhaps most importantly, do you have the necessary skills?

Many people would say that a website should include a Content Management System (CMS). These websites can have all the latest features, blogs, RSS feeds, etc plus an administration console where a site administrator can edit or add content to the site. Sounds great, doesn’t it? No HTML or coding knowledge required! With one of these sites you can do your own updates and there’s no need to go back to your designer or web developer everytime you want to change something.

However it pays to be careful. Having a database-driven website can open the door to all manner of security issues, not the least of which is having someone ‘inject’ malicious code into your database, corrupting it and allowing them administration access to your files. How would you cope if this happened? Who is responsible for backup and restoration of your data and how often is this done? What do you know about site security? If your site uses a complex CMS with lots of features, do you have the knowledge to operate it properly?

Don’t get me wrong – I’m not opposed to Content Managed websites at all. I build and administer both static-content and CMS sites and can see that CMS interfaces are a great way for site owners to maintain their own websites. But each CMS is different and they’re often a ‘one size fits all’ solution. If you stick to creating and editing text content, fine. But if you have a need that’s even slightly outside the scope of what the site is capable of, you’re stuck. Unless you can find a workaround (which usually involves a bit of old-fashioned HTML know-how).

If you’re not into constantly updating your web content and you want a stable site that can’t be compromised with the flexibility to modify pages to look the way you want them to, good ol’ HTML, with a smattering of CSS, can still be the best way to go!

Nudity on the Hutt Motorway - and other places

OK, perhaps calling it a ‘motorway’ is a bit of a misnomer seeing as it’s got traffic light-controlled intersections and you can ride a bicycle on it... but I must admit to some involvement with the recent appearance of six ‘nude’ males (OK, they were wearing body paint), on the side of State Highway 2 (Lower Hutt) – and various other places around the country (including Auckland – nice to give those JAFAs something to look at as they sit in their traffic jams).

Some years ago, British Progressive Rock group Pink Floyd printed a poster to promote their back catalogue. The poster featured six naked female models, each body-painted with a different Floyd album design. When Daz, lead guitarist with New Zealand’s Pink Floyd Experience, asked me if I could do something similar featuring the band, I accepted the challenge. After all, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery!

P.S. Went to the Wellington concert last Saturday night and it was just amazing! These guys are really talented musicians with a real passion for the music of Pink Floyd. And the light show is incredible too! Floyd fans take note – if you get a chance you should see these guys!

Happy 50th Anniversary, Mini!

I didn’t want to let this April pass without mentioning that it has been 50 years since the launch of that everyday classic car, the Mini. Designed by engineer Alec Issigonis the small car was a revolutionary design featuring transversely-mounted engine and front-wheel drive, rack-and-pinion steering and rubber cone suspension that gave legendary handling, and a surprisingly large passenger space relative to the small overall physical dimensions of the car.

My Mini, affectionately known as ‘The Beast’, was made in 1961, and totally rebuilt in 1983. When I brought it the car was a near basket-case. Every time it rained water flowed through the rust holes in the gutters and exited through the rust holes in the floorpans (not surprisingly the interior smelt like a wet dog). The electrical system was suspect (I even had a small fire under the dashboard one night) and, as with all early Minis, trips in wet weather were fraught with tension lest a curtain of spray from opposing traffic drown the exposed distributor behind the grille and kill the ignition. However when it wasn’t raining ‘The Beast’ was a lot of fun to drive, veering round corners on the metal road I lived on almost sideways, holding on with the aid of a widened rim at each corner and its firm ride on rubber cone springs.

I became so attached to the car that after a year I decided to completely rebuild it to a sort of ‘Cooper’ specification. The rebuild took a whole year and involved stripping the bodyshell back to bare metal and repairing the rust-affected areas (roofline, scuttle, door skins and floorpans), completely rewiring the electrics and repainting and retrimming the interior. The original 850cc A-Series engine was replaced with a larger 1100cc unit (better for the open road and enabling ‘The Beast’ to take on all comers when going uphill) complete with straight-flow exhaust system and a two-inch tailpipe that made the car sound much larger than it actually was. The only thing missing was the set of dual SU carburetteurs that I had always promised myself. Needless to say, I learned a lot that year!

Once completed, ‘The Beast’ was the archetypal 'Boy Racer'! I sold it to my younger brother in 1987. Should have kept it...

Back to the Future... again!

OK. I’ll ’fess up now and admit I watched Back to the Future – again – this weekend.

What a nostalgia trip back to the ’80s! Seeing Michael J Fox and Christopher Lloyd as in character as Marty McFly and Dr. Emmett ‘Doc’ Brown. And then there was the car! Doc’s “if you’re gonna build a time machine into a car, why not do it with some style?” DeLorean DMC-12 managed to be both awesome and kitsch at the same time. The time-travelling DeLorean is, putting it simply, incredible. Flashing LEDs, digital readouts and lots and lots of buttons – real 1980s technology hardware at work! Sure, there are the reliability problems that I believe were part and parcel of 1980s DeLorean ownership (in fact one or two cars that I have owned that were definitely not DeLoreans suffered from similar problems)! But then the car hits 88mph, the Flux Capacitor kicks in and all that remains are burning tyre tracks scorched across the asphalt! After the movie, still feeling nostalgic, I looked up ‘DeLorean’ and guess what I found?

This press ad for carsguide.com.au is one of a series of three (the other two being the original Knight Rider and The A-Team). The set is totally in keeping with Doc Brown’s workshop from Back to the Future. And what I like best of all is that the image tells the whole story. The only words on the ad are in the tagline ‘Choice is Everything’ and the address for the carsguide website. How often can a designer persuade the client to forgo the headline in an advertisement completely?

Brilliant!

Imitation – the sincerest form of flattery?

No doubt about it – copying somebody’s corporate identity is fraud. However I think it’s fair to say that this copy of the Starbucks logo is more a case of imitation than direct theft.

That said, I do feel that making money out of somebody else's design is no go. And as the imitation logo is used on a range of merchandise that is then onsold to the general public, the whole thing starts to smack of commercialism, which flies in the face of the message that the message that the copied logo is trying to portray.

Not so nice one, guys.

Make the logo bigger...

It’s a song that’s familiar to most graphic designers and those involved in the design and advertising industries. And finally somebody, somewhere, has set it to music!

It’s the rockingest version of Make the Logo Bigger that you’ve ever heard! Two minutes and thirty-six seconds, composed and performed by Burn Back. To download the MP3 file for your listening pleasure click here! (MP3 file size 3.14MB)

Make The Logo Bigger

Make the logo big, make the logo bigger.
Make the logo big, make the logo bigger.

Chorus
Make the logo as big as you can. And make the logo bigger.

That logo isn't big enough, so make the logo bigger.
Bigger, bigger, make it big. Make the logo bigger.

(Yelling)
Don't try to be the brave guy!
We don't have a job for you!
You know what you've got to do!
You gotta stick to the process!
Make the damn logo as big as you can!

Chorus
Make the logo as big as you can. And make the logo bigger.

I don't want to tell you how to do your job, but could you make the logo bigger?
Bigger, bigger, make it big. Make the logo bigger.

Let's get this show on the road!

Why would a Graphic Designer who already has a website go to the trouble of setting up a blog?

For those of you who do not know, Blogs are small part of the new 'Web 2.0' philosophy. Web 2.0 is all about interactivity. First-generation websites had limited interactivity - users could click a link to decide where they wanted to go, request a search or fill out a form to give feedback or make a purchase. But interactivity was limited. With the advent of Web 2.0 and Blogging, interactivity between publisher and audience is expected, and even encouraged. Any web user can generate new content!

In starting this Blog I am looking to engage with my audience. Just how much time I have to put into maintaining it remains to be seen. For now it's simply a case of 'publish and be damned'!