“Everything in nature is the way it is by design; evolution has no aesthetic or personal opinion. Like art, some people find bugs to be quite beautiful while others cringe at the sight of them. But like them or not, their design is the way it is because of their environment and the obstacles they face trying to survive. In other words, it doesn’t matter what you think; it has to work, or they die.”
- Eric Fisher

Here’s a link to an excellent article about design, but more specifically about user experience design. It explains the difference between art and design, sometimes not very clear since the lines are continually blurred by both artists and designers. But the central tenet behind this article suggests something that I’ve been ruminating on for quite a while. It explains that the discipline of user experience design at it’s core is objective, not subjective. So I’ll add to this idea by making some basic distinctions. Yes, graphic design must be very artful and aesthetic, and I would venture to say that it’s probably the most artistically free expression of design along with motion graphics, where the only goal is to communicate and suggest an emotional response. But once you venture into architecture, product design, industrial design, application design, and web design, the stakes get higher. The goal is no longer limited to communication, but to guiding the action of the user. User design adds an additional layer of complexity to the work of design, and of course it must have an aesthetic appeal for it to work effectively.

But getting back to the issue at hand, designing objectively is very hard if you don’t know what your aim is, who the users are, or what your context is. This is why psychology, cognition, learned experience, and environment are such important points to explore when designing for successful user experience. As explained in the article there may be different routes to going about the same task. But if you design with the simplest and most efficient goal in mind, you save the users a lot of confusion. That’s Occam’s Razor at it’s finest. And nowadays the success of a product depends on it’s ease of use, which means intuitiveness. If you placed the button right where the user would have looked for it initially you’re on the right track. In order to know this you must get in your user’s head. And getting in people’s mind is no easy task. User design utilizes relevant and logical steps to guide experience. Art and aesthetic appeal don’t have a strict need for efficiency and logic. Although user experience design and graphic design are related, their aims are different. But both must work in conjunction for an experience (be it web, software, product, environment) to be completely effective.

What is marketing?

Marketing is simply knowing how to communicate effectively with your customers. The best marketers are masters at connecting with their target audience by using different means. TV advertising, print advertising, direct marketing, event marketing, guerrilla marketing, content marketing, and online marketing are all different doorways that lead to your prospects. For the purposes of this post we’ll focus on Internet Marketing alone, and leave the other stuff to MadMen. But before we dive into online marketing lets talk a bit about the medium where this communication will happen. Specifically, the internet.

What is the Matrix?

If you want to successfully market online the first thing you must understand is the fundamental nature of the Internet. The main currency of the web is information. This is why people pay for their internet service. They want to consume information in massive amounts. Content is just a fancy word for structured information that can be delivered in different ways like text, video, audio, etc. The most successful online marketers fully understand this underlying principle. This is the basic logic: Give people the content they want, and they’ll instantly like you. If they like you, they’ll trust you. If they trust you, they’ll buy from you. Now this doesn’t sound very complicated, but doing this right is harder than it may appear. Creating content is a process and it does involve hard work but if done right it’s impact is quite impressive. So to improve your online marketing success you need to produce good content and share it with the world. This approach coupled with basic marketing principles that apply to marketing in general as well can dramatically alter your marketing reality. But we’ll get into content marketing in a future post. Let’s go back to basic online marketing.

What about Online Marketing?

Nowadays it’s mandatory to have a website if you want to connect with your audience, but this is only one way to market online. Another method is online advertising and it can be accomplished through pay-per-click or Search Engine Marketing and media buys or banner advertising. Search Engine Optimization is another way to tap into a market by structuring HTML code on a website in a way that facilitates search engine indexing. Today social media is all the rage and everybody is jumping on the bandwagon. But the truth is Facebook, Twitter, SEO, SEM, and your website are simply tools. These are just a handful of the many online channels you can use to reach your audience. And all these marketing channels can be rendered useless very quickly if you don’t know the fundamentals of marketing. Fundamentals like knowing who your market is or defining your Unique Selling Proposition(USP). But what if you don’t know who your market is or what your USP is? We’ll today’s your lucky day because that’s what this post will hopefully clear up for you. And it is the first step in marketing effectively.

Throw out your Business Plan

One thing you must realize is that it’s not about your products, services, business or your business plan. Besides, business plans are just guesses. A business is all about finding a solution to a real problem people are having and are willing to pay money for. So in the end it’s all about your customer. If you can’t articulate what problem you’re solving for other people it’s time to do your homework. And the best way to do this is to observe, listen, and research. Let me give you an example. We’ll take graphic design. This profession fills a real need, and people are willing to pay money for this service. So here you have a solution. As a graphic designer you can help people with their branding, their business cards, brochures, stationery, etc. So you found a hole to fill. Great! But you’re only halfway there. And this is where most fall short. If you want to be ultra successful you must dig deeper.

Why are you unique?

To answer this question I will ask another question that is a bit less subjective. Who are the people you’re trying to serve? If you don’t know who your market is it will be very difficult for you to find customers. And following the graphic designer example above, if your answer is anyone who needs graphic design, good luck with that. Join the ranks of millions of graphic designers who do just that, but don’t achieve satisfying results with their business. You will get customers using this approach, but it might not be pretty. Just consider the size of the internet, the amount of information out there, the amount of competition, and add to that all the noise. What makes you think customers will find you simply because you’re out there with the rest of the world shouting me, me, me, pick me, but doing nothing differently? To get really powerful with your marketing you need to be unique. And you can do this by asking yourself what specific group of people could use your services. Why? Because it actually allows you to a) know precisely who your customers are, b) communicate better with your customers, c) become an authority within your niche, d) charge more for specialized services, and e) set you apart from the rest of the professionals out there.

When you select a niche you position yourself by making your services unique to a group of people. And these people will run to you for help because you’re directly addressing their needs. A jack of all trades is a master of none, and will always find himself broke. Specializing allows you to dominate a market. So what’s your USP? If you don’t have a specialty pick one. Do some research and figure out what type of client work you’ve done in the past, what type of work you really enjoy, and come up with a few answers. Being a graphic designer is not a unique talent. But if you tell me you’re a graphic designer that specializes in branding for museums and art galleries, that’s a different story.

One of the best examples of differentiation as a marketing strategy is Apple. From the very beginning Steve Jobs had a clear vision that his computers would be different. He also selected a target market, creatives, and made the computer technologically unique, to stand out from the rest of PC’s by offering superior graphics and design centric software. I think Steve Jobs knew what he was doing.

So now you also know that the first step to marketing successfully is specialization. This allows you to stand out from the crowd by offering a unique service. It also lets you identify your customers with much more accuracy. This knowledge alone will set you apart from the vast majority of your peers. So now it’s time to do your homework and find out why you’re unique in a sea of competitors. In the following post I’ll cover the next step in the formula: How to find prospects and clients.

1. Clean unobtrusive design

The main purpose of a photoblog is to showcase photography so keep the graphics and distracting imagery to a minimum. Maintain the focus on the pictures. You don’t want to saturate your visitors with too much information. To achieve this use a layout that is maximum 2 columns, typography that’s not too loud, clean and minimal design, low key graphics, neutral colors, and a clean background. Your design should tastefully complement and not overpower your photography.

2. Fast loading times

To improve the quality of the web viewing experience you’ll want to maximize loading times. There’s nothing more frustrating than waiting forever for images to load. And since a photoblog is full of them, you’ll have to make special considerations to compensate. The first thing that you can do to maximize loading is to optimize your images for the web. Don’t upload images at 100% quality or the downloading experience will suffer. Optimize images for web between 60%-80% quality, depending on the dynamic range of the image. The second thing is to keep the site’s HTML code clean and lean. This is done by adhering to web design standards and best practices, meaning unobtrusive javascript and graceful degradation, all concepts that any good web designer worth their salt is familiar with. And lastly pick a quality host with the right bandwidth. Depending on the amount of traffic your blog receives, you’ll have to manage bandwidth. Most hosting services offer differing plans, but you should stick to the ones on the middle spectrum. Going with a cheap host based on price can work to your blog’s detriment and inhibit download capacity.

3. About/Bio page

Blogging is about getting personal. It’s a form of medium where you loose the facade and show your true colors. So creating an about page with your bio will definitely welcome visitors and make them feel at ease. Put a human face behind the name and the work, and people will be attracted to that personable side of you. This will keep them coming for more.

4. Engagement

One of the main elements that distinguishes a blog from a regular website is its commenting capability. Make it easy for visitors to comment on your images. People are more engaged when they can interact with the content they see. So invite and promote interaction. It’s also kind of fun. Make your comment area clearly visible and even ask for comments by creating nicely defined buttons and titles that ask for comments explicitly.

5. Integration to portfolio website

If you have a photography website why not make it a seamless experience to jump from your blog to your professional portfolio and back? I see a lot of professional photographers have two separate sites. This approach can be cumbersome and a costly. Some of the people who stumble upon your blog may want to immediately look at your professional portfolio and maybe even hire your services, so keeping the door open to your main site is always smart. A good way to do this is to have the same look and feel for the blog and the portfolio, and use a content management system like WordPress to power the whole experience.

6. Search Engine Optimization

SEO affects your site in more ways than you can imagine. If your photoblog is well structured for search engines you’ll be blessed by the Internet Gods (meaning Google, Yahoo, Bing, and other search engines). This translates to more traffic, more interaction, more exposure and ultimately more photoblog success. You want your site to be crawled by search engine bots, so make this an important piece of your web design puzzle. What can you do to improve SEO? Well, use correct and relevant title tags, description tags, headline tags in all your pages. Since most of the content is imagery you’ll want to use some sort of caption to inject relevant text in your photos. Internet technology is not yet at a point where search bots can process images. You’ll also want to use tags replete with rich keywords concerning each image. All this will do is create a semantic foundation for your images that web crawlers love and understand.

7. Large imagery

There’s nothing more disappointing than going to a photoblog only to find really small images. The images are the centerpiece so make them large and attractive to the display and layout of your photoblog. I would suggest making them at least 600 pixels wide if it’s a two column layout, and maybe even 800 pixels wide if it’s a full screen width layout.

8. Relevant information design

Information design is the key to building an excellent web experience. Successful information design starts with relevant information so it makes sense to keep your links and buttons relevant on your photoblog pages. Let’s say a visitor is looking at a post in the fashion photography section. If you want to keep them engaged you’ll want to offer them links to related fashion photography posts, information about fashion photography services, and possibly a link to your fashion photography portfolio all in the same page. Make relevance come front and center so the user doesn’t get lost in the shuffle.

9. Screen resolution

The basic screen web resolution today is 1024 pixels wide by 768 pixels high. Web users are quickly shifting to greater screen resolutions, but this number is still a reference point for web design in general. There are thousands of websites that don’t adhere to this standard either by making sites too thin or too wide. Some sites have images that are way too small because they don’t maximize the alloted screen space, or the opposite, they have images or navigation cut off because they overextend their reach. Your aim should be to entertain the greatest number of users on your site. By applying a standards based screen resolution to your photoblog you’ll be able to communicate effectively with everyone.

10. Define your style

Part of having a blog is about expressing your own voice. Every photographer has a unique vision and you’ll want to express that uniqueness in your photoblog. If you have a certain style make it evident not only in your photography but in the blog design itself. So as a creative find your own style and stamp it on your site. This comes by defining the right color palette, typography, and even graphic design that’s relevant for you. Doing this will infuse your blog with personality and make you stand out from the pack.

These are all essential steps which can take your photoblog to new found glory. As a photographer you already have beautiful images to start with so why not give them the right home on the web by applying these insights? In the coming weeks I will also write a follow-up post that relates specifically to marketing your photoblog so stay tuned.

But you don’t have a marketing budget you say. Make one. If not now, do it when you have the resources, but marketing is not just limited to media buys in the New York Times. For all of us mortals there are other creative alternatives to marketing that are low cost. They do require more hands on involvement and hard work, but Rome wasn’t built in a day. The bottom line is you need to get creative with your marketing if you don’t have the marketing dollars of Coca-Cola. In a follow up post I’ll offer some resources and tips that have helped me understand online marketing. Something I’m sure you’ll find useful for your business.

Sabuy Photography WordPress Theme

Adventure Photography WordPress Theme

Snapblog Photography WordPress Theme

Deep Focus Photography WordPress Theme

Dandelion Photography WordPress Theme

Dobin Folio Photography WordPress Theme

Ephoto Photography WordPress Theme

Gallerific Photography WordPress Theme

Gallery Photography WordPress Theme

Kin Photography WordPress Theme

Landscape Photography WordPress Theme

Lens Photography WordPress Theme

Manhattan Photography WordPress Theme

Mattis Photography WordPress Theme

Minimalista Photography WordPress Theme

Modularity Photography WordPress Theme

Photo Nexus Photography WordPress Theme

Photocraft Photography WordPress Theme

Photographic WordPress Theme

Photoland Photography WordPress Theme

Photolist Photography WordPress Theme

Photome Photography WordPress Theme

Photon Photography WordPress Theme

Photo Pure Press Photography WordPress Theme

Photoworks Photography WordPress Theme

Adobe CS5
This is the mother lode of all design software in the market. This comes as no surprise and I won’t go into detail about it because it’s common knowledge. I chose to include it in the list just because it’s mandatory. Without Photoshop or Illustrator life would be depressing for designers everywhere. Fireworks and Flash deserve a special mention also. But the complete suite of products is incredible and Adobe is beyond a doubt the industry leader for making great software for designers.

Transmit
I have used this FTP client since day one and will never look elsewhere. The latest version comes with an Amazon S3 connection module. What can I say? It’s just plain simple to connect with multiple servers, manipulate files, drag and drop objects, change file names and permissions, etc.

TextMate
TextMate is a coding powerhouse. It’s an efficiently simple markup editor. Code anything you want with it in ten seconds or less, HTML, PHP, ActionScript, you name it. It has quick libraries that can help you build site frameworks in seconds. It also has keyboard shortcuts, snippets, and macros to make coding lightning fast. I cannot recommend this piece of software enough.

Coda
This is the main event when it comes to server side coding. I love using this because it gives me live server access to change and update code on the fly. This has completely replaced Dreamweaver and its interface is phenomenally clean and uncluttered. Besides text editing it has terminal access and subversion control. What else could you ask for? Brought to us by Panic, the same guys who made Transmit.

Little Snapper
This handy app has helped me gather web inspiration like nothing else. I use it to grab screen shots of sites that inspire me which I later archive and use. It serves as my digital scrapbook with tags, annotations and a well organized interface. And it’s super easy to publish the content to Flickr or upload to a server via FTP.

Font Case
Typography is essential to design and I manage my font library with Font Case. I only recently started using this software but as far as I’m concerned it rocks! Imagine an iTunes like interface that handles all your fonts. Need I say more?

Things
I’m a get-things-done kind of guy. This is not as much a design tool as an organizational and productivity tool. I gather my task list for certain areas and I simply check things off as I complete them. It’s a reliable task management tool that helps you get it done.

Quicksilver
Here’s another speed app. By using it you’ll be able to access and launch all programs and files on your computer with a few keystrokes. Makes switching from one program to another fun and seamless. This alone is a rare and crazy productivity and time saving tool that has saved me hours in accumulated time.

DropBox
Although this piece of brilliant software is not related to design, it deserves a special mention because it is essential for all of us who manipulate and share digital files. This is more critical if you’re working with a remote team. And we all know how important backups are. Well, DropBox does it all.

If you haven’t given these programs and apps a try I suggest you do. They’ll take your design and production skills to a whole new level. And if you know of any other software that has helped you make a quantum leap in your design work flow I invite you to share below.

Eric Bowers Photo

Pixelgrain

Photography for Soul

Mike Olbinski

Flory Photo

Zocky Photography

Ben Olivares Photography

Cornershots

Monostep

Charlie Stout Photography

Stuck in Customs

Danny Otto

Andrew Gransden Photography

Jan Sochor

Robert Dann Photography

Raven Photography

Ben Thomson Photography

Isabelle Ribeiro Photography

Alex Wise Photography

Ten18 Photography

To begin the design process I needed to gain insight into the client’s business. After a few round of emails and detailed phone conversations with the client I got a clear picture of the business and its target market. The bulk of the business comes from Senior photography but also includes portraits, commercial, and weddings. This provided the starting point for structuring the site, always important in the initial information architecture phase of any web project. Aside from the main portfolio categories the client also wanted to give his photography blog prominence. I considered this a wise move, because the blog would provide powerful SEO benefits from backlinks and posts, even more so in his market replete with tech-savvy teens. Armed with this knowledge I created the backbone for the site which included four gallery sections, four service pages describing each type in detail, a testimonials page, a photo blog section for news, and the ubiquitous about and contact pages.

User interaction is always key when designing for the web. And a significant portion of effective interaction is information relevance. Starting with the main gallery sections I designed the pages so that only the most relevant information would show up and not clutter the space, leading to information overload for the user. For example, the gallery sections display only related posts from the photo blog. So if a person interested in wedding photography is browsing the wedding gallery section he will find posts that are within the wedding topic. The center stage of the site is the gallery section where the photographer showcases his best images in an irregular mosaic style layout, which feels almost like a scrapbook. We decided to omit the traditional single frame slideshow with previous and next buttons, and instead lay out all the images in one page. I found this approach refreshing since the user doesn’t need to click but scroll down to visualize all photos in one continuous flow. Testimonials were also included to convey trust in the service pages. These testimonial snippets are randomly pulled from the testimonials category and refresh on every page reload. For the photo blog section we used a magazine type format to display the posts in two columns. All images used as post thumbnails were cropped in a panoramic format to make it more interesting. As the introduction to the site and company, the homepage had a completely different layout. The first thing the visitor sees when entering the site is an accordion type slider that displays four distinct images inviting the user to each gallery section. Below the fold we display featured posts from the blog to get visitors interested in reading blog articles. By doing this we achieved the initial goals of the site on the most important page: opening the door to the photography work and beckoning visitors to take a look at the studio blog.

As in all portfolio centric sites, the focus is on the work, not the design. For visual style the client chose a minimal and fresh yet urban design, using large typography and supporting iconography. The aesthetic is subtle and not too loud as to detract from the main show, the photography. The green color for the accents came from the original logo, but on the site we decided to place an all white logo to make it even more clean and trendy.

The final result is an attractive portfolio website that provides information in a relevant manner. This not only invites users to see the photos, but compels them to read more about the services and the photography process, kind of like a behind the scenes look at the photography studio. Having a blog is like having an open door policy. Let people enter and see what you do, they might just be interested, stay a while, and build a business relationship. I’ve found that WordPress provides the perfect platform to achieve this because of its versatility in form and function. Kyle Berg at Ten18 Photography can attest to that as he happily blogs away when he’s not shooting photos.

“Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.” - Rich Cook