It’s really part of a bigger picture, you see not only has there been no activity on this blog, but the companies social media presence as a whole. The reason is simple, there just isn’t enough time in the day. Right Mind Creative is primarily run by one person (that would be me). Most of my time is spent working on client projects (as it should be). But I also have to manage all the other aspects of running a small business and as anyone working in a creative field will tell you, book-keeping isn’t our strong-suit. After that I try to squeeze in a couple of hours pursing other interests to keep my mind fresh for the next day.

I have made an attempt lately to become more active on Twitter (@ryanstang) and have found it to both rewarding and a major distraction at the same time. My network of friends (at least the people I would classify as willing to meet in person) now spans much of Western Canada. I truly enjoy conversing with interesting people even if it only is 140 characters at a time.

Although I do want to blog more, tweet more, and continue to my involvement in the design community I am not at all discouraged. I love my clients, I don’t think I could be doing work for a better group of people. I am 100% committed to providing all my clients with the best product possible and if that means I have less time to post pretty pictures on the internet then so be it. Nothing compares to satisfaction of a job well done.

It’s interesting to see how much the English language has evolved in 160 years. My personal highlights from the posters:

Mr. Mackintosh will ride his daring acts of horsemanship, and go through a number of surprising leaps!!

…take a surprising leap over a board of lights.

Sanger’s stud of educated horses and ponies, 100 in number

For many many more and to buy reproductions visit www.leodis.net/playbills/

I have noticed a counter-productive trend beginning to take shape in my community and area, and it has to do with social media.

Here in rural Alberta the majority of the population are often slower to adopt new technology, especially when it comes to social media. Recently, Twitter has really taken off here (about a year after it appeared on the local news), and people are really starting to connect the dots and realize the potential all this social media stuff has.

In the rush to adopt Twitter and Facebook, something was missed, the humble blog. First lets focus on what businesses are doing right. The majority have a website; that’s the first step. They have signed up for twitter and Facebook, and are building up friends and promoting themselves quite successfully.

Now, here is what unknowing business people (and the candidates running in out local election) have done wrong: All of a sudden there is traffic going to your websites and a buzz is building. Upon visiting the website, users quickly realize the site is static and it hasn’t changed much since the last time they were there. Another scenario is that the website owner wants to communicate more in-depth than Twitter or Facebook will allow. As a solution the website owner, having heard of “this blogging stuff” from a friend, thinks it is a good way to solve their problem. And it is. The part they get wrong is creating a free blog on WordPress’ site or Google’s Blogger, now you are directing traffic away from your original site, and a myriad of other things not conducive to your Google rank, SEO and branding. That’s not good, especially when you’re already paying for your own domain name (www.yourwebesite.com) somewhere else.

So what’s a person to do? Simple, host your blog on your existing website. Keep all your visitors on your site, eliminate having to re-enter content in more than one place, and maintain your branding and company identity. Adding a blog to an existing site will be a long-term money saver by reducing your online marketing efforts and the time spent managing multiple websites.

Remember, blogs are social media too, it’s not just Twitter and Facebook. They can connect with more people than twitter (not everyone is updating their status every hour), and are much more likely to inspire debate.

Level Ground Trading

Irving Farm Coffee

Intelligentisa Coffee

Paulig Coffee

One Village Coffee

Again, all images are from Lovely Packaging. Check them out for all kinds packaging inspiration.

The entire Right Mind Creative team will be at the Calgary show later this month. I haven’t come across a poster for the Calgary show yet, and am keeping my fingers crossed I’ll be able to pick up a poster created for the show.

All of the above prints are available for purchase at the Burlesque store.

Another innovative use of Google Maps. At mapenvelope.com you can print off and fold a mailing envelope with your location printed on the inside. Entering an address queries Google Maps for a satellite image which is placed on the inside of the envelope, centered just inside the top flap. You can then add a custom message for the person receiving the letter. When the envelop is opened the reader is presented with a personalized greeting.

Big Rock Brewery

Update: The Big Rock Brewery bottles are a concept design, you won’t see these in store.

Great Divide Brewing Co.

Pembroke Craft Brewery

Cerveceria Hacienda

North Peak

Ribe Bryghus

Grimm Brothers Brewhouse

Bogotá Beer Company

Cable Car

Hallertau

All images are from Lovely Packaging, check them out for all kinds packaging inspiration.

1. Colour Theory

Do the colours look good together? Do the colours used match the intended audience of the site? Are your eyes straining? You don’t need to know anything about colour theory to know if it is present. Chances are, if something is off, you’ll just know.

2. Contrast

If the website was in black and white, would you still be able to make sense of everything on the page? Do the important elements get your attention right away? If you feel like too many things are competing for your attention, or nothing is grabbing your attention, there may not have been enough thought put into contrast. You should know almost instantly what the most important element on the page is, and which elements are secondary.

3. Load Time

How long did you have to wait for that page to load? Is it more than your used to? There are many factors that can affect the load time of a website. Some may be out of the control of the web designers hands, but it is still their job to do everything in their power to get a website loaded as fast as possible. Faster load times will also improve your rating in search engines.

4. Content Hierarchy & Layout

Does the page present its elements in order of most important to least important? Are elements like the navigation in a logical place? Do they move around from page to page as you move through the site? Does the content of the site have headings and subheadings? Proper formatting of a page leads visitors through the site’s content from the most important to the least important. It also makes a long page of content easy to skim so your visitor can find what they are looking for faster. Properly formatted content will let google and other search engine know what’s important and can increase your search engine rating.

5. Validation

Go to http://validator.w3.org/ and enter the address of the website in question. Upon hitting enter a list of errors produced by the page will be loaded. Don’t jump to a conclusion just yet, there are many factors at play here. Errors do not necessarily mean the website is broken, at times the errors you see are acceptable and sometimes unavoidable. However, if you see a lot of errors use your best judgment and compare them to the errors on a competitors page. It is very important to note that errors will happen (sometimes it is necessary to break the rules a little). If you are curious to know if the errors you find are acceptable or unacceptable, just drop us a line and we will be happy to help you with any questions. Again, the fewer errors the higher your site will rate in search engines. These five checks are easy for anyone to do, and are all based on a gut feeling. If something just feels off when your browsing through a web designers portfolio, then chances are there is something off. In design, everything is done for a reason. If you have a question about the work of a designer, they should be able to tell you without hesitation the reasoning behind nearly every aspect of it. With a good designer, the amount of thought put into the details of their work will be instantly recognizable.

I am excited to see that ExpressionEngine 2 is finally out of beta and the migration to the new software from version 1.6 is moving so rapidly.

ExpressionEngine is Right Mind Creative’s preferred platform for building dynamic websites. ExpressionEngine allows us to build complex, content driven websites quickly and efficiently. The software provides an intuitive and easy to use platform for website owners to manage their content. Things like photo galleries all the way up to complete e-commerce website can be built and easily managed on ExpressionEngine, even by a computer novice.

With the new version comes a bunch of new features and new ways to interact with users. From using the beta version myself I am looking forward to using ExpressionEngine 2.1 in a real word situation. Who want to be the first to have a brand new ExpressionEngine site built for them?

Recently I traveled to New York City and spent eight days getting a feel for what it meant to be a New Yorker. To me New York felt much more mature than the New York I knew from TV and the movies. I spent most of my time in Manhattan admiring the architecture, visiting museums and galleries, dining on food from every corner of the globe, hailing taxis and enjoying being part of daily life in the city. Manhattan is a real living, breathing, working city; not like the touristy city centres of many of Europe’s big cities. See more photos below.

The view from the roof-top terrace of our NYC accommodations

That’s me with some of Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soups at the MoMA

A view of the Flatiron Building from our balcony.

At any given point in New York you can look up and see buildings upon buildings, upon buildings; some old, some new.

The Guggenheim, architecture by Frank Lloyd Right

Times Square makes the night feel like day when your surrounded by numerous giant video screens all trying to get a few seconds of your attention.

I had a great time in New York and look forward to returning in the future to see more, eight days is just not enough time. Now that I am home, and have had time to process all of the experiences and inspiration I have acquired from this trip I am eager to get to work and create something amazing.

As music is always a great creative inspiration for Right Mind Creative, every year we try to hit up at least one music festival of the “Indie” variety. In the past few years we’ve been to Sasquatch Festival twice and Virgin Festival. This year we will be attending Sled Island in Calgary, AB for 4 days of great music, from June 30 — July 3. All shows take place in 20+ venues downtown with a Main Stage Friday and Saturday in Olympic Plaza Park.

There are FAR too many bands to name them all, but some of the sets include Les Savy Favs, Girl Talk, Dinosaur Jr, The Melvins, !!!, The Black Lips and many many more. (for the full lineup, click here)

Right Mind Creative will be Tweeting photos of the bands, venues and gig posters throughout the event. Follow @TheRightMinds on Twitter to stay in the loop!

Check out these postcards designed by WestmorelandFlint and printed by Studio on Fire. There are seeds embedded in the paper. Once your done with the post card you can plant it and watch your new flowers grow. These particular cards are for a landscaping company, but this idea could apply to anyone in the “green” or environmental industry. This technique would be great for business cards and small takeaway pieces as well as post cards, and is sure to make a big impression (no letterpress pun intended).

For more pictures visit Studio on Fire’s blog; Beast Pieces.

It seems that everyone in the world of web design is talking about content management systems (CMS), but most people outside the web design industry don’t quite understand what that means. In the interest of demystifying what us Internet savvy are talking about I will try to explain what a CMS is and what it can do for you.

To start we’ll break CMS down into its parts.

Content — The meat and potatoes of your website. The content of a website is the writing and images. If you were to take away the design and layout of the page you would be left with just the content. This is what people visit your site for.

Management — Keeping your content organized is key to help visitors find what they are looking for and for you to add, subtract and update content.

System — Through a CMS a work flow is created for you and your staff to maintain the organization of your content.

How can a Content Management System work for you?

We say that websites are built on a CMS, meaning we design and build your website over the framework of the CMS. Here are a few examples of the benefits you will gain by using a CMS.

Instant Updates

Add, remove and edit content to your site instantly from anywhere in the world. The process of maintaining the content on your site is easy and typically works like this: Log into your site using a username and password, select the type of content and where you would like it to appear on your site, type your content as you would in a word processor like Microsoft Word, then click save and your content is available instantly on the internet.

Scheduled Content

You have the ability to write content and have it appear and/or disappear from your site at a predetermined date and time. This is especially useful for retailers offering promotions for a limited time.

Make One Change, Update a Whole Site/Reuse Content

Let’s say you change phone numbers, and you need to change the phone number across the footer of every page of your website. Make the change once and it will affect the entire site. Or, have your latest news appear not only on a news page but also on the homepage of your site.

Delegate Content Publishing

Different people within your organization can be given unique usernames and passwords, each with access to limited areas of your website to create content. This will lead to a website that is updated more often, and ease the workload placed upon one person. If you wish to keep control of the content on your site a work flow can be developed where content is submitted to you for approval before being published live on your website.

Content is Independent of the Design

The formatting of your new content is controlled to maintain continuity in the design and avoid a layout disaster. Also, as the content is separated from the design, any future design changes can be made without having to re-enter all the content you have already published.

The Disadvantages of a Content Management System

There aren’t many disadvantages to using a CMS for your website, but there are a few that should be considered before you decide if it’s right for you. There are numerous CMSs on the market, each one geared towards a unique type of website. Some are more flexible than others. Some CMSs give the designer limited control over the design and layout of a website, which can lead to a website looking “cookie cutter” and are easily identified as templates. Implementing a CMS also requires additional coding, design, and often some training for those who maintain the site.

Is a Content Management System Right for You?

It’s no wonder there are so many web designers insisting on using a content management system for new websites. For a site that will need any modifications to its content, even if not immediately, the time and money saved submitting changes to a web professional make investing in a good CMS worth while. Having your content updated, and new content posted regularly will increase your ranking in search results and keep your audience returning to your site for more.

Well, half of Right Mind Creative is going to New York City… the other half is staying back to take their chances with the unpredictability that is summer in Alberta.

Having traveled extensively through Western Europe and the North Western United States, I know there is no substitute for the inspiration and experience gained from seeing the world then traveling. New York has been in the back of my mind for many years and I am excited to finally be going there.

Even more than I look forward to walking amongst the worlds cultural élite outside my (temporary) apartment in Midtown East, I look forward to the impact the culture, architecture and food of the city have on me as a designer. From experience I know that the things I see and do have a way of turning up in my creative work.

Stay tuned for an update from New York in the coming weeks.

Often when talking with a new client about a website, the first question we are always asked is “how much is a website going to cost me?” There is no easy answer; obviously a brochure style website consisting of only a few pages is going to be a lot less than a site with a store and payment gateway. While I can’t tell you how much your website will cost without first learning about your company and your goals, I can offer some advise to let you know you are getting what you are paying for.

Where is your money going?

The success of a website as a vehicle for connecting business with customers is the result of several stages and disciplines coming together and working as a whole.

Research

For your website to be successful, the designers have to get to know you, your company, your goals, your competition, and most importantly, your target audience. If a web designer doesn’t have a thorough understanding of the needs of your business, your website will not be working its hardest for you. You should expect to spend some time answering questions and helping the designer see your company from your point of view, and most importantly, your customer’s point of view.

Design

What has been learned from the research will directly affect the outcome of the design phase. If the proper research hasn’t been done, no matter how flashy and eye-catching the design is, it will fail to represent your company accurately and make the conversion from visitor to customer. During this phase design compositions will go back and forth from designer to client as the final details are worked out. As this is the face of the site to your customers it goes without saying the importance of the design and layout is paramount. The site must be unique enough to separate itself from the competition without being obnoxious while retaining usability for your visitors.

Assets

Not all websites will need additional assets like photography, writing, or special software, but those that do can expect to pay for the required material. This may be a single stock photo or a session with a professional photographer. The impact a professional photographer or writer can have on the content and appeal to your website is tremendous, and there is a huge difference in an educated, experienced professional and an assuming amateur.

Coding

Behind every website are lines and lines of code that make up the structure and content of the site. This is an area that often gets neglected. Typically clients don’t understand the code that makes up their site and are unable to spot the difference between good and bad. Extra care must be taken to write clean, standards compliant, semantic code. Search engines like Google use the code your site is built on to rank the website and present it as a result of a search. Having accessible code means search engines will have an easier time finding your site and in turn your site will see more traffic. This is one element of SEO (search engine optimization) which design and marketing agencies sometimes sell as an additional service. Properly written code also ensures your website will look the same across different kinds of computers and will look the same in the future as new technologies are developed.

Special Feature Development

From experience we know that the solution for one project, although similar, unlikely meets the specific needs of the next project. The time saved using templates is often made up in having to realign special features from client to client. Some examples of what might fall into the category of a special feature are dealer locators and custom Google maps, member registration and management, shopping carts and stores, events listings and calendars, content organization by categories and tags, and special photo galleries. These often take a little more time to develop and test to ensure they are functioning as expected.

Hosting and Domain

Hosting is the space your website takes up on a computer and is served on the internet. A domain is the www.yourwebsite.com address. Domains and hosting are often purchased together for one, two, or three years at a time. Typically these are relatively inexpensive, depending on the needs of your website you can expect $100 to $200 per year, or less if you decide to purchase three years up front.

Implementation

Putting the website up, live on the internet is often the last stage of the process. This involves configuring the server which your new website will be living on to best serve your custom site, as well as moving your new website from its testing server to its final home. It may also be necessary to move or set-up new email addresses. If you already have a hosted website it is likely that your new site up without any interruption in service.

Training

Paying your web designer every time you wish to update content on your site has become a thing of the past for most design agencies. To date all the websites we have built put control of the content into the hands of the owner. Most internet savvy people have no problem learning how to maintain their website, as it is incredibly easy. However, some sites with advanced features may require some one on one training. Most training is brief, and in most cases it is best for one person to be in charge of the site’s content in the interest of continuity.

Some things to look out for…

Over the years we have been involved in many levels of the web industry, and we have seen some practices which we believe are unfair.

The “Package Deal”

The package deal is an all-inclusive website. Often you will see these advertised as “Get a complete website for $500″. While most design agencies do assume you are looking for a complete package, this particular package deal often includes things like a set number of pages designed, a specific set of features and a set number of email addresses. Whether a site has 1 or 100 pages often does not require endless hours of design and layout time as you would be led to believe. These packages are often focused on quantity over quality and fail to meet the goals of most businesses.

Billed by the Hour

Being billed by the hour does not make sense for a large project such as a website. If you are paying by the hour and you have hired a poor web designer you will be paying a lot more for an inferior product.

Micro Features

Micro features are our favorite indicator you are getting ripped off. It frustrates me to no end when I hear of someone paying a couple of dollars here and a couple of dollars there to include such minuscule (and often unnecessary) add-ons. Some examples of micro features are “Bookmark Me” buttons or links, the current date and time in the website header, current weather information and images that fade in and out. The best feature I have seen to date is the ability to have unlimited pages on your site (for an additional fee of course). The truth is there is nothing limiting the number of pages that a website can be made up of, and the majority of these little features are simply copied and pasted from one template to another.

In conclusion…

As you can see, there are many factors that go into the price of a website, and choosing a web designer that is dedicated to helping your business reach its goals is important. Right Mind Creative prides itself on a honest approach to all the work we do, without cutting corners or using templates, and a one on one relationship with each of our clients.

So how much will a website cost? Contact us to find out.

Have a computer in need of a little colour? Download this wallpaper to brighten things up. Also available for the iPhone and iPod touch.

Download Wallpaper

Update: added iPhone4 and iPad versions

Download iPhone & iPod touch version

Download iPhone 4 version

Download iPad version

Advertising Agency: Colle+McVoy, USA

Great execution for this outdoor advertising campaign for Caribou Coffee to go along with their new logo design and slogan. I think they really hit the mark on this one! What are your thoughts?

Public transit is used by millions of people everyday, and the maps used by commuters are often overlooked. The goal of any good map is to communicate a lot of complicated information, simplifying it enough for everyone to instantly understand. The subway in a large city is defiantly very complicated. There are multiple lines going in different directions, stations with and without interchanges, multiple fare zones and more. Distilling this information down to a easily understandable format is no simple task. Click Continue Reading to see more maps.

Prior to 1933 most of the worlds subway maps were based on the geographic locations of  stations and the direction of the trains. Harry Beck (a London Underground employee) realized that travelers primarily wanted to know how to get from station to station and the actual location of each stop was, for the most part, irrelevant. He began work on his simplified map of the London Underground in 1931, using only 45° angles, strait lines, and markers for either interchange stations (where you were able to switch trains) or regular stations. Although the map was initially released in small numbers, its popularity quickly grew. Beck’s original map has gone through several changes and designers since the 30’s, but the principle remains practically unaltered.

Today most major cities have adapted Beck’s design, to some degree, and applied it to their own transit maps. Below are a few maps from cities around the world. The first map is the London Tube, you can see many similarities between the London map and other cities maps (some more then others). Click on each map for a larger version.

London Tube — London, UK

link to Transport for London

Paris Metro — Paris, France

link to RATP

New York City Subway — New York, USA

via MTA

Munich Public Transport Network — Munich, Germany

link to MVT

Montreal Metro — Montreal,  Canada

link to STM

Mexico City Metro — Mexico City, Mexico

link to Mexico City Metro (spanish)

São Paulo Metro - São Paulo, Brazil

link to São Paulo Metro

Tokyo Metro — Tokyo, Japan

link to Tokyo Metro