Remaining relevant with information.  You can correlate the human knowledge base with the knowledge base of your products and services, which means it will double about every 5 to 7 years.  Due to innovation, staying informed about what you do or sell will require continued education, and will also require updating the information you provide to your clients.

Staying visually current. You probably don’t have the same hairstyle you had in the 3rd grade.  Why would you keep the same images and visuals.  Keep fresh by looking at things differently, and representing them differently visually.

Its a reflection.  End users of your site or media will associate the design with your company.  That is the whole point in having a website, to allow users to interact and get to know you.  A bad first impression is hard to get over, people assume certain things by how they appear.  Its just a fact.

Out with the old.  Along with updating information, you may need to get rid of bloated content that is not attracting customers, since this can actually harm the user experience by making things appear more confusing.

KISS.  Maybe its time to make things simpler, easier to use.  Functionality should be the driving factor for any site.  If yours is functioning poorly, it is time to redesign.

Contemplate your strategy for gaining customers and staying competitive, maybe its time  to look at putting a fresh look on your site.

• 320andup
• columnal
• bootstrap
• foundation

Thanks A List Apart, for sharing a wonderful article on prototyping in Foundation.

A good designer can employee his skills to take a simple or general idea and turn it into a visually or aesthetically appealing concept.  The goal is to help the end user have the best experience.  A good designer is always working toward bringing solutions to marketing  issues as well as creating awareness and protection of a brand.

Its not just about pictures, design includes…

• scale
• color
• typography
• shape
• consistency 

Just a little thought about one aspect of my job.

The sharp, crystal-clear screens are awesome news for new iPad owners, but they create some new dilemmas for web developers who’d like to offer a better experience for high-resolution screens. Sure, increased pixel density means you can serve up sharper, better looking graphics, but there is a cost as well — bigger images mean more bandwidth and longer page loads.

This isn’t a new problem by any means and Webmonkey has looked at a variety of solutions in the past, including techniques like adaptive images and responsive images.

The problem is simple: you need to send smaller images to small screens and larger images to larger screens. Sending a huge iPad-optimized image to a device with a max resolution of 320×480 just doesn’t make sense. At the same time, when bandwidth isn’t an issue, most sites will want to serve high-resolution content to displays that can handle it.

The ideal solution would be to detect both the resolution of the screen and the available bandwidth. Then, based on the combination of those two factors, the server could offer up the appropriate image. Currently that’s not possible, though there are already proposals to extend HTML to handle that scenario.

The Responsive Image Working Group is a W3C community group hoping to solve some of these problems. The group is proposing a new HTML element, <picture>, which will take into account factors like network speed, device dimensions, screen pixel density and browser cache to figure out which image to serve up. Think of it as a much smarter version of the old lowsrc property. So far though it’s all hypothetical

In the mean time if you’d like to serve up high resolution images to your third-generation iPad visitors look no further than Apple.com for one (not necessarily ideal) way to do it. An Apple Insider reader noticed thatApple is already prepping its site to deliver double-resolution images to new iPads. Cloud Four’s Jason Grigsby, whose responsive image research we’ve covered before, has a great breakdown of what Apple is doing.

Essentially Apple is serving up lower resolution images by default, then using JavaScript to send larger images on to iPads. That works, but it will definitely mean increased download times for new iPads since they have to download two files for every graphic. Apple’s approach will also up the number of HTTP requests, which will also slow down the page.

The slower page loads seem to be an acceptable trade off for Apple since the company no doubt wants to showcase the new iPad’s high resolution display with high resolution images. For other sites the bandwidth trade off may not be worth the gain in image resolution.

Still, screens are only going to continue getting better with ever-increasing pixel density. Now is the time, if you haven’t already, to start embracing CSS 3 (avoid images altogether with gradients, shadows and rounded corners in CSS 3), Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) for resolution independent graphics and of course @media queries to serve high-res background images.    web monkey

1. Can I tell what the company does in the first two seconds?

   Two seconds. That’s about all you get to make an impression on a visitor before they click away and find a site that’s less confusing. If your site doesn’t tell me who you are and what you do the moment I look at it, it’s an instant D minus. Respect your visitors’ time and be upfront about it.

2. Without doing anything (browsing around, scrolling, hovering) can I tell what the basic navigational structure of the site is?

   Clear site navigation is vital to a website that people will actually use. Consider it a matter of trust between you and your visitors. A visitor needs to understand where they are, where they can go, and what they expect to find there. And they need to know it before they do anything like click around or hover a mouse over things. If you need to play around and “investigate” before your site’s navigation is revealed, you fail. Sorry – harsh but true.

3. Does the navigation remain consistent throughout the site?

   Remember what I said about site navigation being a matter of trust? Well, just as your visitors trust that a link in the site navigation will take them where it promises to, they also trust that the navigation won’t jump around or reorganize itself while they’re browsing around the site. Violate that at your own risk.

4. Is it clear what the site wants me to do (calls to action)?

   So if you’ve ever anything on internet marketing, you’ve probably heard about “calls to action.” Often, that’s taken to mean some kind of large, brightly-colored button that says “Click ME!” But it doesn’t have to be so blatant and irritating. Simple as this: you brought people to your site for a reason, so what is it? Don’t waste my time. If I have to look around on different pages of your site before I know what you have to offer, chances are I don’t want it anymore.

5. Is there a logical hierarchy of elements on the page – are important things larger/emphasized and less important things smaller/de-emphasized?

   So this is a basic question of good graphic design. And it’s pretty simple: a well-designed site should have an obvious visual hierarchy, where the most important things are the ones that stand out first. Do you have headers that are large enough to separate them from the rest of the text? Are your links clearly identified? If everything has the same level of visual importance, then it all starts to look like a mess. If you don’t know yourself what’s most important on your site, maybe you should think that over first.

6. Is there a “splash” page that you get to before seeing the site content?

   You’ve seen this plenty of times before – before you can get to the “real” site, you are treated to a musical opening video or slideshow, with a button or something that allows you to proceed. The thinking used to be that you should make your website more of an “experience” for visitors. But the real world has taught us that this is really just irritating. People want their web experience to operate on their own terms, not yours. How would you feel if every store you walked into wanted to make you watch a short film about their products before you could see what was on the shelves? How many people do you think would walk out without bothering to see it all the way through? Which brings us to…

7. Does the site make unnecessary use of Flash?

   There was a time, not that long ago, when Flash seemed like the best way to make a website stand out. These days, it’s become a little out-of date. If your site is heavily flash-based, you’re probably making your content harder for people to reach (especially people on mobile devices) and you’re almost certainly putting it out of the way of search engines. These days, a site that’s heavily based on flash is clunky and limited – chances are that there are better and faster ways to get the same results. Unless you’re using a good deal of video and animation that requires it, you should probably consider another option. And if you are using flash on your site, aim to use it in limited ways for maximum effect, while making sure that there’s an alternate way of getting to your site’s content.

8. Is the site navigation too complex/confusing? Are there pages that could be combined or eliminated entirely to improve clarity?

   Look over your site, and count the pages in the “top tier” of the site’s navigational hierarchy. Are there more than eight? That’s a pretty good sign that you’re starting to get too complex. While sites may legitimately have anywhere from 5 to 5000 pages in their structure, they still need to be easily navigated and understood by humans. So consider whether several smaller pages might be more usefully combined to put similar information all on one page. If there are pages with less than a paragraph of information on them, consider whether they might be turned into a sidebar or callout on a different page, or even safely removed entirely. If there are several pages on the same topic, consider grouping them together underneath a top-tier page.

9. Is the site layout too thin or too short for modern screens? Does it feel awkwardly “cramped?”

   It used to be a design trend to design websites that fit entirely within the browser window, without scrolling. Often, this involved having scrolling panels or frames inserted inside of a fixed-height design. These days, those sites feel cramped and awkward. It’s much better to let your site breathe a little, and let your visitors scroll down normally. Page width standards have also changed as monitors have gotten larger and more powerful – if your site looks too thin on modern screens, consider an update.

10. Are the photos/illustrations used on the site large, clear and attractive?

    They say that “content is king” when it comes to websites, and that’s true to some degree. But it’s a website’s pictures that tell the story more immediately. Bad photos can kill an otherwise great looking design. If your site’s images are small, unappealing or clearly unprofessional, consider springing for some professional photography. Or at least some high quality stock images. Improving your customer’s perceptions of your business will probably be worth the cost in the long run.  VisibleU

Symbol ? Or Wordmark ?

Of the 15 marks in my “1996” article, nine are essentially “wordmarks,” while six feature graphic symbols (Lucent, NCR, Imation, Pharmacia & Upjohn, McGraw-Hill, and LG; I count Nortel as a wordmark, but its “O” can also function as a freestanding symbol).

Which logo strategy is best? When should a CEO choose a wordmark, when a symbol?

In general, consider a symbol only when:

• Your name is too generic, too long, doesn’t translate well globally, or is hopelessly deficient in personality.

• You need an emblem on the product, as on a car hood–or a sneaker.

• You need to link subsidiaries to the parent and can’t easily use the name. (The Bell symbol served this function for the old AT&T and its operating companies.)

• You have (or can afford) ample media, to teach us what the symbol means.

Choose a wordmark when:

• Your name is reasonably distinctive but not (yet) a household word.

• You want to associate products or subsidiaries with the parent more clearly and directly than a symbol permits.

• Communication funds are limited and should be focused on name recognition.
A case in point: In 1995, Novell wanted to be a more powerful umbrella brand over its various software names. Consultants Frankfurt Balkind designed a striking new N symbol, appropriately expressive of a focal “enterprise networking” concept, accompanied by an elegant low-key wordmark.

In 1996, the “dots” were banished from marketing communications, to better focus on the branding essential–the Novell name. Rationale: “We don’t have time for trinkets that serve no functional need.”

Bottom line: Wordmark or symbol, make sure your identity consultant provides a strategic application-based rationale–not just a pretty face.     Identity Works

Think of a few of your favorite brands.  What makes them so special to you?  Is it their logo?  Is it a product photo?  Of course it’s more that that.  They are probably very intentional about presenting their story.

One quality that stands out to me is consistency.  Your messages need to be consistent not only to avoid confusion, but to build trust.  Just like with personal relationships, we depend on others to do what the say, those are people we are loyal to.  In order to build a strong brand with great emotional connections, you need to constantly be what you say you are.

The more consistently your company portrays its brand, the more that customers will trust the kind of experience they can expect from interacting with your company’s brand. And the more consistently good that experience is, the more loyal your customers will be to your brand. Make it really good, and your customers will love your brand. That’s the holy grail of branding, as in any trusting relationship. Zuzuman

Apple has built up its brand consistency over time with a series of products that reinforce the company’s central identity—sleek elegant products that push the boundaries of innovation. And Apple wants you to feel sleek and elegant too: That’s why you don’t see the Apple logo on pay-as-you-go cell phones or shoddy cassette players. Inc.com

Part of remaining consistent is in imaging, but the emphasis should be on actions and decisions and interactions with customers.

A brand is a little more complex.  While you have complete control over how your business identity, it is only a very small part of what makes up your brand.  A brand is a gut feeling, it’s the way your customers perceive your business.  Are they fans, will they tell others.  If you have a strong brand, they definitely will.

You need to be intentional with marketing, consistent in presenting that story, and mindful of your reputation.  Stay tuned for more articles on brand management and identity.