New favourite internet thing.

I <3 gifs. Especially design studio references with gifs. All kinds of win going on here.

*(definitely possibly didn’t happen)

Because of this I’ve had to get re-familiar with Facebook’s rules on promotions and competitions, in the normal way. I took them out, got them drunk and they told me everything. Serious. I’ve listed them here and have added my own completely helpful** but mostly unhelpful*** comments.

**(False) ***(True)

General rule of thumb people, before you start – get your T&C’s (tanks and catweazles) in order. You’ll need to detail the rules of your promotion, offer terms and eligibility – you know, who you’re going to leave out because of how old they are or where they live. You nasty bigot you. Facebook are also very clear that you writing these rules does not make them lawful. They’d like you to use a lawyer. AHAHAHA. Seriously, just keep it concise and you’ll have no trouble**** at all.

****(Don’t listen to me)

Moving on to the nitty gritty stuff

Promotions on Facebook must be administered within Apps on Facebook.com, either on a Canvas Page or a Page App. Pretty self explanatory really – don’t run competitions on your wall. Ever. Just don’t do it.

Facebook would also like you to make ABSOLUTELY CRYSTAL CLEAR to your entrant that Facebook is in no way responsible or endorsing their entry, that Facebook do not sponsor or are associated with your event and that the information you are collecting is going to you and, you guessed it, NOT FACEBOOK!

The only actions Facebook are saying you can ask of your entrants are:

1. Liking a page.
2. Checking into a place.
3. Connecting to your app.

This means asking your entrants to like a wall post, or that image of you in your mums clothes… Not allowed. You’re also not allowed to ask your entrants to upload or post anything to confirm their entry. So those competitions that say – “share this to win” totally not allowed. Hopefully this will stop the assholes that create them cranking them out, but to be honest im not holding my breath.

This next one seems to be the main offender at the moment. When gathering your competition entrants, a ‘like’ is not enough. You cannot use the act of ‘liking’ or ‘checking in’ as your participants entry. You must include some form of data capture that sits OUTSIDE of Facebooks CTA’s. This is separate to ‘like gating’ though. You are allowed to require a user to ‘like’ a page before they can enter – BUT – you can’t use that ‘like’ as the entry token. Facebook will also pull off your ears***** if you use Facebook features or functionality, such as the Like button, as a voting mechanism for a promotion. So no voting on images etc to win. Stop it!

*****(Unlikely)

To finish up, once your fantastic promotion or competition has ended and you have ADHERED TO THE RULES, you have to tell the lucky winner. Stress over, right? WRONG!!! You CANNOT use Facebook to tell you winner they have won. This must be done outside of Facebook – in the real world. Scary stuff. Nothing to say you can’t congratulate your winner on Facebook though.

If you don’t trust me and, lets face it, why would you? You can read the official line here.

Post ended. L8rs.

Ok, so right off the bat – I don’t like it. I think the branding opportunities created by new facebook timeline for pages are great, I mean truly great. Allot of thought has clearly been put into the whole timeline concept and for individuals I think it’s great. For brands and businesses I think it’s great. Maybe i’m old fashioned, but the idea that they will exist as one in the same thing erks me. This is a discussion for another time though, the point of this post is to give you a toolkit for setting up your own timeline for facebook page.

The nuts and bolts of it

So with the new timeline layout, you’re going to have some new areas to brand. I’ll be using a page I setup recently for these examples – you can see it in the wild here.

These sizes are all minimum, there’s no harm in uploading something bigger – the facebook framing options (once uploaded) are pretty self explanatory. If you can though, try and get as near to these sizes as you can. That way you can manage pixel compression issues your end.

Cover Photo

851px X 315px A great place to push the visual identity of your brand right into your users faces, like some kind of clown pie or something. Facebook are being fairly strict on this area though. They ask that this area is kept ‘CTA’ free. So no telling your visitors to ‘like’ your page or telling them to visit another url. If you follow the tutorial i previously linked to, you’ll get the jist.

Thumbnail or profile picture

180px X 180px Weird one this. It’s the only new display size to not display at the minimum size facebook ask for. Possible things with this happening in the future? No idea. The actual size ‘on page’ is 125px square, worth keeping in mind. This image will, as always, be used throughout facebook to represent you. Remember that when you come up with some ingenious relationship between cover and thumbnail that makes no sense out of context. This is the image your ‘fans’ and the general facebook population will see most. Simple and striking, that’s all you need.

Tabs

111px X 74px My favourite addition to the new upgrade, custom tab images – good bye poxy 16px icons. With custom tab images you can keep your page nice and tidy, on brand and call attention to what you want, how you want… Sort of. Of course there would be some constraints here, it’s facebook after all. You can only add custom images to non standard tabs. That is, tabs you have added to your page, ones that do not come as a default.

You can’t alter the image of the ‘photos’, ‘events’ and ‘likes’ tabs. The ‘photos’ tab, annoyingly, must remain in position 1 as well. There are a couple of small hacks that work, ‘photos’ displays the most current image and, as yet, I can’t find a way to change that – you could manage that if you upload infrequently in batch though. ‘Events’ is a little more agreeable. It displays the image of the last event added. So, add your events – then add a final event, call it something fairly nondescript and add your image to that event. It’s not a great solution, but it is a solution.

You can have upto 12 tabs, with ‘photos’ and 3 of your choice on display. The 5th tab partially hidden with the drop icon will reveal your other 8 tab selections. It’s this icon that you will need to press to allow the edit options (for adding your custom tab images) to appear.

Things to note

No more landing pages

With new timeline for pages, facebook have dropped one of the best features it gave to brands – the ability to define what your visitors saw when they visited your page. This is less of a problem than you might think though. Tabs still have their own custom URL, so (externally) you can still drive traffic direct to your custom tab.

The ‘like’ refresh bug

Have you ever visited a custom tab that asked you to ‘like’ the page before you could enter a competition or download a resource or have the chance to walk on the moon? Well, at the moment, that’s out. This kind of tab, at the moment, has a small bug – facebook’s end of course. It used to be ‘liking’ a page meant a refresh – which meant code and image reloads. At the moment a page ‘like’ doesn’t trigger this response. So what you are left with is an irate new ‘fan’ who has done what has been asked of them and no noticeable action for them to enter/download/visit. I can tell you from personal experience, this kind of fleecing makes people *very* angry. As I understand it, this *is* something facebook are working on, so it shouldn’t be around for too long.

So, the temporary fix? Change how your custom tab is worded. Get fans to ‘like’ 1st *then* click your device. Have your device refresh the page by loading the tab URL. Facebook will recognise the new fan and load the ‘liked’ fan facing tab. Again, not great, but a viable dirty fix.

Pin posts

Click the ‘pin post’ icon (top right in any of your posts) and have it remain at the top of your fan page for upto a week. Great for promoting competitions or pushing traffic somewhere you need them to be.

Direct messaging

Fans can now send messages to fan pages. A subtle feature. But a great one for handling immediate feedback and issuing much needed private responses.

The admin panel

At the top of your page (admins only), this handy feature offers a snapshot of Notifications, new ‘likes’, insights, messages and page tips.

Custom tab application width

Facebook have widened the width of custom tab applications to 810px in width. Don’t worry, your old tab applications will still work (‘like’ bug aside).

Good luck

I hope this post has been of some help, if you have any specific questions – do ask and I’ll try my best to help.

Post ended. L8rs.

Pretty sweet looking service for gents like me who, 1. Have no time to high street clothes shop and 2. Have no idea how to dress so you don’t look like a twonk.

Will be giving this a run in the next week or so.

So this is what was stated in John Naughton’s article.

Over the last decade, the size of web pages (measured in kilobytes) has more than septupled. From 2003 to 2011, the average web page grew from 93.7kB to over 679kB.

So what? I mean, honestly, what is the point here? In 2003, as John states, the average page may well have been 93.7kb. What he doesn’t tell you is that the average speed of the web in the UK back then was around 500kbps. So this 2003 web page is using 18.74% of its capacity.

Flash forward to 2012. As Ofcom have stated, the UK average in november last year was 7.6Mb/s or 7,782.4 kbps. If we use Johnno’s figure of todays average page weighing in at a meaty 679kb – can you see where i’m going with this – this means that your average punter is using around 8.7% of their bandwidth, upon download.

There are some sound principals contained in J-dogs article, namely form/function princiapls – but hey, controversy is where it’s at. My counter statement to John-bob.

Graphic Designers. Saving you over 50% of your web tubes since 2003.

As well as, arguably, increasing rich media interaction and usability – not to mention – the overall enjoyment of what is essentially not going outside to play.

Post ended. L8rs.

Once again I’d just like to say, I offer no sure fire method, at the heart of it, I’m just a designer – at the moment one with the responsibility of giving others their first big break. The following are some things I’ve learnt from the employers side and may help you or someone you know.

The application

Do exactly what the advert says

It seems so obvious, but you would not believe how few applicants tick all the boxes when submitting their application. If the advert says include a cover letter and CV – then that’s what you need to do. The cover letter is fine as – if submitting by email – the body of the email, with the CV as a pdf attachment. Make it easy for your potential employer to find it.

I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works.

Oscar Wilde

Don’t send word docs. Just don’t. The likelihood you both have the same version is slight. The chance layout quirks in different versions of word that might make your employer think you are a buffoon, higher. You’re not a buffoon – right?

Your cover letter

Always make your cover letter as personal to the company you are applying to as possible. Employers who regularly recruit can spot a generic application a mile off, straight away they’re questioning your commitment to their organisation. Find the name of the person doing the hiring. Send it to them as well as any generic mailto address. If this information isn’t available on their site, call them.

Be friendly, introduce yourself as a person (not a robot) and fulfil the requirements of the advert you’ve seen. If they ask for salary expectations, do this. You may want to add subtext, possibly that this is what you were on at your last job for instance. But there is nothing worse than spending an eternity agonising over what we, as employers, put in our adverts for them to then be ignored. Keep it light. This is a short cover letter, not an extension of your dissertation. Cover the de-facto points; Who you are, where you saw the ad, where you live, why you’re applying, any links to work and end on something memorable. Maybe you’ve won a design award recently, maybe you’ve just got back from a life changing trip – anything. If you think it might stick in the employers mind, it can only help.

Your CV

This is where opinion in the design industry differs hugely, and I can only go on my own experience and the experience of my friends here.

BE DIFFERENT! Viva la revolution! DO NOT include a word document, or worse still, do not paste your CV into an email. Yuk. You’re a designer – this is the first opportunity your employer gets to see your awesome skills, bust em lose! This message does however come with a proviso – make sure its legible. Design your CV, don’t decorate it. The purpose of this document is give your employer an overview of your past history and qualifications and this should be in your head when you design your CV.

If David Carson is your hero, this is NOT the time to pay homage. Keep the Bauhaus ideology on repeat in your mind, form follows function. Use space, typography and solid layout principals to design something that does its job and looks great. I would also advise you to do this with a largely white background – some employers (me for one) like to print out (enviro-what?!?) CV’s etc when refining the hiring process, nothing worse than a sodden black page with lovely thin type you can no longer read!

I honestly believe this is such a huge plus when applying for a designer role, and in our latest designer position i’d say less than 20% of applicants designed their CV, so straight away you’ve improved your odds of getting noticed and landing that invitation to an interview.

More on getting hired, soon.

Post ended. L8rs.

Failure is built into creativity…

Saul Bass

The crux of the matter is simply I did not believe the efforts I were designing were good enough to be shown to my peers and to my clients. So I gave up. It was becoming an albatross around my neck. I failed. The amount of detail and research I would put into a client’s site could never be equalled on this one. When you build a career on providing creative services for others and feeding off their enthusiasm and ideas, the right elements are there to really excel at what you produce. Here, not so much. The function of this site is to be clear, usable and client friendly. So with time dragging on and not being able to dedicate the time I needed to, I built this site on a template, available to anyone on themeforest.

“But you’re a website designer, and you can’t design your own website?!?”

The important thing here is that I don’t want a website. I mean, I do, obviously. But, I don’t *need* a website, as such. Not to the extent that I would plan and execute in my day to day anyways. My last site design was a labor of love. Something I (at the time) really liked. Clients found it odd and unappealing. Lesson learnt. Never design for yourself. Not even when it’s for yourself. Seriously.

Post ended. L8rs.