Working on a slick web application like Champion Sound is a real joy, and keeping up with the times can be challenging. These days Twitter is becoming a household name, and Facebook already is, so it makes sense that Champion Sound should play nicely with these two platforms. If you want to get the word out, email is only part of the solution in today’s social climate. Short messaging has been on a rise since it became popular on mobile phones like the Nokia 5100 series in the late ’90s, and it’s still with us and stronger than ever today.

Champion sound is all about communication, and getting relevant content to your subscribers, so in keeping up with the times we’ve added Twitter and Facebook support to Champion Sound in the past few weeks. The new Shout Out functionality allows Champion Sound users to Shout Out an event or email. This means thier statuses on Facebook, Twitter, or both will be updated with the message and a link to view the rich content on championsound.com. We plan to add MySpace and SMS support soon, and to continue extending the capabilities of what we believe is the best email marketing and promotion tool out there.

Another year has come and gone, and it’s time for the “official” dt Cleanup Report of Pacific Beach.  Our team, along with a couple of friends (thanks Gema and Jesse), got together to help Mother Nature out.  We started off at Cafe 976 for breakfast, and then got to work.  Again, we found that some of the dirtiest parts of the shoreline were north of Crystal Pier towards Tourmaline/La Jolla.  The good news is the beach was much cleaner in 2009 than any of the previous years.

Best Find: A porcelain horse

Worst Polluters: Cigarette smokers (still!)

Other Fun Stuff: 1 high heel, a dress, board shorts, several flip flops and a kid’s beach playset

Check out the pics on our flickr page! If you’d like to join us for future activities, please leave a comment, and we add you to our mailing list.

If you’d like to join us, please leave a comment below.  We’ll meet at 9AM for breakfast at Cafe 976, and then will proceed to meet at the end of Crystal Pier at 10:30.

For the last few days, we’ve all been enjoying a really fun quirk that brightens up our day at the office. DT is an awesome place to work and my co-workers are a really fun bunch of characters—not that we need any funny, random things to happen during the day, but it just makes everything “funner”, that’s right, “funner”. We’re always just a Champion Sound sign-up away from a “Ba da ding ding ding ding woah!”

Allow me to explain: when someone signs up for a free Champion Sound account, this audio file plays, and we really can’t help but chuckle and be glad that we’ve got yet another user checking out our product. Sure, we get automated emails for each sign-up, but who gets excited over an email anymore? The email is really there for technical and informative reasons—not to be funny or to boost morale. The audio sample playing on the other hand, is hilarious! It’s just awesome to be working quietly among your co-workers when out of nowhere, “Ba da ding ding ding ding woah!” and we all smile and chuckle at the comforting novelty that is our new user signal.

“Champion Sound” is a phrase often used in reggae music and it’s even used in SNL’s Digital-Short Ras Trent. A few of us developers and designers at DT are big fans of the Ras Trent short. We often find ourselves singing bits and pieces of it as we work. A while back, I thought to myself “Hey, wouldn’t it be awesome if everytime someone signed up for Champion Sound, a clip of Ras Trent played?” Indeed it would… I connected a pair of speakers to one of our staging servers and set up a simple email notification sound. The results, priceless.

The first thing you may think of when you hear “Customer Service” is the counter at the back of the store where you take product returns or even worse, the department that you sit on hold for. Well, it’s about so much more than department stores and telephone call centers.

In our business of providing User Experience strategy and design for the web, customer service is a holistic approach to managing a relationship that is all about setting expectations, maintaining excellent communications and following up. These are some practices to help create customer satisfaction and delight (the Holy Grail of customer service).

Setting Expectations

From the start of your relationship with a client, there should be clarity in the individual responsibilities of each organization. If you can’t spell everything out with concrete definitions and deliverables, you’ll need to be crystal clear on what isn’t definable (and follow up on that later). You can’t advertise donuts and deliver muffins – that crap doesn’t fly.

Think About What You Say: Sales has nothing to do with the stereotypical greasy-mustached scumbag selling used cars. It’s about establishing a relationship and creating transparency from the start. What you say should inevitably be what you deliver (and more). Great salespeople who believe in their product only need to impart their enthusiasm – there’s no need for any bullshit.

Write it Down: Make sure that all conversations are followed up with something in writing. It can be a project proposal, an email summary of a telephone conversation, or a work order. When the project is in progress, we use Basecamp and change orders to track updates, changes or enhancements to the scope or direction of the project.

Talk About It: After you have it down, make sure that everyone reads (they usually do not) and understands what is being committed.

Maintaining Great Communication

This is everyone’s responsibility. Communication fosters a relationship, and that’s what you want to have with any client that you’re working with. Remember, a relationship is just that – relating to the people that you are working with.

Be a Leader: Know your craft, your timelines, deliverables, and everything else necessary to lead the conversation. Don’t waste anyone’s time.

Have Empathy: Understand that all clients have different levels of knowledge and experience. Work hard to understand their position and how you can relate to them. Great business working relationships are just like meeting anyone new – find the common ground. Luckily, you have something awesome in common – your project!

Communicate Frequently: Regardless of who your client is, there is no such thing as a “hands-off” relationship. Anyone who is giving you their money wants to feel loved. It doesn’t have to be complicated (well, sometimes it does), but it needs to happen. Email, call, IM, or drink beer together – a little personal touch goes a long way.

Be Strong: You are the expert who was hired to create something amazing for your client. Help the client to understand that, and fulfill that role. From a creative standpoint, If you’re just doing what they want you to do, you’re not doing your job.

Embrace Challenges: Almost every project you manage will have its communications breakdowns and misunderstandings. No two people are the same, nor do they communicate in an identical manner. Embrace these circumstances as a way to better connect with your clients and improve your customer service process.

Following Up

When the project has been completed, the relationship is often just hitting its stride. There may not be more work right away, but if you did a phenomenal job and gave great customer service along the way, there will be in the future. Plus, it takes outside evaluation to really have a complete perspective.

How Did it Go?: Sometimes this is an email or a telephone call, and sometimes it’s a conversation to be had over lunch. No matter what, it needs to be done. Clients always feel better about spilling the beans when you don’t hold all of the cards. Encourage them to be honest – it will only make you better.

How Much Do You Really Like Us?: Find out for real – use an efficient survey system like the Net Promoter Score to really discover whether or not you’ve achieved customer service nirvana. If your client will refer you business, you’ve truly succeeded.

We Have Some New Ideas: With the amount of flux in the online business world, there are never-ending opportunities to present new ideas to your existing clients. Brainstorm new ideas for your clients regularly and make sure you set up periodic meetings share them. Businesses that are truly aware of the power of the web will always want to hear your ideas.

Looking at these projects led me to the MoMA website for Design an the Elastic Mind, and amazing website for “the exhibition that highlights designers’ ability to grasp momentous changes in technology, science, and history—changes that demand or reflect major adjustments in human behavior—and translate them into objects that people can actually understand and use.” While the website itself if abstract its is engaging and inspirational itself and as I told our staff….WARNING: Stay clear of this link unless you have some time to kill. The interaction that at first seems confusing resolves to be incredibly addictive and provides extensive exposure to the sites heavy content.

So where does this all lead? Think abstract, and bring that down to earth to make it real, but as creatives we must never ever ground the interpretation so much that is loses its ability to inspire others, the way the initial information inspired us.

Aaaaand we’re done.

After years of pulling out our hair writing specialized scripts and CSS for a browser thats older than the iPod, Windows XP, and even some sovereign nations - not to mention the immense security flaws that have plagued this application since its inception - digital-telepathy is finally dropping support for Internet Explorer 6. This is not to say that we won’t support those sites that we did program with Internet Explorer 6 in mind, we’re just not making accommodations for this antiquated browser on any new projects.

We would like to congratulate Kathryn Ballint, CEO of CropMom!  CropMom is a web application which is taking traditional scrapbooking into the modern era.  Dried flowers, construction paper and orange-handled scissors are no longer necessary for parents to preserve the best memories of their kids. Our UX team worked with Kathryn to help refine and polish CropMom’s design, executing on her passion and entrepreneurial spirit.

Please jump over to http://cropmom.com and check it out!  It’s free to sign up and use.

The Golden Arches. The Swoosh. The Shell. You remember them all like you remember the lyrics to Ice-Ice Baby. It’s a company’s identity. Their logo. Their “tramp-stamp” if you will. A distinctive and unique icon or symbol of a company, object, publication, person, service or idea that best represents them and helps to convey its message to the customers in their market.

You’d think this would be simple and easy to make/design a logo, but it ain’t. Making a memorable logo that hits the mark is damn-near impossible unless you own a Mind Reader or, in fact, loose your own mind. So to help expedite the mind-reading process, we decided it would be wise to share our process in a logo design for our client, Resume Bear.

FUN & SERIOUS or COOL & SOPHISTICATED…

Depending on how you approach it, your logo design will create a mood. It will most likely have a hint of whimsy or perhaps a more serious tone. But what if your demographic or client wants to be a little bit of both?

There’s a serious danger heading off into one extreme over another when designing logos. This is the company tattoo and has a level of permanence. Sure, like the music of U2, a company will change its style by polishing the edges, adding a shadow, or giving it a new twist to stay on top of the times. But more often than not, the company will keep its image in order to stay connected to its long-standing customers and future customers. It’s the mood that will most likely never change. Does it make you smile? Does it make you cozy inside? Does it make you feel like they can be trusted? Or, does it do nothing for you?

That being said: Research is key.

First, you should ask your client a bazillion questions. This will clear the air, and through them answering question number 1,342 you might get a tid-bit of information that you didn’t even think to ask for that has become paramount in figuring out the plan of attack. It never hurts to ask a lot of questions. But it DOES hurt to hand over 15 logos and find out they hate all of them because it “just doesn’t feel right.”

Second, find out their taste. Ask them what logos they like and why? What is it about the arches that moves them? Some clients will have a lot to say on this subject and will help direct you in creating an understanding of what they expect. Some won’t have a clue why they like it, they-just-do. That tells you something about the client right there. My guess is that if you look around, find some logos that have the same style, look, feel and direction that you were planning on heading in and present those logos to the client, you might be able to shave off some time and save some brain power for the other stuff. No need in reinventing the wheel here. Think of this as a Rorschach Test - Hold up a logo and ask, “What do you see? How do you feel?”

BRANDING vs. JUST-A-LOGO…

That logo you designed is great, but - so what?! If you’re lucky enough to have a great logo it won’t get you very far if it sits in your closet with the door shut. So, it’s imperative to ask your client what they plan to do with their logo. Are they going to use it primarily as a stamp on their business cards, letterhead and website? Or, are they going to take it to another level and brand it by placing it on the side of their building, car, and t-shirts? What if they’re a Snowboard company? Chances are they’ll want that logo on their spiffy new snowboard designs and maybe even stitched into their hats and gloves.

In this case, Resume Bear wanted to not only have it on their website, letterhead, and business cards. But they wanted to get the logo on T-Shirts, pens and water bottles to hand them out to college students and the like to promote brand awareness. This tells us one thing for sure: The Logo Must Be Cool. Because if it’s not- kids won’t wear the Tee. And if they don’t wear the tee, the tee sits in the closet with the door shut.

It also tells us: The Logo Must Be Legible. And I don’t mean “textually”. If you’re gonna put a logo on a t-shirt and give out those t-shirts, chances are you’re gonna want a logo that says everything the company is at a glance. People do not read anymore these days unless it’s the new Harry Potter book. And I know what you’re thinking, “But Chris! It’s only one word, or sentence! How hard is it to read a name of a business?” People have more important things to waste their time with, especially students. To help them NOT waste their time on reading the words “Resume Bear” we have to either a] get their attention so that they WILL read the words, or b] do the work for them. Or, maybe both!

SEPARATION of BEAR and RESUME…

Resume Bear started out with a big, brown, passive bear holding a piece of paper in its mouth as if it just caught a trout. That wasn’t bad, really, but it wasn’t really cool either. More importantly, a big, brown, passive bear doesn’t spark any “job hunting and finding” memories in my mind. It just reminds me of a log cabin, green trees, snow on the ground, and campfires. It’s no different than calling it Resume Sparrow, or Resume Groundhog. A Bear, in and of itself, does not draw an immediate correlation to job-placement. And we’re not about to ask Resume Bear to “change your name, because this logo design stuff is really hard!”

An easy question to ask yourself, as a designer, is What’s The Focus? We’re not selling bears. And we’re not really selling resume’s either. But we ARE selling a service that involves resumes. So, RESUME then is the focus. And BEAR would then be the muscle behind it. What I meant to say is, “Resume” is the most important word to someone looking for a job and walking by this T-shirt. “Bear” is just the cool part of it all for that person walking by.

But how do you make a job seeker, or employer, who just reads the name of the company that Resume Bear is not about camping? How do you design a logo with focus on the “resume” part, but still have a bear be involved? Is it even possible?

SKETCH IT BEFORE YOU WRECK IT…

With my mind spinning on all these questions I took pencil to pad and braved the world of my imagination. I tried to imagine I was doing a logo for a snowboard company, a law firm, an apparel company, and more. I just drew whatever I could think of that involved resume first, then bear second. I also came up with a bunch of words that defined “resume” to me: Job. Job Hunt. Seeking. Employment. Paper. Suitcase. Suit. Text. Etc… Then I did the same with “bear”: Strong. Bold. Paws. Brown. Big. Claws. Slash. Hostile. Docile. etc.

And I sketched all that again.

Out of all the drawings I had, only a few stood out. And it made me realize - You can blend the two without losing clarity. Of course I loved the bear holding a suitcase [#1]. But does that stand the test of time? Does that really have elegance or is it too cartoony and fun? What has a professional edge, but still makes me smile?

Answer: The Origami Bear.

IS THIS SOLUTION THE BEST?

This is no doubt the hardest question to ask the client. But it’s even harder to convince yourself of this. And if you can convince yourself that this logo meets all the requirements you and the client have, then it should be easy to stand by your decision. Truth is, you can design logos all day, constantly coming up with more and more ideas every week. But no one can afford to pay you those kinds of hours, and no company can afford NOT having a steady, standard logo.

The logo we stand by is the origami bear because it did everything we thought it needed to do: It drives you away from “cozy”, “cuddly” bear; It doesn’t make you think of a log cabin and fire place or pine trees; It looks as though it’s made out of a folded resume, so it literally IS a Resume Bear; It’s charming because it reminds us of folding paper in class as kids to make those paper footballs, or fortune telling things; It doesn’t have an “angry” bear feel to it, so it doesn’t push an emotion on you [sometimes adding eyes or eyebrows to an animal or icon can give a "happy" feel like Carl's Jr. Star, or an "angry" feel like the Bad Boy Club brand]; It’s professional AND charming at the same time.

At the end of the day you can only do your best without losing your marbles trying to read the minds of your clients. Sometimes the best thing you can do is just ask a lot of questions, do a lot of research, do a lot of sketching, and design it out to see if it works. However, if you try to be as organic as possible and understand the breadth of clients business from the ground up, you will hit the mark - or come somewhere close!