Let me be very clear that i do NOT support Obama but I do support kick ass design. I’ve always been a fan of Scott Hansens work.

He created a print this past May as part of a fund-raising effort for the Barack Obama campaign. Once completed, the poster was printed in a limited edition of 5000 and has since sold out.

Scott recently posted an article about the making of the “Progress” print. Go take a look and maybe you’ll become a Scott Hansen fan.

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Ads from advertising campaign “Haagen Daz (Help the honeybees)

Even though the dancing isn’t that bad I just can’t look past those Bee suits.

Later,
Tom

Design Decisions vs. Audience Considerations

Deep down below the layers of interface, CSS, HTML, and XML—down where only the geekiest among us roam—everything comes down to this: it’s all zeroes and ones. On or off. The digital switch.

It goes without saying that clean, CSS-based, standards-compliant code is called for here so users on slow connections, with old browsers, or using screen readers will be able to access your content. Feel free to use Flash and video, as long as you consider alternate means of content delivery. Then test and test and test again.
Though interaction and conversion becomes a bit more complicated at the point the interface meets the visitor, though there are a few more shades of gray, in the end it comes down to the same thing: yes or no.

You will succeed in attracting and engaging your audience…or you won’t. Your audience will visit your site looking for information they want to find or a product they are interested in. If they don’t find it, or if you don’t otherwise engage them, they’ll leave.

We know this, and yet the attraction of designing for ourselves, because we know best, or simply giving the client what he or she wants, after all they are paying, tempt us regularly.

As web designers, we have a unique and thorny task. How do we present the information we most want a visitor to see while simultaneously serving the visitor the content they came for? The two may not be the same, so an awareness of who our audience is as well as why our audience is there should be considered before a single design decision is made.

If you know who your target audience is, you can tailor your site’s look and feel, content, and action areas to appeal to your audience and draw them in. If you know what your site visitors want, you can use that information to mutual benefit. Site visitors will leave having found what they came for, and—if you have done your homework—you will have gotten the response you wanted from them. This may be their contact information. It may be a product purchase. If you are really lucky, the site visitor will sign up to receive email and you will have a chance to forge an ongoing relationship.

We all know that site visitors prefer a site that is easier to use. An optimized site will have more traffic. A site that is cross-browser compatible will carry the same message and branding to everyone who looks at it, without unpleasant and unexpected behavior. Usability, Standards and Content Optimization are, at the end of the day, also audience considerations.

In this article, I’ll discuss the process of deciding or determining who your audience is, the basics of understanding audience motivation and response, the process of making design decisions based on audience considerations, and how to use what you know about your audience to influence behavior.

READ MORE AT DIGITAL WEB MAGAZINE

We know this, and yet the attraction of designing for ourselves, because we know best, or simply giving the client what he or she wants, after all they are paying, tempt us regularly.

The thing is this. If you’re a good designer you should know that Design shouldn’t be all about you. It should be about the the “Audience”. Unless I am the target audience what I like shouldn’t matter. If my objective is to direct a user on a web site where they should be clicking and what important information they should be reading first and to funnel them through certain CTA’s the U.I design and visual design should work together to make that happen. I’ve seen some really nice visual designed sites that fail. Hey but at least they might of received a fancy shiny award.

Another thing to keep in mind is after you have all the right visual and U.I. that you think will work best for your audience, you will still need strong content. It’s not so much about having fresh and up-to-date content its about the “RIGHT” content. Working with Marketing to nail down the correct content path is a must. Example. If you’re selling a product the key would be to show the user “WHY” it’s a good product and then show the “BENEFIT” of using the product. Then have a clear CTA (Call to Action) with the correct wording that will encourage a user to click. You don’t know how many product sites I’ve been to that I just scratch my head trying to figure out what they are selling and then I just leave. You almost have to treat your HP as your elevator pitch. You only have a few seconds to grab someone’s attention so do your best.

What ever you do just use Fireworks. HAHA It’s the best for Wireframes and Visual design. Trust me you’ll thank me later.

Enjoy!

I don’t know about any of you but I’m sick of the word “connect” it seems like the new big thing. Everyone from Microsoft, Cisco, Adobe and now Google is htting the marketing to get down with the social network. Some will do it right while others will not. Will Google?

Previewing Google Friend Connect: Website owners can make any site social

Easily insert social features to make “any app, any site, any friends” a reality

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (May 12, 2008) – Tonight at Campfire One at the Googleplex (http://code.google.com/campfire/), Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) will announce a preview release of Google Friend Connect, a service that helps website owners grow traffic by enabling any site on the web to easily provide social features for its visitors.

Websites that are not social networks may still want to be social — and now they can be, easily. With Google Friend Connect (see http://www.google.com/friendconnect following this evening’s Campfire One), any website owner can add a snippet of code to his or her site and get social features up and running immediately without programming — picking and choosing from built-in functionality like user registration, invitations, members gallery, message posting, and reviews, as well as third-party applications built by the OpenSocial developer community.

Visitors to any site using Google Friend Connect will be able to see, invite, and interact with new friends, or, using secure authorization APIs, with existing friends from social sites on the web, including Facebook, Google Talk, hi5, orkut, Plaxo, and more.

To illustrate, independent musician Ingrid Michaelson has added music features from iLike with Google Friend Connect and is now able to run the iLike OpenSocial application on her official website (www.ingridmichaelson.com). As a result, starting tonight, fans who visit Ingrid’s site can connect with their friends without having to leave the site. Visitors will be able to see comments by friends from their social networks, add music to their profiles, see who is attending concerts, and enjoy other features of the iLike application, all at Ingrid’s website. With Google Friend Connect, people will be able to enjoy their favorite features with their friends on any website across the web.

“We want to bring ourselves to every eyeball, not bring every eyeball to us,” said Hadi Partovi, President of iLike. “Friend Connect is a significant opportunity for iLike, artists, and fans. The iLike Artist Dashboard™ will be the first content-management system that allows artists not only to post their songs, concerts, and videos to every leading social network from one dashboard, but also to simultaneously manage the content on their own websites.”

Google Friend Connect has been developed to lower two barriers to the spread of social features across the web. First, many website owners want to add features that enable their visitors to do things with their friends, but the technology and resource hurdles have been too high. Second, people are tiring of needing to create new logins and profiles and recreate their friends lists wherever they go on the web. Google Friend Connect offers a solution to both these issues.

“Google Friend Connect is about helping the ‘long tail’ of sites become more social,” said David Glazer, a director of engineering at Google. “Many sites aren’t explicitly social and don’t necessarily want to be social networks, but they still benefit from letting their visitors interact with each other. That used to be hard. Fortunately, there’s an emerging wave of social standards — OpenID, OAuth, OpenSocial, and the data access APIs published by Facebook, Google, MySpace, and others. Google Friend Connect builds on these standards to let people easily connect with their friends, wherever they are on the web, making ‘any app, any site, any friends’ a reality.”

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of just watch a little clip of what it can do.

Title sequences. Pretty. Enjoy. http://www.artofthetitle.com/

CNN keeps you up-to-date with today’s news. You can visit their website, watch daily reports on TV, get reports sent to your mobile phone. Now you can be walking down the street and read new topics on shirts. YUP! image that. When visiting CNN you will notice a small shirt icon next to the video headlines. Click it and purchase a shirt with the news topic that the icon is next to.

I don’t know about you but I’m a fan of “Weird fish leave sea, spawn on beach” That should be a big seller.

HA this is great.

The original. The pioneers. The Barbarian Group is a digital services and creation company that delivers the best possible experience for the consumer through the integrated and disciplined use of the best possible practices, good ideas, people and technology. Amongst our weaponry are such diverse elements as fear, surprise, art direction, design, technology, content creation, strategy, gaming, viral marketing, an almost radical devotion to Internet culture and nice red Swedish Fish™. To wit:

Check out the Barbarian Group.

Image Source: AbsolutAds.com

To me IN AN ABSOLUT WORLD it would be filled with Grey Goose Vodka. I have mixed feelings with this Ad. Even though Absolut did not intend to offend anyone I can see some taking this ad the wrong way. With the Political Showdown going on right now I can see how this topic can cause some uproar.

Words from Absolut:

In an ABSOLUT World according to Mexico

Posted Friday, April 04, 2008, 5:26:34 PM
The In An Absolut World advertising campaign invites consumers to visualize a world that appeals to them — one they feel may be more idealized or one that may be a bit “fantastic.” As such, the campaign will elicit varying opinions and points of view. We have a variety of executions running in countries worldwide, and each is germane to that country and that population.

This particular ad, which ran in Mexico, was based upon historical perspectives and was created with a Mexican sensibility. In no way was this meant to offend or disparage, nor does it advocate an altering of borders, nor does it lend support to any anti-American sentiment, nor does it reflect immigration issues. Instead, it hearkens to a time which the population of Mexico may feel was more ideal.

As a global company, we recognize that people in different parts of the world may lend different perspectives or interpret our ads in a different way than was intended in that market. Obviously, this ad was run in Mexico, and not the US — that ad might have been very different.

By Paula Eriksson, VP Corporate Communications, V&S Absolut Spirits

Tim Nudd from AdWeek posted:

An Absolut ad from Mexico City that shows Mexico taking over a large portion of the United States? Oh, that’s not going to go over well up here. Not at all. And sure enough, it isn’t. “Absolut-ly outrageous,” says Jim Hoft of Gateway Pundit. “Absolut-ly insulting,” adds Brian Ledbetter. (At least they’re not so enraged that they forget to pun on the Absolut name.) Rather than complain, Patrick Ishmael over at The News Bucket whips up his own altered map, on which Absolut’s homeland of Sweden gets totally hosed by Finland.

—Posted by Tim Nudd

Already I’m starting to see some other alliterative ADs appearing.

image source: Michelle Malkin

What are your thoughts on it? Do you think they will loose in the market place or gain?

Latest branding project for a new start-up that just launched this week.

Invesra is a technology-enabled business services provider to employers, banks and bank platforms, affinity groups and membership organizations. We provide retirement planning and investment management services to individuals for the management of their retirement assets.

If you’re looking for more samples of our work you request a book by visiting My Card. My Work™ or email me.