To kick things off, I’d like to thank Don Loeb of Typekit for providing some tips on how to handle the flickering text issue I mentioned in my last post. As you can probably tell, I haven’t yet implemented these suggested fixes, but I will do so in the next day or two. Also, an unrelated piece of advice…never confuse Men at Work with Men in Hats…

Now, on to the main stage…For anybody who works with web metrics, Facebook fan pages have been a bit of black hole. We haven’t had the real-time reporting or depth of information we are used to with tools like Google Analytics or WebTrends. Besides, thanks to limitation imposed by Facebook, these tools haven’t worked with Fan Pages. While there have been some third-party solutions introduced, including a new panel in WebTrends 9, and Facebook has continued to make improvements to Insights, its own internal metrics dashboard, it still feels a bit like boxing with one hand tied behind the back. I should note that even with its recent improvements, Insights is very glitchy. For example, in the past month alone it has randomly dropped days, doubled random stats for no reason, and stop reporting altogether for days at a time. Pretty flipping sweet, right?

Facebook recently introduced a new format for fan pages, I am not going to cover all the changes here. If you want to know more Ultimate Guide to the New Facebook Page Design does a pretty good job of summarizing all the crucial changes. The one change I do want to touch on is that now all content in tabs can be pulled in through iFrames…yes, they are back baby! Why does this matter? Well, now we can execute JavaScript in tabs with no limitations. Why does this matter? Well, almost all analytics tools have to execute a query through JS to report (those working in mobile analytics are aware of the problems this can pose). Why does that matter? Well, in theory we can now tag our apps and tabbed page content with our standard tracking codes and they will execute and report normally.

This isn’t a be all end all solution, and it does still leave one dependent on Facebook Insights, in all its glitchy glory, for internal referral and search data, (likes, unique visitors etc) – But it does offer a level of free, real-time reporting for Facebook tabs, apps and other content that has been unavailable until now. I am curious to get my hands on WebTrends’ new Facebook reporting and tagging tools. I don’t much care for WebTrends, but this sort of social metric integration could give them an edge on free tools like Google Analytics, which I generally think is superior to most of the paid options out there. But, given the cold war raging between Google and Facebook, I imagine it could be awhile before we see any sort of Facebook reporting in Google’s Analytics.

My Three Albums of the Week:

1. Mogwai – Hardcore will Never Die, But You Will!
2. Oasis – Definitely Maybe
3. Jackson Browne – Late for the Sky

(I wanted to be able to put The King of Limbs on this list…but…well…just go here instead )

This article is copyright © 2012 

I am listening to Mogwai. Not sure why, but at some point shoe-gazing post-rock replaced modal jazz as my go to writing music. Unless, I get really stuck, in which case the Stones’ Sticky Fingers gets turned way up. But, this isn’t about my writing process, it’s pretty boring. I sit in front of a screen make my fingers move in syncopated rhythms all while listen to some slow jams.

No, this the story of a mysterious dog named Waldo, cash payoffs to the Canadian Parliament, a stolen religious idol, and a chateau in the Swiss Alps that holds the key to it all…No, I promised a follow up on Typekit and here it is.

As I stated before, Typekit is incredibly easy to setup and use. I simply had to paste a bit of javascript into the header of my document and configure my kit. This consisted of selecting my fonts and assigning them either to specific styles or specific HTML tags. Boom! Done! Web fonts displayed!

The free version of the service, which is what I am using, provides a limited set of fonts to choose from. Even the limited set of fonts provides a good mix of serif and sans-serif, body, and display styles to choose from. I am currently using “League Gothic” for the headers and “DejaRip” for the body text.

There are a few downsides with these types of hosted font services. There will almost always be a bit of a flicker as the site switches from the default fonts, to the custom hosted fonts. This seems to be particularly true on pages that have a lot of text. Before I conclude this, though, there are some additional optimization techniques that I should try on my site. These tweaks might help alleviate the slow loading on heavy text pages. Typekit does help minimize this impact of the flickering by allowing you to set fallback styles. This gives you better control of how the fonts look during the loading process.

All in all, my experiences thus far have been great. I would certainly use Typekit on a client site, and I when I finish building out the new version of my site, I will probably upgrade to the paid version. This way I will be able to streamline my graphics and more seamlessly integrate the fonts I use for my logotype throughout the design.

My Three albums of the Week:

1. The Beatles – Revolver (Mono Mix)
2. Mogwai – Ep + 6
3. The Minus Five – Down With Wilco

This article is copyright © 2012 

I have been a fan of Lowery’s work since a friend passed me a copy of Cracker’s self titled debut. He gave  me the CD because he didn’t like the album enough to move it to Germany with him (this was pre iPod). Not exactly a ringing endorsement, but hey, one man’s trash is another… Anyway, the founder / leader of both Camper Van Beethoven and Cracker has finally stepped out and released an album under his own name, which I found a demo copy of for sale at a discount book store in Chicago a week before its official release. Again, not exactly a ringing endorsement, but…

It is definitely worth more than I paid for it. While it shares some DNA with Lowery’s other work, like Patterson Hood’s (Drive-By Truckers) solo efforts, there is no mistaking who is singing, Lowery has toned down his trademark sarcastic absurdism a bit, and gone for a delivery that is both a bit more direct and a bit more biting. The Palace Guards touches all on the bases you would expect, from foot stomping hand clapping country (Raise ‘Em Up on Honey) to straight ahead rock (Baby, All Those Girls Meant Nothing To Me), but the majority of the album tends toward the subtle and subdued. In many ways its best tracks (The Palace Guards, I sold the Arabs The Moon and Submarine) most closely resemble the sonic palate of Cracker’s Gentleman’s Blues, and for me at least that’s a good thing.

Though a bit more sparse, both lyrically and musically than Gentleman’s Blues, The Palace Guards opens up with repeated listens, revealing additional details along the way, and that’s the best thing I can say about it. There are albums that will never be as good as the first time you heard them…any record by Son Volt, and there are albums that gain strength over time. This one is of the second type. If you are a fan of Lowery’s other projects, then The Palace Guards is worth your time. If you’ve never been a fan, then you probably stopped reading a couple hundred words ago…

My Three (other) Albums of the Week:

• Crazy Horse – Crazy Moon
• Jackie McLean – 4, 5, and 6
• Wilco – Yankee Hotel Foxtrot Demos

This article is copyright © 2012 

There are still major issues facing designers who want to create complex text layouts or preserve the rich typography and layout of certain types of text, such as preserving the format of poetry. These limitations are especially frustrating for those without a lot of HTML experience, like people who are responsible for managing their company website using text editors in content management systems. When I train people how to use content management systems, text formatting is easily the biggest frustration people have, and I get more questions about type and text layout than any other technical issue.

At least one area of web type is improving. Thankfully, it is getting easier and easier to finally start using a rich range of fonts online. Now, with a growing variety of tools we are no longer limited to the handful of web-safe fonts we’ve all come to know and love over the past 17 years. If you want to know more about the evolution of web typography and the various tools and methodologies now available, read Richard Fink’s article Web Fonts at the Crossing on A List Apart

Instead of rehashing these summaries, each month for the next several months I am going to try out a different method for implementing web fonts on my site. I will then report back on the results I have with each tool.

First up – Typekit, which is a standards compliant subscription service for fonts. You simply create an account, add a line of javascript to your site, assign your fonts and off you go. The best part is that the service degrades gracefully for people who have javascript disabled. I will give a complete write up of my time with Typekit at the end of the month.

New Job

Finally, a bit of exciting news, at least for me. Starting Monday I will join the Web Development and Usability Team at Country Financial. I am excited to be joining a great company, and I look forward to this new opportunity. Of course, whenever one door opens another, as they say, closes. I would like to publicly thank everybody I have worked with at Mavidea Technology Group over the past 3+ years. Mavidea provided me a tremendous opportunity and a great environment in which to learn and grow, and I wish everybody at Mavidea continued success going forward.

My Three Albums of the Week:

1. The Old 97′s – The Grand Theatre Volume One
2. Drive-by Truckers – The Big To Do
3. Bottle Rockets – The Brooklyn Side

This article is copyright © 2012 

5by5.tv

Dan Benjamin describes 5by5 as the “NPR for designers, developers, and geeks.” There are a number of great video and audio shows that cover a variety of tech and topics. I routinely listen to:

• The Big Web Show
• Briefly Awesome
• The Pipeline
• Founders Talk

This is a great place to hear what leaders in various areas of the web design and development world are thinking about.

Real Time Marketer

RTM is run by Scott Bishop who writes on all things social media marketing from Omaha, Nebraska. RTM looks at how various social tools from Groupon to Foursquare can realistically be used by small businesses as part of a social media marketing strategy. This post “You Aren’t The Next Groupon, Foursquare, or Facebook. Bring Your Online Goals Back To Reality” provides a great introduction to the type of material you’ll find on the site, and is generally worth reading if you are a small business owner.

Vincent Flanders’ Web Pages That Suck 3.0

Why did I include this site? Well, a site about sites that suck all on a site that itself sucks…speaks for itself…If that isn’t good enough, then think of this site as a canary in the coal mine.

If you have a potential client who wants something that resembles anything you see on this, then you need to run the other direction as fast as possible. Trust me. Not all dollars are created equal, and designing something that winds up on a site like this, no matter how happy it makes the client, is not worth it.

If you are small business owner who wants something that looks like anything you see on this site, you should probably get (insert your choice of libation here) and do some serious rethinking of everything you know about marketing social or otherwise.

My three albums of the week:

1. Bruce Springsteen – The Promise: The Darkness on the Edge of Town Story
2. Broken Bells – Broken Bells
3. Cat Power – Moon Pix

This article is copyright © 2012 

Before I start any redesign project, I work with the client to determine several things. Ideally, this exploratory process is accompanied by customer research and a thorough review of available analytics data.

• How did you get here?
  • How long have you been online?
  • Who was your primary audience, and is it the same audience you serve today?
  • What goals have you have had for your site?
  • Were you successful in meeting these goals?
  • How did you measure success?

• Where do things currently stand?
  • Who is your current audience?
  • What need(s) does your site fulfill for your audience?
  • What needs does your site currently fail to meet?
  • Does your site have the right content, and does this content have the right voice?
  • Is it structured in the right way?

• Where do you want to go?
  • Who do you want to reach that you are not reaching now?
  • What new needs do you want to meet?
  • What tools and technologies will help us meet these goals?
  • What is a successful outcome for this redesign?
  • What will we use to measure that?

I always do some version of this…Unless, I am redesigning my own site, in which case I immediately open Photoshop and spend a lot of time making something that looks cool. In the end these efforts always dead-end. Why? Because, I have no idea who I am designing for or what goals I’m trying to accomplish. Eventually, I get pissed off and leave things the way they are. Even more eventually I slow down and go through the process for myself.

The Past:

There have been several versions of this site up in different locations over the past several years. The site originally had only one purpose, be the portfolio for my web and visual artwork. I had one audience, prospective employers. There was very little content beyond the visual design work. The site was built using static HTML and content was updated only as frequently as I completed new web projects or visual work. To make these updates easier I eventually migrated the site to a content management system.

The Present:

The current version of the site has been live for about 2 years. There have been minor revisions to the header, footer, navigation and sidebar during this time. When this version of the site went live my goals were largely unchanged from the previous version. It was still a basic static portfolio site. It was still targeted to potential employers, with prominent links to my LinkedIn profile and online resume. Basically, I was redesigning to stay current.

At the same time  I actively shifted my professional focus away from working primarily as web designer and front-end developer to focusing increasingly on content strategy, web usability, and social media, and I started using my site more as a place to share my thoughts on these topics. The visual portfolio still serves an important role, but it is less of a focus now than it used to be. As Zeus says in Tron: Legacy, “The game has changed.” BOOM! Brought it full circle!

The Future…”Did you say the future Conan?”

Going forward I want to become a more publicly recognized voice (especially within my local community) on content strategy, design, and social media marketing. I hope to reach those who, like me, have worked primarily with small business owners. There are a lot of us out there who work with higher volumes of smaller clients, and I believe that this audience is under served. I already touched on some of the strategies I plan to use in Short on Long Term Goals, and in a future entry, I will breakdown specific measurable goals, go into greater detail about how I plan to reach my intended audience, and explain how I’m using analytics data to guide the redesign process.

As always, let me know what you think! Or, barring that, let someone else know what you think.

My three Albums of the week:

1. Daft Punk – Tron: Legacy Soundtrack
2. Sonny Rollins – Rollins plays for Bird
3. Michelle Branch – Everything Comes and Goes

This article is copyright © 2012 

This article is copyright © 2012 

Alright! The car is running  and the computer is rebuilt…..Let’s DO THIS!

Back during the baseball playoffs my friend Jeremy and I were having a conversation about long-term goals. In short, he was encouraging me to think about getting some long-term goals. Since that could potentially be a long fall down the rabbit hole, I figured why not start smaller. In that spirit, I’m going to get a jump on my New Year’s resolutions and instead lay out some long-term goals for this site in 2011. Since CBS seems particularly litigious when it comes to Top 10 Lists here are less than 10 things to look for in 11.

1. More new and hopefully relevant content: Look for the weekly columns to keep on coming in 2011. In addition to the more general posts on web marketing, design, and usability, I plan to start mixing in a few more case studies and tech articles. If you have topics you would like me to touch on, just let me know. I will also be looking for opportunities to guest post.
2. Updated design and implementation of new technologies: I will be refreshing the design for two primary reasons. First, so that the site will be more adaptive across the wide array of phones, tablets, and computers people use to access the web. Second, the current design doesn’t fully fit what has become the site’s primary purpose, written content like this. When I first put this version of the site up, it was still more of a static portfolio and less of a living thing. It is time to tighten up the experience for readers. Some of this work is already underway on my development environment. I will be leaking out some previews soon, and plan on rolling things out the first part of the new year. This revision is also my first real foray into HTML 5, and I will be talking about that as well.
3. Increased engagement with social media: Yes, I will be doing more with Twitter and Facebook and other social tools in the coming year. Why? Because I am always telling my clients how they can use these tools to better engage their audience, build their brands and reach new people. Why not actually take my own advice and use my efforts as case studies? I will be throwing a bunch of different things against the wall over the coming year, and, yes, I will be writing about the results both good and bad. BTW you should read Tara Hunt’s (no relation) The Power of Social Networking: Using the Whuffie Factor to Build Your Business.
4. A podcast: This goes hand in hand with #1 and is something I have been kicking around with increasing seriousness over the past few months. This is still in the formative stages. There will be more to come soon

Well, there it is! The crux of what I intend to make happen on this site over the next year. As always let me know what you think! Or, barring that, let others know what you think.

My three Albums of the Week:

1. Ryan Adams – III & IV
2. U2 – The Unforgettable Fire
3. Coleman Hawkins All Stars Featuring Joe Thomas and Vic Dickenson – Prestige Swingville

This article is copyright © 2012 

This article is copyright © 2012 

Unfortunately my plan to retool my dating profile hasn’t paid off yet. So, lucky for you, I will instead fill the void with another exciting weekly web installment. This weekend I finally got around to watching The Insider, Michael Mann’s 1999 film about 60 Minutes and a tobacco industry whistle-blower. There is a scene about 35 minutes into the film where Lowell Bergman, (Al Pacino), walks through a rotating glass door and out on to the street to catch up with Mike Wallace (Christopher Plumber).

The mix of diegetic (the slowed down slurred whoosh of the door) and non-diegetic sound (Lisa Gerrard’s string arrangements), jagged first person steady-cam and subtle color tinting which plays up the oppressive nature of industrial fluorescent lighting make this one of the most technically stunning scenes in the movie. For a brief moment I actually worried that Lowell wouldn’t make it through the door alive before he at last he breaks through to the natural lighting and noise of a busy Manhattan street.

This scene builds up an incredible sense of dread in only about 53 seconds (it feels much longer). It’s a brilliant piece of film making. Until, that is, you stop and realize that the scene serves absolutely no purpose to the overall narrative arc. Bergman catches up to Wallace in a few steps and the film promptly cuts away to another scene. It could be argued that the this scene actually draws the viewer out of the movie.

This scene encapsulates perfectly my love-hate relationship with Mann’s films. I love how his subtly brilliant sense of color, framing, and editing coupled with great atmospheric sound mixing create an unmistakable compelling style. I hate that too often (in my opinion) Mann’s written narratives fail to fully support his stylistic genius. As I see it, Mann has made two almost great movies, Man Hunter and Collateral, and a few really good movies, Heat, The Insider. The writing (both quality and quantity) alone is what separates them for me. Yes, this is turning into yet another pop-culture metaphor for my the content’s style and structure should drive visual strategy fixation…

Late last year New Riders published a really excellent book by Kristina Halvorson, Content Strategy for the Web. This is a book I would like to give to every client I work with. It is a concise and actionable and pulls together almost everything on the subject I wish I could communicate to the clients I serve. It does a far better job than I can of explaining how to audit, structure, and manage your site’s content. It is also a book I wish I could give to every aspiring web designer (and quite a few established ones). Basically, I think it should be required reading in any educational program that deals with new media. ‘Nuff said…

Finally, another call for all designers and writers to engage in more usability testing. I don’t care how basic it is. Nothing will blow away your assumptions faster – trust me. As a disclaimer, most of the usability testing I do is pretty low-fi. No heat maps, or fancy equipment. Just the old standby, observing people completing basic lists of tasks. I never ceased to be surprised by what I learn from these sessions. It is amazing how something as subtle as renaming a link can lead to an enormous improvement in the users’ success rates. If you don’t believe, me grab a couple of friends, coworkers, or family members and turn them loose on something you are working on. In many ways it’s no different from having someone proofread a memo. I guarantee you will be surprised by something and that you will change something as a result. As always, let me know what you think!

My three albums of the week:

1. Neil Young – After the Gold Rush (NYA 180 gram LP)
2. Aimee Mann – Lost in Space (Mobile Fidelity 180 gram LP)
3. Marshall Crenshaw – Marshall Crenshaw (Mobile Fidelity CD)

This article is copyright © 2012