thinking in pencil | jason pamental - web strategist, designer, technologist | providence, ri

slides for my talk on Designing for Uncertainty at #eduiconf

jpamental — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 20:42:11 +0000

Topics: design speaking usability web strategy

I gave a talk today the the edUi Conference in Richmond, VA. It’s been a fantastic conference so far, and worth more words than I can devote right now (because Whitney Hess (@whitneyhess) is speaking and she’s fantastic and worth the attention). But the response to my talk was just overwhelming, and I wanted to get the slides up here quickly.

Thanks for all your feedback and tweets so far - please stay in touch!

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Death, Taxes & Viewport Chrome: Designing for Uncertainty	8.59 MB

change

jpamental — Sat, 22 Sep 2012 13:44:06 +0000

It’s time. After two years (and another previous as a consultant), it’s time to wind down my involvement with Schoolyard. While I’m sure I’ll still help from time to time, the platform is in good shape (we’ve launched over 30 sites in just over 2 years, with nearly 20 more in various stages of evolution) and the team needs to have more room to grow and take on more challenges. Likewise, I need to grow as well.

I’ve learned that I need more thinking time than was available while caught up in the press of launching so many sites and keeping up with platform development. I’ve also got a book to finish on Web Typography (sorry Patient Editor!) and a long-overdue 3rd post for Fonts.com, and a Responsive Design Bootcamp to put on with some wonderful friends and colleagues (http://www.responsivebootcamp.com).

So as of the beginning of November I’ll officially be back on my own, working from The Home Office on some new projects, and a few older ones. Thanks to those who have already contacted me - I’m excited to work with you - and thanks to those who have kept in touch and have asked about new collaborations.

Finally - I have to include a thank-you to Mark Bistline, the founder of Schoolyard, for the chance to build something special for schools who are really making great use of what we’ve created. It’s also been the opportunity for me to work with my darling wife Ellen Diamond, who has surpised and delighted me with her new-found talents as an IA, project manager and ‘client empathist’ every single day.

A wonderful chapter to be certain, but exciting things are afoot and I’m excited to turn the page.

Curiosity: Not just for killing cats anymore

jpamental — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 08:10:18 +0000

Topics: design drupal innovation speaking

It’s what drives innovation. It’s what drives the web. It’s the force behind the questions ‘Why?’ and ‘What if?’

If Tim Berners-Lee was not curious, he would not have created the very place we all work.

If Marc Andreeson wasn’t curious there would be no graphical browser.

If Dries wasn’t curious we wouldn’t have Drupal (there may be a spelling issue there too)

If you weren’t curious you wouldn’t be here.

I usually talk about this with students. But I think most people here at DrupalCon are students in some way. Even those giving the presentations – actually, I think ESPECIALLY those giving the talks – because they were curious enough to learn something we want to know.

Curiosity is the one trait that will set you apart from all others. HTML can be taught. CSS can be taught. Drupal can (eventually) be taught. But being curious - really, deeply curious, the kind that wakes you up in the morning with ‘ah-ha’, stops you in the middle of your day so you can take a note and try something later, the kind that keeps you up until you follow that thread of thought all the way to the end – that can not be taught. (though it can be nurtured)

From experience, this is the trait I hire on. I can meet two designers or developers, see great work from both, that may be technically good or visually exciting, but one will have a spark. One will use CSS in a way you didn’t expect. One will find an inspiration in a book on wayfinding systems for hospitals. One will show you a page tested in Arabic in Opera Mini on an old Nokia.

Nobody who is here at DrupalCon would be here if they were not curious. Frankly that is likely because it’s so hard to learn well that if you weren’t curious you would have lost interest long ago. But we have skills. We have interests. We likely have passions, as Fabian has been talking about. But to me, the most critical part is curiosity. It’s been driving me to solve problems and learn new things for almost 20 years on the web, and it keeps me excited about what new thing I’ll learn, make or do tomorrow.

Curiosity is your fire. Guard it. Nurture it. Feed it. Fan it. Turn your spark into a blaze. It’s easy to say that ‘I know _______ so I can always get a job doing that’. But will that be true tomorrow? It does’t matter if you’ve already started making what tomorrow will think comes next. Feed your fire and just go do.

(Written while attending DrupalCon Munich where I was fortunate enough to be presenting about ‘Designing for Uncertainty’. If you’re curious, the video and slides are here: http://bit.ly/JP-DCM2012 )

installing APC on CentOS Linux

jpamental — Wed, 23 May 2012 21:00:01 +0000

Topics: drupal

APC is a caching module for PHP that can really speed up the serving of pages for logged-in users in Drupal. I found this article in setting it up and found it pretty clear and accurate:

http://www.tipsandtutorials.net/centos-6-install-apc.html

Here’s what I did to get it up and running:

Run this command:

yum install php-pear php-devel httpd-devel pcre-devel gcc make

then

pecl install apc

(I answered default no/yes to all questions asked during the install process)

then make sure that this is the only line in /etc/php.d/apc.ini:

extension=apc.so

Restart Apache:

service httpd restart

Done!

mysqltuner.pl – a bungler's tale

jpamental — Wed, 23 May 2012 20:39:16 +0000

Topics: drupal

I’ve spent some time getting to know how to tune up MySQL a bit to speed up the Drupal sites I create, and wanted to share a bit of what I’ve learned.

To start - know that this is all based on using CentOS 6 (or 5.x - was mostly the same) and MySQL 5.x. Getting started was really easy:

https://github.com/rackerhacker/MySQLTuner-perl

If you have dev tools installed, just run these commands:

wget mysqltuner.pl 

perl mysqltuner.pl

Look at the recommendations and add them to your my.cnf file. This is a bit of trial and error - make small changes, save it, let it run, and monitor your server. Don’t be too drastic - sometimes small changes can have a much greater effect than you think.

my.cnf is located in ‘/etc’

Use VI to edit my.cnf

Then save the file and restart MySQL with this command:

service mysqld restart

Let it run for a bit, rerun

perl mysqltuner.pl

And adjust again if necessary.

It’s best to let it run for a little while (at least 20-30min) between tuning tweaks. Be sure not to make too many huge changes at once or you’re never know what made it better or worse. In the end though it was literally a several hundred precent increase in performance just from doing this.

To learn more about this check out a great presentation from Matt Westgate from Lullabot about performance tuning for the Grammy.com site: http://bit.ly/ijtXMT

designing in public, inspired by @zeldman & started with Goudy Sans

jpamental — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 14:42:11 +0000

Topics: design drupal

Lots of ‘new’ today. New version of Drupal (7), new host provider ( @linode ), new markup language (HTML5), new evolution of design based around Goudy Sans and built responsively and designed from the typography out. And new rough edges. Lots, to be honest. But overall I’m pretty pleased.

I started this redesign back in November before #FOWD but couldn’t get it done before the conference and still have a presentation written, so the site redesign got shelved. But the initial choices around the type were really interesting to me. So when I saw Jeffrey Zeldman ( @zeldman ) dive into another redesign in a very public manner I was inspired. So yesterday I jumped in as well. I started in the morning and made one decision very quickly. Since I’m spending most of my time working as Creative Director and Platform Architect at @Schoolyard I was much less concerened about the portfolio section, so I just turned it off. The writing and speaking bits are much more a focus these days, as is typography: so that made a logical choice. My goal was to launch it before bed, so practicality had to creep in as well.

I spent most of the day on design and cleanup, then sorting out @instagram feeds (still have to import a bunch), and then time setting up a new server on Linode. Jake Camara here in #PVD has been a huge help in getting to know them and setting things up, so that part wasn’t too bad, but it was a long day.

The responsive bits were one of the last areas to touch up - I had the basics in for my ‘typography-out, mobile first’ approach but had to tweak things for the various screen size break points. There’s still work to do, some artwork to redraw and edges to smooth, but there’s no time like the present. I’d welcome your feedback here or via Twitter, email, etc. This site has become a resource for a number of people for tips about Drupal, accessibility, responsive design, typography and photos of sunrises and @aProperCollie - so I hope it continues to be a good one.

talking about Social Media & Mobile's impact on marketing @ Providence College

jpamental — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 00:31:53 +0000

Topics: speaking web strategy

I had a great time this past week dropping in on a few collected classes’ worth of marketing students at Providence College. I was asked by good friend and former client Ed Gonsalves to talk a bit about how Social Media and Mobile has changed marketing in recent years. While marketing isn’t necessarily a core interest of mine, I’ve been involved in it in one way or another fairly constantly over the years. I think it’s actually hard to NOT be involved in some way when you work as a design and strategy consultant. If you’ve ever heard me carry on about how much design is all about communication and influencing behavior, and how much technology must be an integral part of your vocabulary in order to do it well on the web then you’ll know what I mean. And if not, well - it might be worth it to check out the slides or watch the video of my talk from Future of Web Design in 2010. (At least I think so - or I wouldn’t spend so much time talking about it, writing about it and teaching it!)

Anyway - here are the slides, and with luck I’ll have the video posted in the next few days. I can’t thank the good people at @ProvidenceCol enough for the opportunity and excellent facilities, to say nothing of the excellent questions raised by the students themselves. Please feel free to comment here or on Twitter with the hashtag #SoMoMarketing - I think it’s a good topic to discuss.

Attachment	Size
SoMo Marketing Slides	2.28 MB

looking back, moving forward

jpamental — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 05:08:34 +0000

Topics: design

Well, the ball’s about to drop in NYC to ring in 2012. Looking back at 2011, I really can’t quite believe how much has happened. The year started early on with a pretty amazing development: my wife started working with me at @schoolyard – which has been absolutely amazing. That was followed by writing a couple articles for Monotype’s blog at Fonts.com (more on the way!), speaking at DrupalCon London, Do It With Drupal in Brooklyn and Future of Web Design in NYC (again!). Topping it off I ended up with a deal to write a book on web typography for O’Reilly.

That’s been a fantastic experience so far. Focusing on what’s coming next in web typography has been fascinating, but today I got a rare treat in the mail that gave me a unique look at one of the places from which it’s come.

My aunt sent me a box of stuff from my late uncle – turns out it’s a bunch of type and a catalog from a Vari-Typer machine dating from 1943! I’d never heard of it before but it’s really quite a marvel. It held two type ‘anvils’ at a time and was used most often as an office typesetting machine to make master documents for lithographic reproduction. They were made in various forms from the 20’s to the 70’s and some versions could even adjust individual letter spacing and justify text. It’s another piece of typographic history I’ll cherish, especially knowing it belonged to my uncle. Did I mention that the type is Cyrrilic? That was another amazing bit about this machine: you could get type in 55 languages (the catalog is fantastic)!

Well - the ball has dropped. Happy New Year everyone! Here’s to new adventures in 2012.

Thanksgiving

jpamental — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 04:55:03 +0000

Topics: design development

I’m not sure if this is really a tradition quite yet, but certainly something worth doing once a year at the very least. One thing that I’ve come to recognize about my life thus far is that it’s been a very fortunate one. Not that it’s been all easy, that I want for nothing or anything of that sort. It’s been fortunate in the sense that even the challenges that I’ve faced, both internal and externally imposed, have brought me to a point in life where I can honestly say I’m profoundly happy. Professionally it’s been an amazing year fully of new opportunities that continue to challenge and inspire me, and personally it’s brought me even closer to my wife, family and an even wider circle of friends. With that, it seems right to take a few moments and mention those who have made such a great impact in my life this year, say thanks, and wish them, and all of you who may read this, a happy Thanksgiving. (Even those abroad - I’m guessing you’ll still get the sentiment. Even those in Canada who said thanks a few weeks ago.)

It’s been a little over two years now since I left my job at an agency here in Providence to start working on my own, and this past year has brought some amazing new developments. I’ve worked more closely with Schoolyard ( @schoolyard ), we’ve grown from 3 school clients to nearly 30, and the Drupal-based platform I designed has matured tremendously. Our team has grown from (literally) Mark and I sitting in a big empty space to now 5: Oscar (the most recent addition), Jessica ( @jessica_port ), and (my personal favorite) Ellen ( @ellendiamond ) - my darling wife. Working with her this year has been fantastic, and her knack for getting to the heart of what makes a school special and bringing that out in its discovery research and information architecture never ceases to impress and amaze me. Both Jessica and Oscar are also proving to be great additions to the team - I hope they’ll forgive my bias though. We’re producing some really great work, having launched 8 sites in just the last few months. I’m really proud, and can’t thank Mark enough for inviting me to be a part of the new Schoolyard.

Aside from Schoolyard I’ve also had the pleasure of working with another really great client: Monotype. What started a year ago as an inquiry about helping with their Drupal module for their new web font service has turned into an opportunity to write for them, speak on their behalf and generally consult with them on the direction of their web font offerings. They’re a fantastic bunch of people to work with and I count them very much as friends rather than just colleagues. (and if John G. - @johnnyGMTI - ever invites you out for Greek food: just go… trust me)

Speaking has been another big part of my professional life this year, with talks at Design for Drupal in Boston, DrupalCon London, Do It With Drupal and most recently a return to the Future of Web Design conference in NYC. While I can’t possibly thank everyone enough for these I’d like to mention in particular my pal Steve Fisher ( @hellofisher ), everyone at @Lullabot for inviting me to DIWD and making the experience rock, and especially Cat ( @oh_cat ) and Ryan and everyone else at @Carsonified for inviting me back to #FOWD .

I’ve also come to know (and in some cases know better) an amazing number of other designers and technologists in Providence and beyond this year. It never ceases to amaze me; their talent is only matched by their generosity with their time and knowledge: Jeremy Keith ( @adactio ) and Rich Rutter ( @clagnut ) for Beer O’Clock hospitality in Brighton and Jared Ponchot ( @jponch ) for being my fellow ‘design tourist’ for a day; Jen and Jeff Robbins ( @jenville & @jjeff ) for opening up possibilities for me I never expected; and Josh Clark ( @globalmoxie ), Coryndon ( @cluxmoore ) & Evelyn H. for starting up our #PVDUX meetup.

Another real treat has been the resurrection of our #webdesignbookclub with Stephen Cross ( @stephencross ). It’s my weekly dose of web design geek-out with a great bunch of designers. We’ve had some great conversations and shared a lot of knowledge. Jeffrey Zeldman ( @zeldman ) and Ethan Marcotte ( @beep ) provided much of the fodder for discussion in the form of two great books, and Ethan was kind enough to join us twice. He’s a gentleman and a scholar in the truest sense. We’re about to start Aaron Gustafson’s ( @aarongustafson ) book next and I’m thrilled to have gotten to know him this year. He’s another true inspiration in his knowledge and willingness to share it.

So - a year to be thankful for to be sure - but I can’t end a post like this without family. Trevor and Phoebe continue to amaze me, and I’m more honored than I can put into words to be a part of their lives. Of course Tristan has to be thanked for waking me up early and nudging me out the door to see some of the most beautiful sunrises imaginable. I can’t thank him enough. And then there’s Ellen - my darling wife. I don’t know how I got so lucky. Life, love, work and home has never been so amazing. Thanks baby!

Nope. Not bad at all.

Thanks everyone - I hope you’ve all had a great day and found your own inspiration and told them how much it means. Feels. good.

video for my web strategy talk from #FOWD NYC 2010!

jpamental — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 16:29:48 +0000

Topics: design speaking technology web strategy

Now that #FOWD 2011 is come and gone I can make the video available for my talk from last year! Thanks so much to @Carsonified for permission to make it public (and inviting me back again this year!)

You can find the slides for download here as well.

Slides from my talk at #FOWD

jpamental — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 15:35:41 +0000

Topics: design development speaking web strategy

I need to write more about my experiene at #FOWD this year - because it really kinda blew my mind. It’s a rare thing indeed to go through two days of sessions at a conference and have not a single dud. Seriously - and I could easily have sent a clone to a few more. Just an amazing bunch of speakers who all clearly spent a TON of time on their presentations and were as generous with their time and knowledge off the stage as on it. It’s truly an honor to have taken part, and I’m humbled by the response in person and on Twitter to my session.

And with that… here’s the slides! (for those who weren’t there to get the explanation of my somewhat overly-clever title - it’s about the future of content management, designing for systems and embracing what we don’t know… yet)

Death, Taxes & Viewport Chrome

View more presentations from Jason Pamental

Attachment	Size
Death, Taxes & Viewport Chrome	3.46 MB

Do It With Drupal 2011 triple-play madness

jpamental — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 00:11:58 +0000

Topics: design development drupal speaking web strategy

So I went to Brooklyn this week pretty excited: I’d been asked about giving a talk on web typography at Do It With Drupal ( #diwd ) - Lullabot’s conference about Drupal and the larger world of the web. With keynotes from Jeffrey Zeldman ( @zeldman ), Jeff Robbins ( @jjeff ) and Josh Clark ( @globalmoxie ) it was an honor to be on the schedule. I also had a fun little announcement to make that came about just in time too. Things, as they say, didn’t necessarily go according to plan.

A couple hours before my session on Thursday I got a tweet from Steve Fisher ( @hellofisher ) asking me to let the organizers know that he’d been sick with food poisoning all morning and wasn’t able to speak. Not one to cling to any sort of sanity I told Matt and Jeff I’d be willing to fill in. I wasn’t really thinking about the fact that it would be right before my scheduled session! SO… out came my presentation on Web Strategy. After a quick run-through it was time to get on it, and I’m really happy with how it went. It was a long few hours (only a half hour break between sessions!) but I got some absolutely amazing feedback and had just a flat-out blast doing it. Both topics - Web Strategy and Web Typography are things I’m pretty passionate about, and to be honest it wasn’t hard to say yes to doing both. And Lullabot knows how to say thanks too! I came back to my room that night to find a bottle of wine and chocolate covered strawberries. Here’s hoping the bottle survives the trip home in my suitcase!

And in case two presentations wasn’t crazy enough - Jeff asked me to sit in on the closing panel along with a whole bunch of people way smarter than me to answer questions on ‘all things Drupal and otherwise’. It was a really fun way to close out the event, summarizing highlights and talking about where things are headed. The big theme for me? The parallel between designing from the content out and building a responsive world around it to how Drupal fits in the middle of it all, tying disparate systems and data sources together into a content hub easily capable of pushing content out to services, sites and apps all at the same time. All in all - a pretty great picture of where we’re headed.

And that other little tidbit? Well, all my carrying on about web fonts and typography has turned into a deal to write a book on it! More on that in the next post. In the mean time, here’s slides from my presentations, and I’ll include a link to the Lullabot Podcast we recorded of the closing panel once that’s live as well.

Thanks again to Lullabot (Addi - you rock!), the other amazing presenters and everyone who attended for all the great feedback. It’s that kind of support that makes it all so much fun!

Attachment	Size
Web Typography: Putting Arial Out to Pasture	5.24 MB
Web Strategy: What it is & Why we need to care	4.24 MB

90 minutes out

jpamental — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 15:48:20 +0000

Topics: design development drupal speaking

I left for DrupalCon London last Sunday night, flying overnight and heading right into a day-long discussion about Drupal in education. The week progressed in a similar fashion: I gave my talk on web typography on Tuesday and the days and evenings were full. I had some amazing discussions, went to informative and inspiring sessions, a bit of revelry and work on projects filling up the late night and inter-session nooks and crannies. Now I’m sitting on a Virgin Atlantic flight from Heathrow to Boston, where my darling wife Ellen and Phoebe and Trevor will be waiting. To say I’m eager to get there would be an understatement of possibly galactic proportions.

Before these last minutes expire I’d like to capture some of what made this such an extraordinary week. I realized early in the trip that while I’ve been working on the web since 1994, I’m actually more excited about it and what I do now than I think I may ever have been. There are a number of reasons for that being true. One of the most compelling is that I now get to do this with my wife. Many might think that’s a recipe for trouble, but so far it’s been nothing short of amazing. Selfishly, it’s amazing to get to see her more every day than ever before - and now she actually understands what I do in a way that she never did.

I’ve gotten to see her grow into a role she didn’t know she could do

But more than that, I’ve gotten to see her grow into a role she didn’t know she could do. While the part of her job that requires research, details, scheduling and communication is second nature, she’s also turned into a fine information architect, able to organize the most complex school structures amazingly well. I don’t even have to think about that part of the projects we work on, letting me focus on our platform and projects. That leads me to my next realization: because of that I’ve gotten to develop some design ideas I otherwise would not have to delve into so thoroughly. Getting to talk about that with fellow designers and developers really helped remind me just how special that really is.

I also picked up some great books this summer, two of which sparked a whole vein of work that’s been fascinating and truly gratifying. Ethan Marcotte’s Responsive Web Design and Aaron Gustafson’s Adaptive Web Design were both quick reads, but have impact greater than having the heftiest of programming tomes dropped on you from on high. Because we had 7 sites to launch I decided to go all in and develop a responsive, adaptive theme as the basis for all of them. While this might seem to some as perhaps, well, ludicrous - to me is seemed perfect. We use Drupal as the basis of our platform, and it’s all about applying a system-based approach to site-building. A single new base theme was the perfect opportunity to develop the new theme and battle-test and refine it, working out the kinks while I go. We’re still in the middle of that process but I have to say its going well so far - better than I could have hoped.

Something else happened on the run-up to DrupalCon: I received an email about a week and a half before the conference asking me if I was still interested in presenting. The answer of course was yes - I had submitted two sessions and knew I was on a short list of presentations. It did put a bit of pressure on though. I also do a bit of consulting and writing for Monotype and their web font service, and two of the people I know there would be attending. So I got to work, developed the talk and I think it came out well. The focus was on the importance of typography in general and how web fonts can be used and implemented well, dealing with some of the web’s general cantankerousness on the way. I’d written a pair of articles for the blog on Fonts.com that talked about much of this and included some sample code showing how I’ve learned to deal with some of that.

A funny thing happened during the presentation though: all the work and research on responsive design snapped in line with the work on typography and I realized (and blurted out) that it was really tied. I was talking about responsive typography: the merging of Ethan and Aaron’s ideas, applied to how I was working with web fonts. You have to build up your typographic design in layers, making sure you allow for all the ways that things don’t work as much as you finesse the design for when they do. So that’ll be my article I think - and one that I think is important to get done quickly while this whole experience is fresh.

That’s certainly not the only thing to come out of this week though. In addition to the conference activities, I went on a little excursion down to Brighton on Friday. At the last minute I ended up with a compatriot for the trip in the form of Jarod Ponchot from Lullabot. I’d already made a somewhat vague plan to meet up with Jeremy Keith for ‘beer o’clock’, so off we went. It was a great trip, with equal parts wandering, photographing, people and architecture watching and hanging out with some fantastically talented and genuinely nice people. It never ceases to amaze me how nearly universally it is true in our industry that from the most novice to the most experienced, the passion for learning and sharing that knowledge is just now we roll.

So here we are, now 20 minutes out. To review: I went to London, didn’t sleep much, met some great people, gave a talk, got some great feedback, made a mental leap and tied it all together. Truly, I feel lucky to do what I do, with the people I get to do it with. I can’t wait to see what comes next.

Cheers-

Jason

London Calling: Headed to #DrupalCon to Put Arial Out to Pasture

jpamental — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 16:30:56 +0000

Topics: design drupal speaking

Heading to London tonight for DrupalCon this week! I'll be giving a talk on web typography, web fonts and Drupal, and have to say I'm pretty pleased with how it's turned out. The slides and video will be available after the conference but here's a copy of the slides. I'll add a link to the articles I've written for Monotype's Font.com blog as well (another one should be live tomorrow with demo code to view and download).

Go ahead, London...

Attachment	Size
Web Type Slides for DrupalCon	2.65 MB

heading back to speak @ Future of Web Design in NYC!

jpamental — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 21:25:00 +0000

Topics: design development speaking

Not much of a newsy post really, but excited to announce that I'll be speaking again this year at Future of Web Design in NYC this November! My topic this year is going to be centered around the future of the CMS and how it can (and should!) be a part of every designer's toolbox and workflow. I'll post more about the talk as it develops.

speaking on web typography at Do It With Drupal in October!

jpamental — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 17:57:00 +0000

Topics: design drupal speaking

Really excited to announce that I’ll be giving a talk on web typography, web fonts and how to use them at Lullabot’s Do It With Drupal conference in Brooklyn, NY this October! Still a few more days for the early bird discount so check out the announcement and sign up! Totally amazing lineup of other speakers with keynotes from Jeffrey Zeldman ( @zeldman ) and Josh Clark ( @globalmoxie )!

slides (and now video!) from my Design 4 Drupal session on Schoolyard

jpamental — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 17:32:19 +0000

Topics: design drupal speaking

I have a talk at #D4DBoston (http://boston2011.design4drupal.org) this past weekend, and wanted to make sure my slides are available. I was truly gratified by the audience - even though it was at 9am on Sunday! Thanks so much to everyone who came, and for all the great questions.

MIT Tech TV

Taking on Goliath: Schoolyard & Drupal in the school web site market

The independent school web site marketplace is full of companies selling sites to schools based in proprietary CMSs that come with astronomical price tags: often $50,000 for design and development and $15,000 or more every year in licensing for even the most basic of sites. Schoolyard used to be one of them until 2007, when the original platform was sold to one of the other companies in the market in 2007.

In 2010, I started working with Mark at Schoolyard designing a platform based in Drupal to see if we could come up with something that had the features, extensibility and scale that could turn that market on its head - and it’s working. We’ve launched 6 sites and have 9 more that will be live by the time DrupalCon London rolls around for schools around the US and as far away as Amman, Jordan.

I’ll talk about what has made it possible, including module selection, LESS CSS in our theming, the (thankfully rare) custom module development and more - all allowing us to design and deliver great sites to schools for a third of the cost, with even more features and functionality than ever possible. The best outcome of all? Most of the budget goes to design and architecture, allowing us to ensure that when you’ve seen one Schoolyard site, well, you’ve seen ONE Schoolyard site. And that couldn’t happen without Drupal as the foundation.

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Schoolyard D4D Slides	788.15 KB

Design Thinking: not a business school panacea - it's what designers do

jpamental — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 19:24:02 +0000

Topics: design web strategy

Design Thinking (DT) is a pretty big ‘buzzphrase’ these days, it’s true. Big in business education, business innovation writing and even (shockingly) in the design world. What has always struck me is that purely by definition, design thinking is exactly what designers have been (or at least SHOULD have been) doing for decades.

I first read about DT in Roger Martin’s book ‘The Design of Business’ - and it is a great book. But I came away thinking that it was all very familiar, yet somehow the design industry seems to have forgotten that we are supposed to be doing this all the time. We think about design problems in far too narrow a way - how to market, how to brand, how to represent that brand on the web. But what we know about problem solving is far more valuable when we apply it at a higher level.

We know about visual heirarchy, emotional connection, visual language, color, composition and typography - all in the service of organizing information, delivering a message, building loyalty, influencing behavior. But take that knowledge, that skill - and apply it to the whole organization: how employees connect and work together, how customers interact from end to end, how the public perceives the organization and how that organization participates in the community around it. The possibilities for increased connection, community, social good, efficiency, productivity and yes, even (and especially) profit are astronomical. Currently the trend in this conversation is centered around the business world: MBA programs and centers of entrepreneurship and the like. But teaching DT in an MBA program is starting from the ground floor, whereas the design industry already knows the techniques; we simply need to start applying them in a broader context. While it’s still debatable whether the industry as a whole has embraced web and mobile technology enough (I personally think not - by a long shot), the principles are still there to take our thinking as designers to a higher level.

I recently attended DrupalCon in Chicago - the big Drupal design & development conference in North America this year. The design and user experience content has blossomed, and one of the panel discussions was about DT and how the panelists used it during their day-to-day work. The panel was moderated by Steve Fisher ( @hellofisher), a very talented designer from Alberta, British Columbia, and he was joined by Jared Ponchot ( @jponch ) from Lullabot, Samantha Warren ( @samanthatoy ) from Phase II Technology and Jen Simmons ( @jensimmons ) from Palantir.net. Samantha and Jared focus more on user experience and design, while Jen Simmons focuses more on front-end development, so perspectives were varied and the level of talent represented phenomenal. While I’m thrilled that the topic was included, especially at a Drupal conference (where development tends to have a stronger focus) - it felt like it only got part of the way there in terms of really tackling what DT is all about and how big a role it SHOULD play in web projects.

The big reason it fell short for me was that it focused more on DT in the design process but didn’t really touch on DT as driving what should be designed in the first place. That’s where my ‘pet topic’ of web strategy comes in. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking, writing and speaking about web strategy as the nexus between design, technology and the client organization, enabling innovation on a broader and deeper scale than when we as web professionals only respond to the brief. I think we need to look deeper than the request in order to really innovate for our clients and organizations. This is an embodiment of DT, but not the whole story.
Take it a step further and DT is about the whole organization. Not everything is web related - but chances are that much will be web-connected, so that domain knowledge is important. Brand is embodied in logo and identity, but represented to the world as much by how employees answer the phone and speak with each other as by any business card or sign. Profit is derived far more from employee motivation and engagement than by incremental efficiency gains on a production line. Innovation too is fostered by collaboration and culture more than by material incentives. While culture itself cannot be designed - it is certainly encouraged and embodied in and by materials that are.

Our traditional notion of what designers do is part of many (almost all) of these things, but more critically, our design thinking process can (and should) be applied to all. That will ensure the sum will be greater than the parts. Our knack at finding the obscure or oblique connections - when applied to organization- or systems-level challenges - makes those who embrace that creative process on a daily basis perfect candidates to apply DT in ways designers have rarely thought to act - but are perfectly suited to do so.

Graphic design as a profession is at a crossroads - with many agencies, studios and schools still looking backwards at a landscape fast disappearing. Web design is only somewhat better off - looking forward but still struggling to retain and reframe skills, practices and concepts common to more traditional graphic design. To truly succeed and evolve we must start thinking again as designers, but embrace the challenge of being Design Thinkers, tackling not just brand but culture, not just marketing but customer relationship and it’s entire lifecycle, not just web trends but web and mobile application and information infrastructures that through technology and design transform organizations and allow them to work and function in ways they themselves could never imagine. It’s not a small challenge - and some will always prefer to focus on on area or another - but leadership in our industry must reach higher and farther. That’s the only way for us to move forward as an industry - and the best way for us to move up within the larger leadership heirarchy of our own organizations and our clients’ in order to help them succeed as well.

catching up: DrupalCon Chicago

jpamental — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 13:20:42 +0000

Topics: design drupal development web strategy

I guess I should be clear: this is going to be way too short a post to catch up on ALL of the past month or so - but with so much having happened and the pace continuing, I had to give it a shot. There's more to come this week (ouch - a written commitment to post) about Puerto Rico, the NCAIS Innovate conference and a talk I gave on the Open Source Revolution in schools and a fistful of websites designed and launched over the past month or two.

I went out to Chicago for DrupalCon last month, and had a month full of learning slammed into about 3 days. My brain still hurts just a little bit, and I haven't even had time to watch the video of Leisa Reichelt's presentation on UX Strategy. A couple real highlights for me were the keynotes from Dries, Clay Shirky and Jared Spool, Samantha Warren's presentation on working with clients during the design process, Steve Fisher's on Designing for Mobile, the panel discussion on Design Thinking and a great closing session with Kevin O'Leary and Arron Stanush on web typography.

But it wasn't just the sessions - not by a long shot. I spent a bunch of time hanging out with John Giannopoulos and Ed Platz from Monotype Imaging, talking to them about their webfonts.fonts.com service, and introducing them to the guys at Lullabot, the good people of Phase II and others. They're great guys, and I've really enjoyed getting to know them and working with their service. More on that soon.

There's so much more to talk about from the opening party at the Field Museum (our own night at the museum - just amazing!) to an awesome night out to dinner, Gypsy jazz and the Billy Goat Tavern with Samantha Warren, Steve Fisher and Jeremy Keith, to a closing night crawl which (ironically) STARTED at Rock Bottom and slid in a wobbly fashion down from there to an Irish pub filled with tipsy Drupalistas. I felt it was a crowning achievement to explain the value of good typography to a table full of core developers at 2am and have them totally get it. Or at least that's how I remember it.

Hat's off to the organizers. It was an amazing time, really well-run, thoughtfully planned and thoroughly enjoyable. Felt like a week with my 3,000 closest friends. And now I have Drupal pants. #WINNING

Sketching isn't about drawing well - it's about capturing an idea, a moment - as you experience it

jpamental — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 14:39:49 +0000

Topics: design

I wrote this initially as a post to my students - I’m teaching a graphic design course this semester at Rhode Island College, where I studied that subject when I was in school. Heemong, one of my professors in college, always had us start with a minimum of 30 thumbnails of any project we started. Some will say it should be a hundred, some will say it can be less. Some complain that it’s a burden because ‘they can’t draw well.’ But that’s just an excuse, and a condition worsened by not actually doing something to correct it. There are two big reasons to sketch - any time - but particularly at the outset of a new project. First, sketching helps you work through ideas, get the bad ones out of the way and move on, and gives you a visual memory of your explorations. The more you sketch, the more you think, the more your ideas progress. Even if the best one is the third one you drew, there is still tremendous value in furthering the exploration and refining the idea.

The second reason draws on the aspect of ‘memory of an experience and point in time’ - the way you see something right here, right now is different than how you will see it tomorrow, or how someone else saw it yesterday. Roger Ebert wrote a great post about this, and I think it’s important for every thinker to take this to heart, but especially so for designers who are becoming all too used to only thinking behind the mouse. Have a read, and get out your sketchbook.

interviewed by Kimberley Donoghue from the Providence Business News

jpamental — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 15:06:14 +0000

Topics: design speaking web strategy

I was interviewed by Kimberley Donoghue ( @kydonoghue ) recently for the Providence Business News and it just came out today (view here). I’m really flattered - especially since PBN.com was one of the first big clients I had back in the 90’s and the first large-scale CMS I ever developed.

It was good fun, and a great chance to really think about the work I’ve been focusing on and where it’s been taking me over the past year. Happy to say that it has been and continues to be a really great time both professionally and personally!

talking at DrupalCamp @ UMass about Web Strategy & Drupal (with slides)

jpamental — Sat, 22 Jan 2011 20:20:11 +0000

Topics: design drupal development speaking web strategy

I gave a talk today at DrupalCamp ( #DrupalCampWMA ) on Web Strategy and how Drupal fits in that view of the world. I have to say I was hugely gratified with the reception - the room was packed and everyone asked a ton of great questions and sparked wonderful conversations. I've certainly written previously about what web strategy is and why I think it's so important, but what's equally vital is how Drupal can play such an integral role in enabling that strategic approach in designing and developing really compelling web solutions.

I think that video will be available soon, but wanted to make sure the slides were here right away.

Thanks to everyone who attended the talk, to the organizers of the camp and to all the sponsors. It's been a fantastic event and the facilities are just amazing.

Attachment	Size
Web Strategy: What it is, why you should care & how Drupal can help	4.48 MB

hitting the big time: presented at #pvdgeeks last night [updated with video!]

jpamental — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 13:06:16 +0000

Topics: design drupal development speaking

If you’ve been around the Providence tech scene for any amount of time, you’ve heard about Providence Geeks. According to Jack Templin ( @jacktemplin ) and Brian Jepson ( @bjepson ), this month marks the 4th birthday of the group, and they organize a monthly dinner/drinks/presentation by a local startup, usually at AS220. Not that many get the chance to present, and it’s usually a packed room full of some of the smartest technologists in the area. So when Jack got in touch last week and asked if @newschoolyard was interested in presenting, I didn’t wait for Mark (the president) to answer - I jumped on it. (And then started to freak out a little bit.)

I’ve been working with Mark Bistline for the past year designing and developing the Newschoolyard platform and in the process getting several schools launched on it as well. I don’t get to spend all my time there, but it’s been amazing to be in there from the start, and have the chance to really shape the platform and by extension, the business. Mark has been in the school web game since the mid-90’s, but this time we’re doing it with the doors open, windows wide and building on Drupal and other open-source tools.

We had a great time last night, and really enjoyed talking about what we’re doing to change the landscape in the school web site environment and how we’re getting ready to grow, right here in Providence. I know at least one person asked, so I’m also posting the presentation in PDF form. Brian also shot an interview with Mark and I - I’ll update the post with a link when that goes up as well.

Thanks to everyone who came out, asked questions, tweeted and in general made us feel welcome. #pvdgeeks rocks!

Attachment	Size
newschoolyard pvdgeeks presentation	2.54 MB

Hello. I'm a web professional and I make AWESOME

jpamental — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 03:24:38 +0000

Topics: design web strategy

Well, not a huge revelation here - but something that came out of my talk at #FOWD was a bit of inspiration. As web professionals we should remember that we do make AWESOME happen. The web has the potential to be the single most pervasive & transformative development in the history of business - but only if we learn enough about that organization to see how it can be applied.

As a reminder I made a sticker out of it and printed up a bunch for my talk. They went quick, so I figured I’d put it up on some shirts. I’ve tried Cafe Press (not overly happy - another post coming on that) and now SpreadShirt.

slides for my web strategy talk at FOWD

jpamental — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 06:07:17 +0000

Topics: design development speaking web strategy

I wanted to get these up here while it was still fresh in my mind. I can’t adequately express how humbling it was to see you all today for my talk, and my apologies for those who were not able to get in once the space filled! The response has been truly overwhelming.

Web Strategy: What is it and why we need to care

For those of you who really dug the ‘Hello… Awesome’ sticker I’ve put it up on Cafe Press as a shirt or whatever else you want to buy. I’m thinking that an appropriate thing to do is commit 1/2 the proceeds to the Providence Animal Rescue League, but I’m open to other charities. Respond here or @jpamental on Twitter and let me know what you think.

Attachment	Size
FOWD Web Strategy slides	1.4 MB

interviewed on the Unofficial Linchpin Podcast this week

jpamental — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 14:13:48 +0000

Topics: design speaking

I had my first podcast interview this week, and have to say I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. My friend Stephen Cross ( @stephencross ) emailed me and this fellow Andy Traub ( @andytraub ) saying something like ‘Andy, meet Jason. Jason, meet Andy. Andy - you should have Jason on your podcast about Seth Godin’s book Linchpin, because he is one.’ Quite a thing to have someone say about you - but Steve’s a great guy like that. Andy went to my site, posted a nice comment on one of my posts and invited me on the show. This triggered a few things.

First, I had to read the book.

I’d read his previous book Tribes and had heard lots about Linchpin but hadn’t picked it up yet. Off to Books on the Square on the East Side in Providence. I started reading the book and also downloaded the first few episodes of the podcast and really enjoyed both.

The book itself is really a bit slippery when it comes to categorizing it. The focus on ‘art’ (whatever it is that you do) and being passionate about it and making it the gift you give every day could lead you to dump it in a pile of other self-help books. But it’s a whole lot more than that: it’s as much about running a business and how you go about your work as it is about how you conduct yourself in your personal life. He ties making your art to giving it to the world: Art just isn’t art until it’s seen and appreciated. That might be a well-crafted latté or a great report or an amazing new logo for a client - or it could be the note you left for your wife when you had to leave in the morning before she got up. But until that gift is received, it’s just practice. That’s where ‘shipping it’ comes in.

We all know the story: it (whatever ‘it’ is) isn’t quite ready. It’s not perfect yet - just need a little more time on it. It’s not a great economy so I shouldn’t try to start this now. I can’t put up my website because it’s not perfect yet (yes, I’m hassling @pjmoore_1 about this). Nothing is ever perfect, and every artist could add one more brushstroke, but there’s also a time when it just has to go. Get it out, move to the next idea. Even if that next idea is something to go back to on the first one and iterate. But ship it. The simple act of setting the goal or date will help you do it faster.

All in all it was a thoroughly enjoyable, well-written book that can have an immediate effect on you and how you live your life if you are open to it doing so. I know it did for me.

I won’t repeat everything I said in the interview, but I will mention a couple of other things that were triggered by this invitation and reading the book itself. I shipped. A lot. I got more done in a week or two than I had in a long time, and I’m happy to say that some of the first things I shipped were for my wife and family: fixing some leaky pipes, a whole bunch of lingering issues on our Subaru (brakes, O2 sensor, belt, wipers, light bulb, cracked windshield, inspection, detailing - most of it done by me), redesigned my own site and SHIPPED it (in about 3 days). There’s more, but those are some standouts. The marvelous effect about shipping something is that it frees you to move on to the next or focus on another task without the mental baggage of ‘unfinished business’ hanging around. It’s very freeing and ultimately leads to even better focus on what’s at hand.

So buy the book. Read the book. And - if you’re so inclined - have a listen to the podcast. There are some great people on there (with shorter episodes!) so please poke around. Andy himself is a great guy and an excellent interviewer and host. I came away from our conversations feeling like I had been talking to a good friend almost immediately. I think you’ll enjoy his work.

outline for my talk at FOWD

jpamental — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 20:35:55 +0000

Topics: design speaking

I’m taking a page from @cameronmoll ‘s book and putting the outline for my talk @ #FOWD (Future of Web Design conference) up and asking for feedback. I’ve actually just finished my presentation, but it’s not really too late to make changes. Since it’s also a relatively un-talked-about topic (at least from my past few years of web-design-conference-attending experience) I though it might also help attendees decide if this talk is worth checking out at the risk of missing @nickla ‘s talk on Wordpress theming.

Please do let me know what you think, either via the comments, email or @jpamental on twitter.

Web Strategy: What It Is and Why We Need to Care

Why ‘I need a web designer’ is the worst possible thing you could ever hear
1. What they say vs what they mean
2. …and what you should do with that
What is it: explanation/definition of ‘web strategy’
1. What it is (think business understanding, design knowledge and technology awareness and fluency)
2. …and what it isn’t
Why we should care
Examples:
1. People - some examples of those who ‘get it’
2. Corporate/In House vs Agency/Interactive Design Shop
3. Project (example)
Education:
1. Who are the ideal candidates
2. What do we teach them
Conclusion
Resources

I’ll post the whole presentation after my talk - and can hopefully point out where direction changed thanks to your input.

more notes on thinkinginpencil.com redesign

jpamental — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 00:20:32 +0000

Topics: design usability drupal development

I wanted to add a bit more on the subject of my site redesign while it’s still fresh in my mind, and pass along some thanks to those who have provided some great inspiration and feedback. My wife Ellen and long-time friend PJ ( @pjmoore_1) had some really great insights that helped me ‘be my own designer’ better than I was, and really got me excited about the process of design and the ‘doing’ of it. The design itself came together pretty nicely thanks to the solid #Drupal framework already in place. Some key modules incorporating some nice jQuery effects like ‘cycle’ and ‘slideshow’ for the image previews provided some of the visual depth. The them is an evolution of the Zen sub-theme I used before, so I knew it would work well in most browser configurations without much effort.

Overall the concept was to align with how I work and what I do, and much of that starts with a pencil or pen and a Moleskine notebook. In flipping through any of the stacks of them on my desk or shelves it’s easy to find the basis of this design in the shape of the page, the doodles and layout sketches throughout inspired the large graphic elements on the home page and interior sidebars. Since I’ve settled on the job description of ‘web strategist, designer, technologist’ it made sense to feature writing, design-fucused projects and more heavily technology-focused ones, but do so in a way that doesn’t need to be explicitly called out to still work. I had a good time with some CSS3 enhancements to complement the jQuery transitions, all complemented by fonts served by @typekit. I liked the hand-drawn effect coupled with scale and clipping to turn the blog posts into graphic elements (but still preserve the full text for SEO).

I still have some work to do in carrying through the design, especially in the comments, and want to sort out something more interesting for the main project page rather than a blog-like list – but overall I’m quite pleased. It’s a design (especially on the home page) that I really enjoy and am proud to show. And best of all - shipped in about 4 days (background changes last week, and the rest of the new design done in bits over last weekend).

Thanks for looking, and please do leave some feedback in the comments or via email or Twitter ( @jpamental). Thanks also to @johnpicozzi, @stephencross and @jjeff for your feedback.

topic overview for my talk on web strategy at Future of Web Design (FOWD) conference

jpamental — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 13:58:15 +0000

Topics: design technology speaking

I’m really excited to be giving a talk in a couple weeks at FOWD. I’ve been attending this conference for a few years now and am still adjusting to the fact that I’m going to be on stage speaking this time around. I can’t wait!

You can check out the conference details here and if you’re quick still grab one of the last few tickets for the conference. (There’s a ton of amazing speakers - Cameron Moll, Paul Boag, Dan Mall, Nick La, Molly Holzschlag to name a few). Here’s the overview for my talk. I’ll be sure to post my presentation after the conference if anyone is interested:

What clients expect of their (increasingly inaccurately defined) ‘web designer’ is a problem. A big one. ‘Web designer’ more often means a ‘web solution’ incorporating design, marketing, IA, UX design, development, Social Media strategy and implementation, mobile apps and/or interfaces and more. But there is another crucial, ill-defined area critical to the success of any web site: how does it fit with and benefit the client and their business? Is it more than simple marketing brochureware? Does it really work for the client, connecting their business units and customers in ways not previously possible, creating efficiencies and opportunities heretofore unimagined? Is it, dare I say - web strategy? We’ll explore what web strategy is, why it’s important and how we as an industry must help foster its growth.

new design for thinkinginpencil.com

jpamental — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 03:10:35 +0000

Topics: design

Just a short note about my new site design. Lots going on lately and it was long overdue for me to have a site that actually reflects what I'm doing these days. I've been increasingly involved with more strategy and design work, and writing and speaking on the topic as well. This site started as just a blog but has become much more as my consulting practice has grown over the past year. Since Web Strategist, Designer and Technologist seem to be the monikers I go by it seemed to make sense to present myself in roughly that order right on the home page.

The site is still a work in progress (aren't they always?) but I have to say that I'm quite pleased with where it is now, and really like how the design has evolved. Many thanks to my friend PJ and my darling wife Ellen for their keen insights and prompts that got me thinking about who I am and how I should portray myself and my business.