Back in January, Doug let the ... uh ... bear out of the bag, so to speak, with his post about using geometry in design. In it, he showed his design process for the Pointless Bear -- the mascot of Pointless Corp. What's Pointless Corp. you ask? Well, it's neither pointless nor a corporation. But, first, some history.
Ever since we started Viget almost a decade ago, people have often said "you guys have all the talent to build web apps -- designers, developers, marketers -- and you must have ideas. Why don't you launch your own products?" It's a fair question with a simple answer: we don't want to be a product company. Our goal at Viget has always been to be a great consulting company, working with great clients on a wide variety of interesting projects.
Consulting isn't easy. There's a ton of work that goes into all aspects of the business, including traditionally boring things like accounting and operations and interesting things like how you can closely collaborate with clients with methods that are customized enough for their needs but still structured enough that you can count on the results. The standard advice we all give start-ups is to focus. Without focus, a business has no hope. At Viget, our focus has been consulting, and trying to build products would put that focus -- and our success -- at risk.
That's not to say we haven't built our own stuff. Like most web shops, we built our own content management system in 2002 (since phased out). Being open source advocates, we're constantly contributing code to the community. When we have time between client projects, we're always playing with new technologies and ideas in one way or another. Even with all that, we felt that we could be more effective with our downtime, learn more from our experiences, and become better consultants providing more value to our clients if we had a more structured approach to internal projects.
Enter Pointless Corp.
Pointless Corp. is a way for our teams to rally around an idea and work together to launch a web app independent of client work. It's not an original concept, but I think we have a slightly different take on the approach.
Continue reading "The Point of Pointless Corp."
Viget's Durham office facilitates Refresh the Triangle each month, and if you're local to the area you should have been in attendance last night. Robbie Allen, sole founder and CEO of the StatSheet Network, spoke about his experience running a web startup in the Triangle area. Here are my top three highlights from the talk and why the meeting was one of our best yet.
Highlights from the talk:
- Don't believe the hype! People like to say that 8 or 9 out of 10 businesses fail, but Robbie called that a myth. According to the Small Business Association, 50% of businesses survive four or more years. Take heart!
- Execution trumps ideas. Having an idea is easy, executing is hard. Robbie's business, StatSheet, is one of those ideas that lots of people claim to have had long ago. Robbie's success is, of course, based on his hard work, not having some perfect idea that no one has had before.
- Competition is good. Robbie shared stories about talking to ESPN
and the like about what he has built to date. Why share ideas with
potential competitors? The way he sees it, he can only benefit from
their efforts to copy what he has already done or their interest in
beating out another competitor by building off the work he has in place.
Why the meeting was one of our best yet:
Continue reading "Refresh Recap: Myths, Wisdom, and Beer"
This year, the Art Directors Club of Metropolitan Washington, an organization in which several Viget folks are actively involved, expanded the interactive side of their Annual Show. We're not really into the award scene here at Viget, but we're big supporters of ADCMW's recent emphasis on the DC web community, and were excited to be involved.
Four pieces of our work were selected for inclusion in the show, the most of any interactive agency:
Saturday night, three of us went down to the National Press Club to view the show, which included some really great work from a lot of area agencies, and a great dinner with other designers who had work in the show. We also took home a Silver Lightbulb award for SpeakerRate, the only such award to go to an interactive work, which was a welcome surprise.
Also, separate congratulations to Viget designer Samantha Warren and friend-of-the-family Ali Felski for having their wonderful personal sites win a spot in the exhibit as well.
Thanks to the Art Directors Club for hosting the event and to the panel of great judges on the interactive side (Dan Mall, Leslie Jensen-Inman, and Ian Coyle) for participating. We're looking forward to watching and helping ADCMW grow to become an integral part of DC's web community.
I should start off by admitting that I'm a philologist -- a lover of languages. Languages have always been a curiosity and a passion of mine. I earned a degree in International Business in large part because it required fluency in another language as one vital component (I chose French). I've studied German, Spanish, and Russian all for fun and to gain at least tourist-level proficiency. My latest challenge: Arabic.
Arabic is the first right-to-left (RTL) language that I've attempted and as I surf more and more Arabic-language web sites, I'm able to better appreciate and understand some of the design challenges one must take into consideration. A couple years ago, Viget designed its first web site for an RTL language -- Persian, which uses a modified version of the Arabic alphabet -- and it was a big learning curve for our team at the time.
To jump-start you on some of the basics when designing web sites for RTL languages, I've interviewed some of our team members who worked on the Persian project (Kara and Jim), as well as added some points I've picked up along the way:
- Character Set. You’ll need the Middle East version of Photoshop (which offers bi-directional text flow, the Western version does not) in order to create any text graphics. While you may be able to type in characters if you just install the fonts, they won’t be connected to each other correctly and will be illegible (cutting and pasting text also does not work as the text will flip around). You will also need to specify the language (fa), character set (UTF-8), and text direction (rtl) within your page code:
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" dir="rtl" xml:lang="fa" lang="fa"> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" /> - Dates. On Persian sites, at least, you’ll need to add a little script to convert dates from the Gregorian calendar to the Persian calendar.
- Layout. Users will naturally be looking at the site from right-to-left. That's how all words and sentences are written, so your horizontal navigation should start on the right. Utility navigation, typically found in the top right portion of the screen in English, is usually placed in the top left of the page instead. Vertical scroll bars belong on the left side of the browser window instead of the right. Search boxes with "go" buttons will have the active buttons to the left of the search field. Dropdown menus will drop from the left corner and display choices listed in right-aligned format. Arrows and similar icons should be flipped horizontally. Thumbnail images should appear on the right, etc. It may be helpful to think of the site as a mirror-image of a site you'd lay out in English.
- Flash/JavaScript. Tickers and fly-in text should be set from left-to-right to allow proper reading, just as the reverse is true in English.
- Captcha. Even on all-Arabic sites, I've seen the English Captcha tool integrated into the site.
- URLs. You have two choices when deciding on which URLs to use: transliteration or English text. After researching other sites, our team chose English text URLs because they appeared to be the convention.
- Font Size. When we included larger font sizes in our designs to promote content hierarchy, native speakers reacted poorly, noting that the fonts looked ugly when they were too large. We ended up knocking down most of our headers several points.
- RTL vs. LTR in CSS. Specify “direction: rtl;” for all right-to-left elements. We found that the bulleted lists were a bit tricky, but got the hang of it eventually. Telephone numbers, email addresses, and any other Roman text should still be presented left-to-right, so you’ll need to call those out as well.
- Content Management. ExpressionEngine allowed us to specify when a text entry field was left-to-right or right-to-left, which was very necessary, so that’s something to consider if you’re evaluating CMS solutions.
Good luck with your own RTL web sites! Shokran.
When National Geographic Expeditions came to us asking for recommendations on design and interactive features for their site, we knew they had the foundation, imagery, and assets to create something powerful and memorable. Armed with our team of visual designers and user experience strategists, we dove into collaboration with National Geographic to plan features, generate loads of wireframes, and suggest design ideas via mood boards and comps. We built out the full site in html and css, and delivered front-end code and annotated screenshots to the National Geographic team and OmniTI, who developed the content management system.
The work paid off last week when National Geographics Expeditions launched its new site.
Learn more by visiting nationalgeographicexpeditions.com.
It's tradition at Viget to celebrate the company's anniversary in April. This year, with the state of the economy not far from anyone's mind, we decided to downplay the event's typical formality for something more casual -- but no less fun -- with a trip to DC's own Nationals Stadium.
After a nearly-full work day and financial recap of the quater, Vigeteers piled into a large bus with their spouses/significant others. We headed up to the stadium in epic traffic: tasty snacks and adult beverages onboard the bus made things a little more tolerable. Once at the ballpark, we headed to a private conference space to toast our nine years in business.
We honored Todd Bayliss for his five vigorous years with Viget. Plus, we thanked our families for their willingness to share us with Viget.
After slideshows and a bit of trivia, we hit the game. We were thrilled to have fabulous seats, despite the fact that the Nats lost to the Marlins.
Despite a few last-minute snafus, a great time was had by all. Here's to nine years, Viget -- and many more to come!
Special thanks to Brian and Andy for continuing to provide us with such fun activities, no matter what the economic climate. You guys rock.
The May 2009 issue of Washingtonian Magazine -- the one getting buzz for its notable cover -- includes a story titled "Washington's Tech Titans" that featured "the top 100 leaders of Washington's tech world."
Our own CEO and Co-Founder, Brian Williams, is listed in the entrepreneurs section along side such notable execs as Ted Leonsis (AOL) and Michael Saylor (Microstrategy). The article references a competitor who identifies Viget as a "brain drain of talent."
"It's an honor to be included on this list. It's also cool to see the names of so many friends, clients, and partners included with whom we've had a chance to work and collaborate with over the years. It reminds you how strong the leadership is in this area and why it's such a great place to do business," Brian said.
His response to the "brain drain" label? "I'm glad our long-standing effort to create a great place for talented people to work is being recognized."
Those included on the list were chosen based on two factors, according to the article. "(1) success, defined as a proven track record in the tech world, and (2) influence, being listened and look to by others for leadership and vision."
Compared to other companies I've worked for in my career so far, Viget's management is committed to running a transparent company for its employees. There's an open-door policy and regular staff meetings where we discuss everything from sales opportunities to the economic situation.
Transparency is one of those of the buzz words that always comes up -- whether in a Middle School Marketing chat about Google's efforts with interest-based advertising or in discussions about Obama's digital media strategy -- as being a core factor to establishing trust and credibility with audiences.
That's also the theme behind a WSJ Blog article, "The Facebook Generation vs. the Fortune 500," by Gary Hamel. In it, he talks about the "buyer's market of talent right now," and particularly how management has to evolve to attract and retain that talent. To accomplish that evolution, he encourages managers to incorporate 12 characteristics of life online into their management efforts.
Examples like, "All ideas compete on an equal footing," "Power comes from sharing information, not hoarding it," and "Opinions compound and decisions are peer-reviewed," are practices we commit to each day internally and with our blogs, as well. Of the few people I know in my generation who don't have these freedoms or voices at work, all are uncomfortable and looking for something "less bureaucratic" and "more personally fulfilling."
Anyway, aside from "Hackers are heroes,"* I think all the points are timely and interesting -- check it out!
* PSYCHE! Of course hackers are heroes!
Project Managers at Viget are constantly seeking improvements in our methodology, processes, solution components, communication tools, and documentation standards. Steph touched on this a bit in her post about Exploring Project Management Tasking Tools.
As a culture, we simply don't stick to "the same old way" of doing things whether it comes to mark-up conventions, software development, or cost-tracking mechanisms. We are always looking for the improved, enhanced, better solution. This mentality can be a bit daunting to newcomers, especially if they have come from an environment with entrenched, immovable processes; but, once they realize they have the freedom to explore new options and have the opportunity to be an instrument of change, they quickly adjust.
Over the years, our challenge of the status quo has had some very marked results:
Continue reading "Questioning the Status Quo"
LaunchBox Digital, DC's early-stage investment / accelerator program, started last year with a solid portfolio of companies. Since going through the program several of them have received funding and are doing well.
Continue reading "Supporting the LaunchBox Start-ups, Take Two"
