A Graphic Look at SXSWi 2009
Sharing notes at this year's conference went beyond Twitter -- there were a few folks at the SXSW Interactive Conference who took sketchnotes. Sketchnotes are elaborate notes with handwritten lettering and sketchy drawings of what is happening during the talk. They are an artform; a combination of comic strip and information design. It takes a good listener and fast illustrator to get down a good sketchnote. The popularity of taking sketchnotes has grown and many people are now scanning in the pages of their moleskin and uploading them to flickr. I thought I would share with you a few of my favorites from this year's conference.
Book Review: Building Websites With Expression Engine 1.6
If you keep up with Inspire you've probably noticed that we use Expression Engine for many of our non-Rails sites. Viget.com and all 5 of our blogs are built on Expression Engine, as are client projects such as PBS Digital TV, Sodexo Esteem Pass and RollStream. Expression Engine is a very powerful content management system with a lot of great features and functionality, but it isn't the most intuitive CMS to jump into. When I first came to Viget I had no knowledge of EE and found it pretty confusing until I really wrapped my head around it. I learned the basics pretty quickly thanks to some great online tutorials from BoyInk and a lot of help from my fellow designers, but a beginner book would have been helpful. Web tutorials are great but I like to do lots of highlighting and underlining. I'm one of those tree-killers that still prints things out to take notes on.
Recently, Packt Publishing sent me a copy of Building Websites with ExpressionEngine 1.6 by Leonard Murphey. It's the only Expression Engine book on Amazon right now, perhaps because the EE user base is so much smaller than blog platforms like WordPress. I was really hoping it would help make sense of some bigger questions I have about EE, like sorting out the many different ways to organize and build your site structure. Unfortunately for me, neither Leonard nor the Expression Engine team offer much insight about that. Everyone seems to have their own way of doing it, and even here at Viget our strategies vary from site to site. While it didn't answer my theory-based questions, it offers a good introduction for a true beginner and showed me to quite a few capabilities I hadn't explored.
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Refreshing Healthy Child: Managing Growing Content & Purpose
Viget had the opportunity to design a new online home for Healthy Child Healthy World two years ago when they were in the middle of a big rebranding endeavor. The outcome was a success and we launched a site that reinforced/helped spread the HealthyChild.org message of understanding environmental health risks for children. We were fortunate to continue our relationship with HealthyChild and have had the opportunity to support the site since launch. But two years is a long time, especially on the web. In that 24 month period, online trends are guaranteed to change, user expectations are bound to grow, and client goals/dreams will expand as they get a footing in the opportunities their newly redesigned site offers them.
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Design Without Pictures, A Few Audio Podcasts Favorites
Living and working in the DC area is a blessing in that there is much to see, and business in the Nation's Capital is seemingly bountiful. The curse is the commute for people (like me) who enjoy living in the burbs. I spend a minimum of 7.5 hours per week commuting to my office. That’s almost a full work day for normal people. Mind-numbing, isn’t it!? If any unexpected roadblocks occur, you can add to that figure.
That said, I don’t find a whole lot of time to do things like read blogs, even though it's probably being done by others on the road (not recommended). I do, however, try to use my commute time wisely. As I travel to work, I listen to at least one design or business podcast per day -- while sipping my first of several daily cups of coffee. Going home … that’s when I rock the tunes!
One of the things that I’ve learned is that a good audio podcast is generally anchored with an interview. News, updates, comments, and random banter can also fill the void, but it’s the interview that seems to be the necessary core component -- at least in my opinion. I’ve opted for the audio podcasts simply because I’d much rather make use of my commute time than stare at a video podcast on my laptop when I’m not driving. The temptations to multitask are just too high.
That is not to say that audio is a better format. It's just that it works better for me considering how I intake the media. There are plenty of good reasons for video podcasting, particularly when tutorials are involved. Alas, I’ve discovered several great audio podcasts related to design. Here are some of my favorites:
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Ending the Great H1 Debate
Most of us have seen the website The H1 Debate where people could vote on whether the H1 should only be used as a site's logo OR used as a the main heading on a page. The point being that you could only use one H1 on a page. This inspired Josh to blog about the extremely violent disputes we have had about the subject around the office. I've always thought it was fine to use multiple H1's on a page where appropriate and sparingly. However many people, such as SEO experts, have claimed that using multiple H1's on a page is frowned upon by the search engine gods (such as Google) since it could appear you were loading your site with dirty SEO tactics thus hurting your page ranking. Today Samantha sent me an interesting video from Google software engineer Matt Cutts on the Google Webmaster Central Channel that seems to quell the debate:
In the words of Brian Talbot, "Let there be peace among the semantic masses"
Viget Flash Mob: 1” Buttons
On occasion, the designers at Viget reserve four hours out of their busy days and work feverishly to create a project that is outside of their daily web design routines. We call this excercise a "Design Flash Mob." We have a running list of ideas that we all contribute to, and everyone votes on a topic when the time aproaches. In the past, we have done desktop wallpapers and t-shirt designs. This time we tackled 1" buttons, a popular piece of flair amongst web nerds, design geeks, indie rock teeny-boppers, and your TGI Friday's waiter. Many of us turned to Stereohype for inspiration on designing for this tiny canvas.
2009