Notes from Notchcode

Fill this up, already!

2009-08-27T22:31:00.001-06:00

I actually really enjoy creating collateral material like point of sale, table tents, and actual merchandise for clients. So when I get to design the art for, say, a pint glass, it's a fun assignment. Here's one I did for a client recently:

Beer-colored background is optional, of course. Once I have the actual glass in-hand, I'll post a photo with real beer behind it. There's a nice second-side design for this one, too. To see that, though, you have to register for the event and get a glass of your own.

One of my other jobs...

2009-08-25T22:10:00.001-06:00

...is helping to run a scholarship fund dedicated to helping out environmentally-minded undergrad students. Started up in honor of my late father, the David L. Bucknam Memorial Scholarship Fund is finally on Twitter, Facebook, etc. and you should become a follower/fan/supporter as soon as humanly possible. You know, if you care about the earth, or anything. Which I KNOW you do--which is why I digress from my usual design ramblings here to mention it.

We're holding our fifth annual fund-raiser on September 13th, up at Alderfer-Three Sisters Park near Evergreen, by the way. It's a lot of fun. You can hike or bike around and not even know you're supporting the education of dedicated environmental scientists while you're wolfing down an amazing burger, or brownie, or Breckenridge Brewery Avalanche Ale (thanks, Tebo!). All you have to know is if you come, you'll have a great time.

Go here for more info.

MIT project analyzes the online "you"

2009-08-19T11:36:00.001-06:00

Nice data visualization of who you are, at least online. Get yours here.

Tip o' the X-acto knife to Jay Parkinson.

We really wanted 867-5309, but it wasn't available.

2009-08-17T14:29:00.001-06:00

We've got a new phone number, courtesy of Google Voice. The old one still works, but this one follows us EVERYWHERE:

Feel free to try it out at 303.351.1717.

Bad UX, bad pose.

2009-08-03T07:16:00.000-06:00

I like guys who can pull off a bow tie. My grandfather is one of them. But not this dude, an internet marketer from the UK:

The worst thing about his site on "Internet Marketing" is the horrible form he makes someone fill out in order to simply generate leads:

TEN form fields, just to get an e-mail address? I can't imagine the attrition rate this guy has. Make it a simple e-mail address and a Submit button, and he'd probably increase his lead generation by about 50 percent. And this is a form created by a guy who is SELLING HIS EXPERTISE ON MARKETING USING THE INTERNET. Gah.

What a week.

2009-07-31T20:04:00.001-06:00

" style="float: left; margin-right: 5px;" />It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. I truly understand that opening line from that book Mrs. Zamboni made me read in high school, now. This week has been good, and really horrible.

Bad: I had jury duty on Monday. Before you all tell me what a privilege it is to serve on a jury, I will say: you are absolutely right, and I was happy to do it. The bad part is that it was on a Monday morning, when your clients are trying to make up for the lost time from Friday afternoon when we all knocked off early. But c'est la vie. I was nearly seated, but in the end didn't sit in the box. Maybe next year.

Good: met with a new prospective client, who has an excellent business plan, and asked me to maybe create some branding and web stuff for her in the nearish future. That was cool. And I found that the Daz Bog on 17th and Downing makes their coffee a lot better than other non-Daz Bog coffeehouses do (and they were just as polite as the folks at Generous Servings, which is saying a lot).

Bad: I wanted to make sure this client had a lot of options on the table, since their plans are a little in flux, so I made several variations on each proposal. This took time (that's the bad part). Happy to do it, but it was a lot of proposal writing.

Good: Prospective client loved the extra effort, and, for me, having those options on the table meant that they could make a more fully-informed decision. Clients often tell me that they've never seen such detailed proposals, which makes me warm and fuzzy inside (it also makes me wonder why no one else seems to be offering basic details like a schedule, a scope of work, licensing scope, and so on, but that's another post).

Bad: I had another proposal due on Saturday, and it's a proposal from an RFP, which I haven't done in years. Most of my projects come from organizations or businesses who approach me with a need, we talk about it, I get specifics, and I issue a proposal. This one is necessarily (due to the nature of the organization) more "official", and it took me several days to wrap my mind around it.

That in itself wasn't a bad thing; it was the fact that between all these proposals and jury duty AND (surprise reveal!) our dryer konked out, I got zero actual creative work done this week. None. Nada. And the designer in me died a little. And of course I had almost no time to post anything here. But there you have it. And since there is an ebb and flow to everything, I expect next week to be filled with unicorns, rainbows, and lots of time to make creative wonders for my clients.

Right?

Want more proof that logo "contests" are spec work? And that spec doesn't pay?

2009-07-24T10:52:00.001-06:00

...then I would suggest you follow Spec Watch, on Twitter. They seem to be aggregating some of the nasty stories about so-called contests in the design world.

I'd also recommend NoSpec. And my posts about bartow's survey of $99 logo sites and the AIGA's position on spec work.

Radio Shack rolling out new brand identity in August

2009-07-23T13:46:00.001-06:00

Following the Tour de France today, I came across Lance Armstrong's message that he will be partnering with Radio Shack next year to form an American pro cycling team. That was enough news for one day, it seemed. Until I noticed in Radio Shack's related presser that the company will be rolling out a new brand identity in a few weeks. As Their Chief Marketing Officer, Lee Applebaum said in the release:

"We are re-launching our brand with a new creative platform in early August, and now having Lance on our team - an American icon who embodies the spirit of mobility, connectivity and philanthropy - really allows us to accelerate our brand's evolution."

"re-launching our brand" I guess could mean they're keeping the same identity, but I don't think so. "new creative platform"....that's nice and vague. Skywriting? Perhaps some sort of chalk-bot-inspired piece of MAKE-kraft? THAT would be truly DYI-inspired, and be a hit with the MAKE-rs of the world.

I'll be interested to see how they position themselves. For years, Radio Shack was the go-to place for hobbyists and do-it-yourselfers interested more in making things work than the brand name on the package. Lately Radio Shack has positioned itself as not only a place you can go for capacitors and AC adapters, but also to buy cell phones, sattellite radio receivers, televisions, and more "finished" consumer electronics goods.

With the recession making everyone look towards fixing what they have rather than throwing it out and replacing it with something new, Radio Shack's fortunes have actually improved, as people once again turn to it for replacement power cords, battery chargers, and resistors.

So which way will Radio Shack go with the new brand? More towards consumer goods? Or back to its roots as the neighborhood electronics parts supplier? I kinda hope it's the latter--we already have too many consumer goods stores, and look where CompUSA and Circuit City have gone. I'm not the only one who thinks this is a good idea, either.

Radio Shack Armatron (I had one of these!) from unlovablesteve on Flickr.

XHTML 2 dumped, HTML 5 ascendant. Does it matter?

2009-07-23T09:51:00.001-06:00

Here's the short version: XHTML was based on XML, back in the '90s when people thought XML was the future.

As mentioned in Techworld.com a while back:

XHTML 2 will not become a W3C standard, [W3C spokesperson Ian] Jacobs said. "We're investing in HTML 5 for the future," he said. Work stops on the XHTML language, but W3C still plans an XML formulation of HTML 5, to be done by the HTML working group.

A prominent AJAX and web development proponent applauded the W3C decision.

Firefox and Safari also include HTML 5 support, as well as Google's Chrome and Android.

So, what's the practical difference for us web designers and developers; people who need to know the code underneath the user experience, but aren't necessarily considered "coders"?

XHTML info from Mike:

XHTML 2.0 is based solely on XML, forgoing the SGML heritage and syntax peculiarities present in current web markup. XHTML 2.0 is supposed to be a “general-purpose language,” with a minimal default feature set that is easy to extend using CSS and other technologies (XForms, XML Events, etc). It’s a modular approach that allows the XHTML2 group to focus on generic document markup, while others develop mechanisms for presentation, interactivity, document construction, etc.

...and HTML 5:

While XHTML 2.0 aims to be revolutionary, the HTML working group has taken a more pragmatic approach and designed HTML 5 as an evolutionary technology. That is to say, HTML 5 is an incremental step forward that remains mostly compatible with the current HTML 4/XHTML 1 standards. However, HTML 5 offers a host of changes and extensions to HTML 4/XHTML 1 that address many of the faults in these earlier specifications.

Read his post for more.

Another post explaining the difference had a nice example of the structural, easy-to-understand nature of XML:

<farm>

 <barn>

    <horses>10</horses>

    <tools>

      <hammers>1</hammer>

      <shovel>2</shovel>

   </tools>

  </barn>

  <field>

   <cows>8</cows>

   <pigs>30</cows>

 </field>

</farm>

The structure shows the hierarchy of elements, and makes no effort to style of make them act a certain way. XHTML is simply a version of HTML that is valid XML code.

HTML 5 will contain more support for web applications, APIs, and other stuff that wasn't as built-into earlier versions of HTML. And as mentioned above, it will be (mostly) backward-compatible with BOTH HTML and XHTML.

So why, or should, we care? Probably not a lot, at the moment. But be prepared to make adjustments in the nearish future, and bone up on the new specification with the Definitive Guide of your choice. O'Reilly, here I come, once again!

Raising the visibility of the U.S. National Design Policy initiative

2009-07-20T10:28:00.001-06:00

Read Allison Arieff's article on Design as Policy in today's Times and remember that every made thing you encounter in your life was designed by someone. And why can't things be designed to be more effective communication tools? The U.S. National Design Policy initiative wants to make that situation better. Check it out. You can download a PDF on Redesigning America's Future, also from the USDPI here as well.

A Ringing Endorsement

2009-07-14T23:23:00.001-06:00

Sometimes a negative is a positive, especially when it comes from a company that has an even worse online portfolio than I do! Really, folks, I know my site is still in the stone age, but don't talk the trash if you can't back it up with work we can see (the portfolio section, if you can call it that, was some sort of slow-loading Java thingie that never finished loading, and wasn't branded with the same UX as the rest of their site. C'mon, people! Let's use something better than iWeb to build your own site--especially if you offer web design services!)

The interesting thing to me is that these guys are in southern California (a place where I've never had any clients) and work primarily in the entertainment industry (which, aside from being a DP on a friend's short, I've never worked in or for). Love the birdie photo on the right, especially. I mean, really, WTF? Is this how you promote your business? I have a feeling they pulled my name off a Google search for "creative services denver" (picking Denver at random, perhaps) and plucked my URL from there.

Who knows? Who cares, really? Just another example that the internet may be a great place to find good people who can help you to make your business succeed, and it can also be a place full of mediocrity and Red Bull-filled nonsense.

Compensation: Graphic Designers

2009-07-09T10:55:00.001-06:00

Planet Money asked people how they are compensated, and I added my two cents today, regarding graphic designers. I've posted about this before, but it's a nice (relatively brief) summary:

Compensation for graphic designers is all over the map, depending on how long you've been in the industry, how your shop is set up, and what you have been trained (by either clients or your boss) to expect.

Most designers who work for someone else--in a studio or in an in-house design department--make a salary, like many white-collar workers. Benefits, etc. all depend on the size, wealth, and philosophy of the employing firm. So that's fairly "normal".

Where it gets interesting is when you're working for yourself, or looking at how the client/studio relationship works in regards to compensation.

Crowdsourcing, and Logo "Competitions"
Of late there has been a lot of "crowdsourcing" of logos: logo "competitions", where freelancers submit a design (based on very little info about the "client" company), in hopes of being the "winner" and having their design chosen. The payout for this is usually very small--a few hundred dollars for something that (when a firm does a lot of research, takes time to get to know the client's organization, and so on) potentially is worth several thousand dollars, at minimum. A lot of designers, design advocacy organizations, and professional groups have come out against this model, saying it's bad for both the designer (not getting paid fairly) and for the client (not getting a logo or brand identity that's really all that effective).

Value-based Fees
Typically, a graphic designer will charge a fee based on the value their finished product has for their client. The logo for a small local business with a lower annual revenue has less value assigned to it than a brand identity for a national, multi-million dollar corporation. A lot of time is spent by designers and firm owners figuring out what these values are, and how the value _they_ assign to them fits into the competitive marketplace. A firm may charge more for a given product for a given client than another firm, but perhaps they offer value-added services (additional consultation, an approach that fits the personality of the client better, and so on).

These fees take into account not only the value that the client places on the product, but (internally) takes into account the actual amount of research, concept, design, production, and implementation time for the designer. They know that they can't make less than $X per hour if they want to pay rent on their studio, cover health insurance, buy design software upgrades, and so on. And since on average a designer only does about an hour of design work for every two or three hours spent looking for work (or planning projects, or doing their accounting) the actual hourly rate is lower than the figured rate.

The client usually doesn't see any of this. It's part of the larger calculation that figures in the value of the piece to the client, as well as hard costs of production.

Hourly Rates
Other designers will charge their clients an hourly rate, but in my experience this hurts the client, the designer, and --ultimately-- the project. If you're paid hourly, what's the incentive to work efficiently? If the client runs out of money, does the project stop where it is, or proceed with the designer getting paid less, effectively, per hour? Or does the client cough up more dough?

Setting Expectations
Whether a designer is charging based on value or based on time, a set fee for a project with a defined scope of work is better for everyone, setting boundaries and expectations on all sides, and resulting in happier designers and clients in the end. The AIGA has excellent resources for designers (both those just starting out and those of us who have been at it for a while) regarding contracts, fees, and terms of use; as well as resources for people who need to hire a designer.

Butter, coffee, and business

2009-07-09T10:02:00.001-06:00

I wanted to let all you designer and branding people know about one of my fave places in Northwest Denver to have coffee: Generous Servings. Not only is the staff unfailingly friendly, and not only is the coffee great (especially the vietnamese iced), you can sit and drink your joe, and work, while watching people cook. There's a large lovely window looking into Generous Servings' classroom, where on any given day you can watch folks get ready for that evenings' class. In the morning the Happy Cakes people from next door put icing on their stock of cupcakes for the day, too. Frankly, the coffee shop part of the operation is a great sales pitch for their cooking classes...after watching everyone prep all this lovely food, who wouldn't want to start cooking, too?

Mary, half of the duo of sisters who run the place, has a blog on cooking and running a small business, and her post on making your own butter caught my eye. If you're a foodie, and like to experiment, check out her blog. And stop in for some coffee, too. It's a great example of a place that takes its craft seriously, and also seems to be full of people who are happy. A nice combination.

Some of her butter post follows below:

"Butter is my new favorite food. Not ingredient, food. Generous Servings now uses only homemade butter in all our cooking, which gives you another reason to have one of our croissants or scones--they are more homemade than almost anything you'll ever eat.

It is very fun to have a bowl full of ten pounds of butter, as you can see:

And it is very good for moisturizing one's hands. This is not to say that my butter recipe development has been without frustrations. There has been a lot of cream thrown out of the mixer onto the floor. One time the cream never turned into butter, although I mixed it for about an hour and a half (usually it takes 15 minutes). That evening our cleaners happened to be working in the kitchen, and they asked me several times what I was making. I kept saying that I was making butter, and they would look dubiously at the bowl full of cream, which never looked remotely like butter. The next time they came, I was making cultured butter, which requires me to sterilize all the implements I use, so I had an array of big pots of boiling water, alcohol swabs, thermometers, and spoons balanced precariously to prevent their bowls from touching the counter, and a whole area of the kitchen blocked off. Again, the cleaners asked what I was doing, and I said I was making butter. At this point, they think I'm delusional.

"

(Via The Cooking Doctor.)

Passport Stamps for Fictional Countries

2009-07-06T13:50:00.001-06:00

I'm working on a project for a client which has, as a component, stamps for fictional countries. It's a lot of fun, and is a great excuse to look through lots of countries' visa and customs stamps for inspiration. A lot of them are pretty boring (I'm looking at you, United States!), but some are quite fun. Here's an early version of one of the dozen or so I'm creating:

Nearly one in 5 of you Denverites are on Facebook

2009-06-24T22:40:00.001-06:00

...scary numbers, but I suppose not unreasonable.

There are 2,357,404 people in the Denver Metro Area, according to the all-knowing oracle at Wikipedia. And there are 468,902 people in the Denver, CO network on Facebook. Granted that some in the network aren't living in Denver, it's still a big number (19.8906 percent).

As a marketing person, however, I want to stress that this means there are at least four out of every five people in the Denver area that don't use Facebook. And don't see social media campaigns being played out there.

So stick to traditional media, in addition to social. It's still sorta important.

Why it's Awesome to be a freelancer

2009-06-19T06:00:00.000-06:00

While I agree with many of the points Andy makes in 10 Reasons It Sucks to Be a Freelancer, I think (if you are a good fit for the job) it's a great thing to be. With Notchcode going into its tenth (!) year, and with me going at it full-time since 2002, here's my perspective on why being a freelancer rocks:

1. You are your own boss.

This is the excellent part everyone who strikes out on their own sees when they pull the trigger and start working for themselves. Now, by "boss", I mean "someone who sets the agenda, schedule, and priorities in your life". Your REAL boss is your clientele, but that's true whether you're working for yourself or for someone else, so we'll set that part of things aside. What I'm talking about here is the day-to-day aspects of having a job. Don't like working in the morning? Fine: No eight AM meetings, ever again. Like to go for a bike ride before work (as I do)? Go for it. Need to pick up the kids and mind them from three PM till dinnertime? No prob. You set the schedule.
(CAVEAT): This also means you need to be responsible enough to work time into your schedule to actually get the work done, meet with your clients, do your bookkeeping, and so on, at other times during the day. Being your own boss doesn't mean being a slacker--it just means being the master of your schedule.

2. You get more work in a recession.

A cartographer I know is insanely busy this summer. I am busier now than this time last year. Why? A lot of in-house creative staff has been let go. And while I definitely shed a tear for my peeps (I was once one of them, too), it's also an opportunity to get more work. Just because there's a recession doesn't mean businesses and organizations need less creative work. Often, they need more: ad rates are cheaper in a recession, and you can build your brand on less budget--but only if you have the creative content and marketing work in place to take advantage of it. While small shops and freelancers have to pay more FICA, deal with their own health insurance, etc., our overhead in the short term is probably lower than an in-house asset (although losing the in-house body of experience and knowledge is a mighty hurdle to overcome with outside talent). I won't say that a lot of my larger clients are giving me huge projects (because they aren't), I will say that small entrepreneurs are taking advantage of the marketing vacuum right now to launch new projects (which need marketing and development) and larger organizations are doing a lot of smaller, strategic projects with the budgets they have on-hand. And small shops/freelancers are perfect for that.

3. Pick your clients.

Granted: When you're starting out, it's really hard to pick and choose whom you're working for. Nevertheless, one thing I've learned is it pays to be picky. If you sense a prospective client is going to be too high-maintenance, isn't a good fit for your capabilities or style, or doesn't have the budget for what you think the project needs, sack them before you get going (nicely. No need to be impolite). You'll find that as you build your clientele with groups you enjoy working with, they refer other good groups your way (mostly). It's a positive feedback loop that makes both you and your clients happy. If you like to do work for hot air balloonists, you'll probably find a lot of other hot air balloonists calling you after you do a great job for your first one.

4. You can work from anywhere, with anyone, in any location.

I work out of my home, my favorite independent coffee shop, my car, a park--anywhere I want. It allows me to put myself in the best place to get work done and to be creative. If I find things too distracting in one location, I pick up the laptop and the client folder and head somewhere else. Some companies enable this with a more open attitude, but not many. You can also find yourself working with a wide variety of organizations in lots of different locations. From my home base in Denver, I've done work for clients in Oregon, California, Washington, D.C., Iowa, and across Colorado. I've worked with vendors from all over the place, as well, which is another cool thing, if you like to see how people in other places do the same thing your usual vendors do. There is the time zone difference to consider, but it's never been a deal-breaker for me.

5. Set your price, your standards, and your scope.

We all know that the market has a say in how much you get paid (on average, anyhow); but there's a lot of latitude. If you are an expert with years of experience in a specific area of graphic design, or web development, for example, you can command a higher rate. You can also be more flexible than a larger firm can (less overhead for you to consider) when it comes to striking a deal with a client you really want to work with. And you have the satisfaction of being the person who sets a monetary value on your worth. You also don't have to do something you don't want to do. You don't have to settle for less, which your boss may want you to do if you're running over on time, for example. And you can define your practice to fit the specific scope of work you enjoy doing--and are awesome at. If you only like doing user experience work, just do user experience work. Refer your clients to someone else for the rest of the project (or better yet, bid on the job together and get a package deal).

Those are just five reasons why it's great to be a freelancer. There's lots more. I started being my own boss, exclusively, in the last recession, and haven't looked back, and am loving it. If you find yourself spending your coffee breaks, day after day, considering going solo: do the research, make a plan, and go for it!

Tag-clouding to visualize your follower's typical profile

2009-06-10T07:07:00.000-06:00

Twittersheep automatically generates a tag cloud based on the bios of your Twitter followers. It's an interesting way of looking at who your audience is. In mine (below), there aren't many surprises: designers, social business people, marketers, coloradans, Denverites, and others.

For a visual thinker like myself, it's a lot more helpful to see info this way than merely as a set of rows and columns of stats.

The need for social relevance on your front page

2009-06-09T15:33:00.001-06:00

How necessary is it to show off your Twitter feed, Last.fm music updates, or other social media on your front page? I imagine it's helpful to garner more followers who are finding you via your site, as opposed to visitors to your site who find you through Twitter... but I don't have the analytics for this. If anyone does, tell me your story; I'd be very interested in what the prevailing opinion is (and more importantly, what the hard numbers recommend).

CoTrip.org has a new interface

2009-06-01T06:23:00.001-06:00

For travelers in Colorado, the state's Department of Transportation has given you a little gift for your summer journeys: an updated user interface at their site, CoTrip.org. They've smoothed out user interactions for finding traffic cameras (something I look at when planning a ride in metro denver, or heading up to the mountains to go skiing), and the programming seems to have speeded up load times as well. At first glance, it's a great improvement over the functional but hard-to-navigate version I was looking at just a couple of weeks ago.

A few other items worth noting: all the most-accessed info is now right there on the front page, including latest road conditions/weather, traffic speeds, and alerts.

The Principles of Open Space

2009-05-29T10:45:00.000-06:00

John McCrea, of Plaxo, is posting notes and images from the Internet Identity Workshop. This is my favorite image so far:

Very Zen.

Follow his musings on his blog.

Papyrus

2009-05-29T08:43:00.000-06:00

Ah, XKCD, you know us typographers all too well:

The Hit List: Still in Beta, but a good list-maker all the same

2009-05-27T08:08:00.000-06:00

I downloaded The Hit List, a list-making tool in the Getting Things Done style, today. And even though I've only been using it for about five hours, it's about ten times better than the stock iCal To-Do offering, and at least as good as the Kinkless GTD system for OmniOutliner I was using a few years back (this was before OmniFocus). I expect to work up a more comprehensive review of it after I've had some time to really test drive the thing, but for now I'll leave you with these reviews.

Plaxo is becoming the key to my Internet-based Perpetual-Motion Machine.

2009-05-26T20:00:00.001-06:00

I think it says something about both Facebook's confidence in being the social network leader (read: hubris) and Plaxo's desperation to get more people to use its platform that Plaxo has reached an agreement with Facebook to allow people who use FB and Plaxo to automatically send FB updates to the Plaxo service.

First I can allow Twitter to update my Facebook status, so I don't have to use Facebook. Then Facebook will update Plaxo. But wait: Twitter already updates to Plaxo. The mobius strip or gordian knot or infinite loop will be complete once Plaxo starts updating my Twitterfeed. Indeed, it will become the perpetual motion machine I've been waiting for.

Geekchart: a confluence of infographics and geekdom

2009-05-26T10:02:00.000-06:00

Want to chart where you spend your time on the social networking inter-tube/?Check out Geekchart. It has listings for almost all the social media portals, including Flickr, Twitter, Last.fm, and more (Facebook isn't on there, yet).

Mine's embedded below:

Bucknam's Geek Chart

Thanks to Cool Infographics for the link.

Remember to Remember

2009-05-25T09:58:00.001-06:00

Happy Memorial Day.

photo of the Netherlands American Cemetery and Memorial by Rob Hogeslag