So I was reading Elliot Jay Stocks’s post on the Apple tablet and noticed all the fancy gravatars his commenters had (maybe because they were not as small as the ones in the blogs I frequent). One in particularl that caught my eye was Jeremy Swinnen’s and made me wonder if, like Sam Wilson’s, it was a condensed version of his website and/or brand. I visited his site and turns out I was wrong.
Avatars are usually faces (photographs, caricatures, etc.) or logos, because that’s the most straightforward way to advertise yourself. But why not try something that remind people of your own website? Chances are that’s the first thing they do after reading your comment: check out who you are via your homepage.
If the logo in your avatar is featured prominently, which is probably the case anyway, then great. But I feel a disconnect when visiting a site that has no visual ties to the avatar associated with it. And putting a spin in your branding by using more than your logo in an avatar is a worthy challenge.
Sure, we also associate people with their respective URLs, but aren’t avatars the proverbial peacock’s feathers, the smoke and mirrors, the flashing neon sign—to lure people in, establish a connection, and possibly seal the deal on whatever it is you’re “selling”?
If you’re not choosing the most effective way to bring people over from Mr. Stocks’s site, then you could be missing out.
Twitter definitely upped its game as its new homepage rolled out today (viewable only if you’re logged out). Now its greatest strengths are featured front and center: real-time search and trends. A wise upgrade no doubt, but there’s something off about the design.
On any other website I wouldn’t have been bothered by this. A fair amount of blue, green, gradients, rounded corners, and overall sleekness reminiscent of a certain OS: these are all “acceptable” characteristics of good web design these days. The problem is, this is not what Twitter is about.
To me, Twitter is warm, organic, friendly—all because of the homepage (and the Fail Whale, of course). Sure, it used stock illustrations instead of commissioning original ones, but they were distinct enough. None of the cliche sunbursts and clouds, or the decidedly safer shades of blue.
And just as Twitter exploded in popularity, so did its branding. There’s an official Twitter bird, but whenever I see any other illustrated bird—hawk, owl, or any other kind—I think of Twitter. Heck, when I see that almost distinct light shade of blue (forget Tiffany & Co.!) or a rounded typeface, I think of Twitter. And while LOLcats have cemented their meme-dom for a while now, it’s really Twitter that shot them to stardom when they were used as error messages on the site.
Sure, all these inside jokes, cutesy mascots, and pastel hues may seem immature to some, and maybe the higher-ups thought it was time to get Twitter a personality makeover. What did they replace it with, exactly? tweaked Web 2.0 slash Apple design elements? Try again.
The old design elements fit Twitter’s image of sheer simplicity, of 140-character answers to the question “what are you doing?”. And today, with the homepage redesign, that image has started to slip away.
When setting up your website one of the most important aspects will be to choose a domain name. It’s that domain name that will stick with you for the lifetime of your site. You can change the template, change the purpose of the site, fire a designer, hire a designer, but you just cannot change that domain name (unless you scrap it and do a redirect). Finding an available domain name that you like and that is appropriate for the purpose of your site is complicated. Here are a few things to think about when choosing a domain name:
1. Match the domain name to actual name of your site
One of the easiest and best alternatives is to get a domain name that matches the actual name of your site. It’s a duh statement but so many people forget to match the site. You will increase your branding as well as make it easy for visitors to remember the name of your site. The worst thing that can happen is if people fall head over heels for your site but can not find it again simply because the domain name is not the same as the name of your site. For example if you have a bakery site, don’t call it StubbornNelly.com. No one will have a clue what your theme is. Call it, TastyPastry.com, or even Anne Cookies around the corner.com.
2. Keep it short – and Keep it Simple Stupid (KISS)
Keeping the domain name short is a challenge if you are looking for a .com domain as all three and four letter words are already taken. Yep, and all standard English words are gone too (designer.com, awesome.com). Coming up with a name that is short will be easier to remember and pass along by word of mouth. But remember, a domain name should however not be kept short just for the sake of keeping it short. Do not use acronyms as a url if they look bad as an acronym. Think of all those failed websites because people did not see different words as one word. Like don’t come up Patterns, Octogons and Other Pics and give it POOP.com. That’s a failed domain name.
Some great short named domains:
- IBM.com (why call it international business machines)
- digg.com (i dig you, you dig me)
- Match.com (find a matching partner)
3. Use keywords
Optimizing your domain name for search engines is a big help. In using one or two of your single most important keywords you will have better chances of getting a higher rank on the search results, thus increasing traffic. This will not be easy, as most “natural” names already are taken. Combine an important keyword then with something secondary. These sites came up with great names:
- GraphicDesignBlog.com
- TutorialMagazine.com
- Dev-Tips.com
4. Describe your site
Your domain name is an excellent way of describing what your site is all about. Say for example that you manage a site about fishing. Your domain name should in some way describe that fishing is exactly what your visitors will find on the site. Again, fishing is a major keyword of your site, so exploit it with a well picked domain name.
5. Avoid confusion
In general, domain names are not expensive. Register domains with misspellings of your original domain if you want to make sure you catch most type in domain traffic. Redirect those misspelled domains to the main website. This is a great for sites that use hard to spell words or need to protect their brand identity. Examples:
- Google.com
- Googel.com
- Gogle.com
6. Consider alternative domain extensions
If it is impossible to find a good domain name with the prefix .com you might want to consider using an alternative domain extension. Many countries have opened up their country code top level domain for international registration. This is perhaps your chance to create the perfect domain hack. Examples:
- Del.icio.us
- Ma.tt
- Designm.ag
Picking a domain name will take time, energy and some creativity from your side but its worth it in the end. The last tip is to checkout recently expired domain names at snapnames.com – many names will be awful or cost a fortune, but once in a while you will be able find a real gem at a reasonable fee. Good luck on finding the domain of your dreams!
All the new browser updates seem to be coming out at the same time, which definitely keeps the competition interesting. But while you continue to scoff at IE, gush over Firefox, and smile nervously at Opera, Chrome, and Safari, have you heard that ordinary computer users don’t actually know what a web browser is? Let’s get to that in a bit…
Internet Explorer is the “best”
IE8 Comparison (comic by Brad Colbow)
I think people around the world made a collective ROFLMAO when the infamous IE8 browser comparison chart came out. I reserved any biased judgment when I first saw it, but oh my, Microsoft sure knows how to put its best features forward.
That’s not all it’s doing to promote the latest version of Internet Exploder, though. There’s a treasure hunt for $10,000 buried “online” (you have to use IE8 to find it, of course), and a donation of meals to charity (per IE8 download, of course).
Firefox has a new icon
New Firefox logo
Firefox is definitely the darling of the browser lot, so even a branding update—the fire, the fox, and the glossy globe are still intact and recognizable—is under magnified scrutiny.
Of course that’s not all there is to the next major release of Firefox, but I’m just glad they also care about their image. Lots of open source products pay little attention to the designery stuff. Firefox knows how to stay fresh and accessible to its audience without trying too hard (cough, see previous browser, cough).
Opera unites
Opera continues to innovate with its upcoming release, including an interface refresh from the same person who brought the Firefox logo to life. But it doesn’t stop there. Opera Unite cuts off the middleman for sharing photos, music, and all other kinds of files by turning the browser into a web server.
It’s not for everybody, but it’s a fascinating idea. An interesting twist to the “web as platform” concept. First there was web-based equivalents of desktop apps, as well as full-blown desktop interfaces on the web, then it was cloud computing, then it was the real-time web, then we have this. The jury’s still out on whether this will actually take off—considering Opera’s level of influence compared to the fox and the blue “e”—but any venture into Web 3.0 is a welcome effort. Here’s hoping we jump into it very soon.
But what is a web browser?
But apparently we can’t jump just yet. According to this discovery by The Next Web, the average internet user can’t tell the difference between a search engine and a browser, about 92% of those interviewed. Ironically, it was Google conducting the survey, and the final question was whether people knew that it had its own web browser.
Although Internet Explorer and Firefox were mentioned, people still didn’t know where the Web ended and the software began. It’s all just a blur of computer terms, which, at the end of the day, help them “find stuff”.
Knowing this, shouldn’t web browsers be scrambling to teach its users how the Internet works, including typing URLs into the address bar, and not just relying solely on search engines? Or should they just give up on the nth incarnation of the Browser Wars?
There are so many wrong things about the branding of MobileMe, Apple’s latest product announcement, that it’s distracting me from seeing how good it could be.
From .Mac to MobileMe
First, the name. MobileMe is a new spin on .Mac, but its new name shows clear focus—mobile. Okay, fair enough, but it’s like no effort was put into coming up with the name. Apple is supposed to be hipper than that. MobileMe has this bad dot-com naming vibe surrounding it. You know, all those names filled with pronouns (I, me, my, you, your, we, our) that stroke the ego.
Then again, Apple is the poster child for that naming strategy. But they could have gone the tried-and-tested “iRoute”. From iMac to iTunes to iPhone, why stop prepending i’s now?
Me vs. ME
Here’s something more disturbing. Why does the MobileMe logo look so strikingly similar to that of Windows ME?
Whether or not this is a coincidence, Apple should be criticized for allowing itself to be associated with an operating system people considered crappy. It’s the last thing you want to do when building your brand.
For those who want to defend Apple by saying “but the handwritten me of MobileMe does not look like the one on Windows ME, it looks better”, I’m not hearing you. They still look too much alike.
Microsoft is too much of Apple’s competition to have this similarity. If Apple drew inspiration from, say, Starbucks, Disney, or Nike, we probably wouldn’t mind—except that you’d think Apple had enough creativity to do more groundbreaking design to take a cue from someone else. Since when does this company listen to anyone else? If Apple is doing this on purpose, then it’s an even lower blow.
Any designer worth his salt would not want to be mistaken for plagiarizing something, much less something not worth copying in the first place.
Attention to detail, lost
No matter how you look at it, the choices made with MobileMe’s branding just aren’t right. They’re sloppy at best. Apple is known to pay painstaking attention to detail, but I can’t see it with MobileMe.
When I first saw the new lowercase “g” favicon for Google, I thought it was a glitch. The blue of the icon was a bit too bright for my taste, and the “Web 2.0″ spin on it (shiny, rounded-corner button) was not characteristic of Google at all. A few hours later I saw that people started to talk, nay, complain about it. And then I realized it was a tiny Google redesign, after all.
Here’s the official explanation from the Google Blog:
Some people have wondered why we changed our favicon — after all, we hadn’t in 8.5 years(!). The reason is that we wanted to develop a set of icons that would scale better to some new platforms like the iPhone and other mobile devices. So the new favicon is one of those, but we’ve also developed a group of logo-based icons that all hang together as a unified set.
And here’s the whole suite of icons for the redesign:
It looks a bit nicer in higher resolutions, but as a favicon, not at all. The small “g” is just a few pixels away from becoming indistinguishable to the number “8″. It also looks like it’s struggling to stand up straight, but failing miserably at it.
How much does Google favicon suck?
- Mayer claims that the redesign is not final, and is even invoking the wisdom of the masses to submit their own Google favicon ideas. Spec much?
- A logo redesign takes a lot of effort (which was also mentioned in the post). The inability to stand by their decision to change the favicon shows flakiness on the company’s part. On the other hand, it’s a good thing for such a gigantic company to be this sensitive about the smallest thing about them. Maybe because they don’t want to act like “the big G”.
- The rounded-corner button look and the specific mention of the iPhone tells me they’re designing for Apple, not for themselves or for any other mobile device. Is Steve Jobs this good at being a design dictator?
- Users have created scripts to bring back the old favicon.
- A comment on TechCrunch: “Google has a design team?” More on that here and here. I’m sorely tempted to write about how Google’s designs are so Web 1.0 (now trying to be Web 2.0), but had no particular reason to. This favicon renewed that desire.
Note: When I use “Web 1.0″ and “Web 2.0″ as design terms here, I mean them sarcastically. I am fully aware that there is no such thing as the “Web 2.0″ look. Glossiness, reflections, and rounded corners are design characteristics that came from Apple first.
Point is, Google never cared about “looking Web 2.0″, never cared about looking a certain way—until this favicon redesign. Despite some very bad design choices, Google’s interfaces are clean, simple, and easy to use. They’re not trying to be what they’re not. But this favicon is. It’s the end of an era, alright.
Remember Blackle? Google is so universal that any small change can turn out to be a huge impact. In the case of Blackle, it was about saving energy. In the case of this favicon, it’s about associating an ever-visible icon on the browser tab bar with the most-used search engine out there. People will have to get used to looking for that small “g” instead of that big “G” when they’re cycling through tabs.
A “website designed by…” link is like a Louis Vuitton monogram. It’s your brand. Let your clients wear it on their websites as proudly they would with a designer handbag.
Is this always true? What makes this practice highly recommended or downright tacky?
It depends. It always does.
Your brand should never hurt your creations, it should enhance them
I bumped into this post: You Will Never See “Designed by Atrick Design”. I totally respect everything he wrote there. And I am not going to say I am completely against it. In fact, I have avoided placing links, logos, and attribution for things I’ve done in the past. But some things struck me.
In Pat Dryburgh’s post, he points this out:
I will never let a “designed by” link do my marketing. I wouldn’t want to take that away from my clients.
A link does not have to be your only way of marketing. You can always do it at the same time you’re promoting yourself in the real world.
But what does that link take away from your clients? Why does does this awful perception exist? If you’re a good designer, (1) you will find a way to place your link so that it fits nicely into the design; and (2) visitors will consider it either convenient or eye candy.
more
I thought it would be cool to dish out interesting links you can check out this weekend. Hope you find inspiration in them.
Pixar’s Brad Bird on Fostering Innovation: Anybody who’s been the tiniest bit interested in art eventually finds Pixar as a haven for all creatives. Brad Bird says it’s not easy to continuously churn out successful animated movies and he lists how to keep the fire of innovation burning.
If you work in lighting but you want to learn how to animate, there’s a class to show you animation. There are classes in story structure, in Photoshop, even in Krav Maga, the Israeli self-defense system. Pixar basically encourages people to learn outside of their areas, which makes them more complete.
Satan’s Logo.: The goal is simple—figure out how Satan would sell his “brand” with a logo. This is a good exercise for all the marketing people out there. You don’t have to choose the Devil as your make-believe client, just find a popular person or brand and ask yourself how you would promote him/her/it. But there’s something to be said about the necessary deception in coming up with Lucifer’s company name. Is branding in general the same way?
The hardest part was the new brand name actually. After all we are talking about the master deceiver in all history here so his true nefarious tendencies need to be cloaked in a thin veneer of corporate benevolence.
Mother Like No Other: Yves Geleyn created a cute animated movie for Mother’s Day. It’s a special presentation from Zune Arts. I love the variety of textures used in this animation.
Set to the tranquil, melodious song “Come As You Were,” by The Bird and The Bee, the short stars a young beaver who is whiling away the time on a tree trunk. When a red cardinal flutters in and pecks at his shoulder, the beaver is jolted out of lassitude, and begins his search for a Mother’s Day idea.
Finally, I just want to let you know I’m now writing the Friday Focus posts at Devlounge. If you’re dying for more link candy, go check it out.
Happy Mother’s Day weekend!
