In the Creativity 38 Annual Awards competition, we have 12 award-winning projects, five of which won a Silver, three Gold, and one Platinum. Creativity 38 brought in close to 3,000 entries from 45 states in the U.S, and 44 countries around the world.

We also were notified recently that we won five awards from the American Graphic Design Awards, presented by Graphic Design USA. These will be featured in an upcoming issue of GDUSA.

Of course, we can’t forget about our local Addys, the recognition program sponsored by the Ad Club of West Michigan, local affiliate of the American Advertising Federation. The Grand Rapids Art Museum trademark and identity system, the Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts capital campaign brochure, and the Herman Miller ICFF New York tradeshow space all won medals: two silvers, one gold.

But the best part is our second Webby Award for our work on the GRAM website. We’ll take any kudos, but this one’s especially special because it’s so hard to get.

You must understand that the power is now in the hands of consumers.

A perfect example of this is the tool Get Satisfaction. This is a social media tool that lets consumers provide customer service feedback whether a company wants it or not. Some quick searches for companies we know shows some familiar names (Herman Miller and Whirlpool are friends who have products listed there without customer service representation — you guys might want to check that out?). Consumers are empowering themselves to solve problems that they find too difficult to address via traditional customer service channels.

This means that companies are increasingly pressured to participate in the community of their customers. As corporations can be slow to engage in these sorts of activities and have often blocked access to them on their internal firewalls, they have isolated themselves from the discussion. But how do brand managers and customer service representatives best engage their customers online?

First off, where are those customers online? What are they saying about you? Are they on Facebook? Are they blogging about you? One of the easiest things an organization can do to keep track of where their customers are is subscribe to receive Google alerts related to their brand. Find out where people are discussing your product and participate in those discussions.

Look at how Comcast handles customer service on Twitter. Not all business have the scale to support this. It takes work. Increasingly the discussion is owned by the customer on a platform beyond the corporation’s control. This can be an unnerving proposition. How do you influence how your brand is perceived when anyone can say anything about your products or services and rank highly in Google? Potential new customers can easily discover a legacy of problems. Google has a hard time forgetting.

Having a presence on these platforms can be a mixed bag. You might find that the result is crickets. In the customer service arena, this is less about creating a fan base for your brand and more about ensuring customers are getting the answers they need in the way that they are most comfortable receiving them. This doesn’t necessarily mean you need real estate on Second Life. It is a question of brand stewardship.

A social media strategy should be a part of any corporation’s web presence. At the very least, you should take the online pulse of your customers. This means devoting some attention to the situation. That means someone’s time. It is relatively easy to address consumer confusion when you know what that confusion is. To associate authoritative answers with customer questions is the goal.

When someone has a problem, they are probably going to start with Google to find an answer. Ensuring that your answer is there is key. Good SEO is the place to start. Good IA ensures that you are representing yourself appropriately to address your customers’ needs. Why did a user blog about you rather than filling out a contact form? Where is the disconnect?

Take a little time today to Google your company. Any surprises?

Many choose to lend their design skills to a greater and larger purpose which, when properly executed, can rally support for a cause and make a change for the better. One courageous cause benefiting from smart design is Buyameter. Buyameter, which allows users to help donate to bring water into the homes and community of Hale County, Alabama, is a great example of what design brings to the communication of a message. Good Magazine describes the story behind buyameter.

The topic of climate change and sustainability are finding designers increasingly lending their support, ideas, and skills — addressing these issues with the hope of accomplishing something good. There is, of course, the national and global rally for change: to change our ideas, habits, thinking and even lifestyles. Design Can Change is “an initiative aimed at uniting the world’s graphic designers to use their influence and purchasing power to combat climate change.” Their website is smart, slick, compelling and offers facts and solutions to how graphic designers can “raise awareness of the importance of sustainable-thinking.” Graphic designers are often the link between the idea and the public. With their skills, designers play a crucial role in how this idea is presented. It is up to the designer to offer the best possible solution no matter how large the cause may be.

Not a designer, but believe that great design can bring power to these messages? Designers who want to do this work may be looking for your support… Check out these communities.

I browsed four lines at a time on my very first laptop, where I met and collaborated with strangers online to write stories, follow movements in my profession, further my education and my career. The best of the Internet has not changed a bit since those early days — sharing what we know to further knowledge for everybody. That was the whole point when it began, and that’s still its strength. People who forget what the internet is in its bones fail fast.

And so it tickles me when I see people — millions of them — making stuff and putting it out there, whose reward is answering the impulse to serve, because it’s a good idea and because they can. Lots of kids. Lots of weekend code jockeys, writers, all sorts of people whose passions keep them up all night, putting stuff online for other people to find.

Case in point: I like graph paper. I bet you do too. But it’s rarely where I need it when I need it. Enter printfreegraphpaper.com. It’s not a promotional site from a company, not a piece of a bigger pie. I became curious about the site’s builder, and dug around until I found him. Here’s Jeremy Hughes, presently of the U.S. Navy, answering my questions about this site he began when he was a student:

Jeremy, why did you make a graph paper site?

I originally made the site to support and promote a now defunct dictionary website I created. If I remember right, the graph paper was to allow the user to make custom crossword puzzles.

When choosing my domain name, I wanted something easy to remember. Well, the site fared so well so fast, far outperforming my struggling dictionary website, I decided to focus solely on that site, expanding the selection and improving the layout.

I bought the domain on February 27th 2005, and moved it to its home on March 3rd. To show you how well it took off, a couple days later on March 14th (Pi Day), USA Today listed my site as their hot site of the day.

Are you in a graph-paper-using profession? Or, like me, you like to sit and color in the boxes?

Um…. neither. I was pursuing a degree in architecture at the time, so I knew how to draft with the computer. I love math (even though I’m not that good at it), so I enjoyed making something relating to it. It was fun researching all the esoteric graph papers.

How does the site work? Does it generate the paper through dynamic PDFs, or… what? I’m not fluent in code, and can’t tell..

Originally, and currently, the site uses predesigned PDF documents I created, each one-by-one. However, I did explore creating dynamically generated documents. That project ended up being a black-hole of time, and was making the site’s layout too complicated with all the nuances that were possible. After realizing how much time I was putting into the project, knowing only a handful of people would benefit from the custom documents, while confusing the majority of site visitors with a complicated layout, I decided to scrap to project. You can still see some of my unfinished coding here.

Any credits we should mention (designers, cowriter/coders who deserve thanks/credit here?)

I needed a custom javascript function to allow me to accommodate hundreds of distinct graph paper documents into a single page. I hired online a coder from Italy named Georgio for that. It was fun working with someone living in a completely different timezone and who speaks only limited English, but we both shared the language of computer code.

Later with the site, I had a concept for a promotional postcard I wanted to send out to school teachers across the country, introducing my site. The concept referenced Harold Edgerton’s work and showed how with math theres both a theoretical and reality side. Even though the number crunching might be considered arduous, the reality can be full of energy and fun. I hired Vincent Penmann, a friend I met through a photography class to translate my sketches into print.

What kind of response are you getting?

Its been very favorable. I love finding my address on math class syllabuses. I even found a document on NASA’s website referencing my site to download polar graph paper for a friction workshop.

Who uses the site most, do you think?

I can tell by looking at my logs that most of my traffic is school kids doing their homework. Nobody likes doing their schoolwork on Friday or Saturday, but there’s a big rush Sunday night. It’s pretty steady on the weekdays.

Are there enough graph paper geeks out there finding your site and clicking on the Google ads to make it possible for you to live comfortably in Alaska?

My site’s been good to me. One great benefit is I did most of the work awhile ago and now I just need to pay to have my site hosted. It’s basically cashing in royalty checks for previous work.

What is the internet good for, anyway?

I think the internet is for sharing and communicating. When one can harness that power to their benefit without infringing on others, that’s great.

A few years ago I spent some time teaching Web design at Kendall College of Art & Design. This is a rough transcript of the lecture I used on the first day of each semester. It was designed to give a brief overview of the technologies, introduce some new concepts to the students, and scare as many as possible into dropping the class…

Hello. My name is John Winkelman, and I will be your instructor for this semester of Web I, Intro to Web Design.

Web design covers a lot of ground. There is the “look and feel” — what you see when you browse to a website. There is the underlying code that goes into the creation of a site. There is the collection of assets — photos, graphics, audio and video — all of which are part and parcel of a site. And there are the research and exploration that go into creating the overall user experience.

We have limited amounts of time and resources in this [as for most projects]. So we will focus on some of the simple aspects of Web design, diving as deeply as possible into the basics of writing the code that underlies every page on the Internet. We will focus on how to design websites, and in order to do so effectively, you will need to know what is possible and what is reasonable.

Roughly, the creation of a website can be broken into two parts: The visual design and the structure of the data. Or, information and the presentation of information. If this were bookbinding, the data would be the story and the presentation would be the physical parts of the book and the design choices such as typeface, cover design, type of paper and the like.

[At this point I pull up Google on the overhead projector.]

All of you have seen this page. You will probably be using it quite a lot over the course of this semester. This is about as simple as a Web page gets while still being useful. You are looking at the presentation of the page. This (here I “view page source” on the page) is the structure of the page. Not so simple, is it? Sometimes it takes a lot of work to make something elegant.

Okay. Let’s look at something a little more complicated (CNN.com). There is a lot going on in this page… (view page source) and the underlying structure of the page reflects that complexity.

Still awake? Good.

Here is another example, something I whipped up to be an easier introduction (a page where I have created an HTML version of the book The Adventures of Tom Sawyer).

Okay. This is about as simple as a content-heavy page gets. This is a novel, which means it has a title, subtitle, author information, chapter headers, and paragraphs. Simple, straightforward, and no real surprises. Look at the first few lines of text. Now, let’s look at the structure of this document (view page source).

Right up at the top, there are the same words, except they have a little extra around each chunk of text, which looks like this:

<p>the text</p>

Now is a good time to explain the first of two new languages you will learn in this class: HTML, which stands for HyperText Markup Language. Basically, this is a way of describing a chunk of content in such a way that it has logical structure. Hyper text. Text which describes text. This is necessary because we need to be able to control the structure of a document in order to be able to control the way it looks in a Web browser. In order to do this, there is another language — CSS, or Cascading Style Sheets — which we use to control the presentation of documents which we structure using HTML.

There is a third language which Web pages use to allow and control user interaction and manipulation of a document — JavaScript, which is often referred to in the shortened form “js.”

So… three languages. One for structure, one for presentation and one for interaction. Things, descriptions and uses. Nouns, adjectives and verbs. In this class we will be using only the first two. First, let’s talk about HTML…

Please stop crying. We still have a lot to cover today.

The first and primary use of a Web page is to display content of some kind. It doesn’t matter what this content is. It could be a photo gallery, a concert promo, a blog, a store or a corporate site. It could be simply text, like the Tom Sawyer example. It could be a Web-based game, like those found at Orisinal or Kongregate. It could be a movie appreciation site. It could be in English, Japanese, Arabic, Russian or French or all of these languages. Or it could be any combination of these. No matter what is presented to the user, under the hood the structure is fundamentally the same. HTML is HTML is HTML. At the base level, every web page in the world is created using the same tool set. And that is another way of thinking about HTML — it is a set of tools you use to build things. I guess in that sense, it kind of makes this class more of an apprenticeship.

Every chunk of content that you want to display on a website is one of a limited number of possibilities: A headline. A paragraph. A link. An image. A table. A list. Because it is a language, HTML has several layers of interpretation. It has syntax, which is the words available for use, and it has semantics, which is the way in which the words are used. Syntax and semantics. Describing things, and placing them in context with one another.

There are around 85 words in the HTML language, and they conform, more or less, with the uses to which they are meant to be put. For example:

<p></p> – Paragraph
<b></b> – bold text
<i></i> – italic text
<ol></ol> – ordered list
<table></table> – tabular data
<html></html> – an HTML document

(A list of all available words can be found here.)

Out of these words, you will probably use about twenty of them this semester. Notice that these words come in pairs, each half of the pair surrounded by angle brackets. Taken together, they are called “tags” or “elements” or “nodes.” Using these tags, we mark up a document to give it structure and meaning. Look at this example in a browser…

(The poem “The Raven.”)

In a browser, it is all jumbled together. No line breaks, no formatting of any kind. Just one big, long, run-on sentence. Now, we add a couple of tags to give this semantic meaning.

(A piece of “The Raven” with minimal HTML included: <p> tags around the stanzas.)

Now it looks a little better, doesn’t it? The stanzas are broken out. We have provided a little structure. We have given the distinct pieces of this poem meaning.

(Add headline tags around title and author.)

Now things are looking a even better. The title-level pieces of the document are called out as distinct units of information. Now let’s go one step further and add some line breaks to the ends of the lines.

(Add BR tags.)

Now it looks like a poem! All the lines break where they should. The title or headline and subtitle or subhead are obvious. The content has been structured so that it retains its original meaning. When the browser looks at a text document, it doesn’t automatically know what all the pieces and parts are. We have to tell it what they are.

Notice that other than adding those HTML elements to the document, I didn’t change how it was laid out. The breaks we put in aren’t necessarily part of the presentation of the document. The structure of a poem requires that lines end after specific words. Therefore the line breaks are part of the content.

Looking at this document with a Web browser, we can see the structure of the document. We have done nothing to say how it is to be presented. In order to do so, we need to use another language: CSS, also called Cascading Style Sheets, or simply stylesheets. We will learn about those after the break.

Any questions? No? Y’all already know everything there is to know about building websites? Good. My work here is complete.

To their credit, none of my students ever dropped the class because of this lecture.

A while ago, a colleague with a strong background in interactive design and user experience suggested that I attend An Event Apart in New Orleans with some of his team members. I had mentioned to him that I wanted to learn more about the Web; he suggested I dive right in.

From a communications standpoint, I was looking for ways to utilize online tools to help clients get their message out. What I learned was much more than that.

I listened to a series of speakers on topics ranging from design to best practices to technical application. Although some of the topics were a bit over my head, what became clear is that the people building the sites we visit every day are working hard to standardize, validate and communicate the importance of the work they are doing in this “young” medium.

Several speakers shared a common interest in pushing the medium to tell a better story. Perspectives on how to achieve this emphasized content, structure, usability, design, findability, and how all ingredients are necessary to deliver a meaningful experience.

Cameron Moll, author of Mobile Web Design, based his presentation on the importance of being solution-focused vs. problem-focused — how articulating the problem clearly gets us closer to an effective solution.

Happy Cog Studios designer Jason Santa Maria spoke about how design for the Web has been driven by technology rather than message, adding that the form of the design should be driven by the story.

Aaron Walter, author of Building Findable Websites, talked about the Semantic Web and how good content helps users find the sites they seek. He promoted the idea of providing rich information as the best way gain rank on user searches.

All of these speakers shared an interest in continual improvement. They discussed ways to work around technological limits to move the capabilities further. And they wanted help convincing clients and other influencers — many of whom may not be familiar with the format — to trust the designers’ expertise and allow them to guide clients through a process to achieve the clients’ goals.

Although I view a Web page on a flat screen, I have learned that there is dimension beyond the content and imagery presented there. In order to build that site, you have to consider the structure, the presentation and how it all behaves. All of those layers have their own parameters. It’s the magic in how they’re built and applied that results in a successful site on every level. It takes coordination and planning to do it right.

As someone with a print background, I drew many parallels to my first AIGA conference (which, coincidentally, also took place in New Orleans). It was 1997. I was one of many designers gathered to discuss issues across disciplines and gain inspiration from the speakers. More than that, we gathered to join in a movement to continue establishing credibility for our profession and promote the value that design brings to business.

An Event Apart seems to have similar intentions — and similar momentum. So I didn’t just test the waters. I dove in and got the whole experience. It gave me insight I wouldn’t have gained otherwise. The conference will definitely impact how I work with the people who build and design websites, and how I think about all that goes into doing their jobs well.

In 1948, Arthur C. Clarke wrote a short story called “The Sentinel.” Twenty years later, he expanded it into a novel while simultaneously co-writing Kubrick’s screenplay. I read the novel. Not only did it give me insight into the meaning of the movie, but it also gave me insight into the evolution of communication in the contemporary world.

The opening of the book portrays a primitive tribe of human ancestors fending for themselves in an early civilization. Clarke shows the beginning of humankind and how these early humans might have interacted with each other. My favorite part is when Clarke talks about how the generations passed on information. He writes that each generation of these early humans was only able to pass down about 20 percent of the knowledge it gained through its lifespan to the next generation. Thus society progressed, but at a very slow rate.

As the book shows, humankind has become a lot more efficient at passing on information since then. It all began with language and increasingly complex forms of communication. I think Arthur C. Clarke saw this as an evolutionary development, looking at humankind as a whole. These developments allowed humans to store information using common systems that were open for anybody to use. Orators and storytellers started to provide effective ways of passing on information to new generations. Forms of writing and education emerged, followed by early forms of printing. Much later telegraphs, telephones and televisions became even better tools for spreading information. Humankind was evolving as a single organism, and it was starting to become a more cohesive organism by creating common channels for sharing information.

The ease with which we can communicate today also makes it easier to preserve information and pass it to other parts of the world. This in turn preserves information by creating an infinite number of backups. Today the Internet is serving this purpose at the highest level. It not only allows people to communicate, it also stores those communications for everybody else to search. It not only lets people draw information from end products (like books and music), but also from everything that went into creating them. Mass amounts of knowledge at the everyone’s fingertips!

It can even help you figure out what that movie was about.

The complexity of design is often missed because our job, if done well, is to make things simple and easy to understand. Despite design’s rich history, not everyone knows or appreciates its impact on their daily lives. I don’t think the majority of people commonly consider design when holding a fork or loading laundry in a new front loading washer.

The part that innovation plays in evolving what we do and how we do it day-to-day is amazing when you do stop to think about it. Design is about function and purpose. If it’s successful, in a sense, it almost disappears or becomes an afterthought. Within our industry, I believe the benefits design brings to business are probably well understood, but the process to achieve them is not.

Recently I picked up a book by Alina Wheeler entitled Designing Brand Identity. It’s a great resource for anyone interested in the process of brand development and is outlined with wonderful visuals and quotes by notables in the design industry that support the thinking. What I love about it most is that it’s straightforward, yet doesn’t over simplify the necessary steps to achieve the best possible results. It’s clear that great design takes smarts, hard work and diligence. Because I work with this type of information every day, Wheeler’s book has become a valued reference for me. I refer to it in my own writing and have encouraged our designers here to spend some time with it themselves.

Many of the concepts we try to convey can be difficult for some people to understand. This book helps bridge that gap.One of the most important things we bring as designers is the ability to develop solutions that connect with people on an emotional level. We can do this not only because designers are problem solvers but because they have the ability to present the solution with insight, objectivity and creativity.

Design is receiving much recognition as a catalyst for driving success in the marketplace. You hear a great deal about designers finally being invited to sit at the business table. What we need to remember is that the seat at the table will remain open to us only if we continue to make our role clear and communicate the value we bring to business in the form of solutions. It’s no longer just about designing artifacts. It goes deep into understanding and impacting the customer’s experience, shaping perceptions and communicating effectively — to friends and all.

http://mercilessrobot.tumblr.com/

This is my blog. Any link, interesting thing that I see, hear, whatever. Funny stuff. Off topic things. They all will be here. Experience the event via links and side-thoughts.

Marie Claire and half of our interaction team are attending An Event Apart, down in New Orleans. This dispatch was the first in…
We just attended the first presentation here, Jeffery Zeldman‘s Understanding Web Design, he’s shared his presentation, and it was really good, he’s decided to share it with attendees, so ask me, if you want to see it.

My notes:

One of the main issues with the lack of understanding with the industry:
*No standards for job titles
*No real standards for ownership of the website, building, content, structure
*Still follow prejudices, gender issues, women who perceive there to be an issue with gender actually get paid more , and have better positions than those who don’t
*There’s no real place where non-understanders can go to see and understand what makes a good website

The Web, What is it good for? first it was an untapped marketplace, then blogging was good, then it was web 2.0, now it’s moving full hog into money. Landmark web design? Blogger templates, simple and appropriate.

Web design:
Should match the character of the content, reflect or adapt to content.
And change gracefully wile retaining their identity

How do we get good web design
*One persona at a time
*One persuasion at a time, sharing, evangelizing,
*Don’t work with/for friends, work within scope, sell ideas not pixels etc.
*Always bring it back to the user

Much to talk about, People.