Marketing and Management Thoughts

This is what the twitter community would look like if it was only 100 people. It’s a fun play off the ‘if the world was a village‘ concept. Thanks mkandlez, for the graphic.

One of the hardest parts of communication revolves around things that are so much bigger than we are. How do you communicate realities that are out of our grasp. This often has to do with large numbers (number of stars/people/bottles used etc), or with abstract concepts.

This video will inspire you as it does a brilliant job conveying a number of statistics in a visually complimentary way to the imagery already exists in the voice over/script. You’d be missing out not to watch it.

Jeffrey Zeldman comes up with a pretty insightful and funny/painful list of top cues for a designer/developer to walk away from a project before it every starts.

Some favorites are:

#7: Client can’t articulate a single desired user goal. He also can’t articulate a business strategy, an online strategy, a reason for the site’s existence, or a goal or metric for improving the website. In spite of all that, client has designed his own heavily detailed wireframes.

And

#20: Client begins first meeting by making a big show of telling you that you are the expert. You are in charge, he says: he will defer to you in all things, because you understand the web and he does not. (Trust your uncle Jeffrey: this man will micromanage every hair on the project’s head.)

Make sure you check it out if you are a designer for a smile.

If you aren’t a designer/developer check it out to get some insight into that world. Make sure to glance over some of the comments to hear their thoughts.

It’s important in any line of work (professional or hobby) to keep tabs on what others are doing. I follow all these blogs (and then some) to keep my eyes sharp and my mind inspired in the realm of design. If you aren’t currently using a feed aggregator like Google Reader you should really start (lets you keep up with news/blog updates all in one place). Subscribe to our blog, and the blogs listed below.

6 Blogs You’ve Gotta Read

1. Swiss Miss – General Design (http://swissmiss.typepad.com/weblog/)
   Tina Roth Eisenberg keeps this blog packed full of great design work on a daily basis.
2. notcot – General Design (http://www.notcot.com/)
   Kept up by a teamof bloggers who post about all things design. Worth checking out (and they are doing christmas product give aways right now, and it’s free to enter!).
3. Brand New – Brand/Identity (http://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/)
   A beautiful blog when it comes to brand identities. They focus mainly on re-branding of large brands (like Pepsi, Delta, banks, ect). The insights shared on the new brands are really helpful to start/continue forming an eye for identify/brand development.
4. Fubiz – Video/Motion Design (http://www.fubiz.net/blog/)
   Most of what they post at Fubiz involves motion art. These videos are really well done and an inspiration to the multi-media designer inside me. I do realize this site is in french, but they post such visually stunning work (much of which is actually in English).
5. TypeNEU – Type Design (http://www.typeneu.com/)
   Type faces are gorgeous. The right type face changes everything. The days of papyrus and comic sans are long gone. This blog will help you realize the current trends in fonts, and gain an appreciation for this, all to often, overlooked art of typeface design.
6. I Love Typography – Type Design (http://ilovetypography.com/)
   Similar to TypeNEU, focuses on typography and has a lot of stunning content for inspiration.

Still not enough designy goodness?

Below are even more blogs to check out.

• http://www.productdose.com/
• http://www.oberholtzer-creative.com/visualculture/
• http://www.designspotter.com/
• http://designnotes.info/
• http://mocoloco.com/