Web Design

Behold the future. And it is good.

Fire up your smart phone (Droid, Blackberry, HTC or even your fancy shmancy new iPhone 4G) and keep reading.
 
You’ve heard of 1-800 numbers, Purls, Texting, and even the most ancient form of response – the reply slip in the #9 envelope. Introduce, the Quick Response code, aka QR code.

If you were at the Career College Association’s Annual Convention this year, you might have noticed that there was a funny block of black and white squares (similar to a bar code) on the registration form for the guitar giveaway at the PlattForm booth. If you happened to scan that with your smartphone, and applicable app, you would have been taken to a mobile-ready mini site that had several links to PlattForm related topics. Such as the “We’re not Gonna Take It” video, PlattForm’s main website, and several other informational pages. That block of squares is what is known as a QR Code.
 
Quick Response (QR) code is a 2D glyph that serves as, well, basically think of it as a paper based hyperlink. These customizable glyphs were developed by in Japan by Denso Wave in 1994. They are widespread in Asia, becoming mainstream in Europe, and are just starting to emerge in the United States. The QR code reader currently has to be downloaded as a third party application, but are starting to be included as standard issue on modern smart phones.
 
To use a QR code, simply take a picture of said code with your super cool smart phone, and you get magically whisked away, or in technical terms, redirected to a website using your phone’s browser. What’s even cooler, is that these codes can be scanned from computer monitors so you can transfer information directly to your cell phone.
 
QR technology provides cell phone users the ability to scan paper-based content using the cell phone’s camera to decode information, on a magazine, business card, gift card, coupon, or dah-dah-dah, DIRECT MAIL PIECE. Once the QR code has been scanned and decoded, the user has access via their cell phone to the information or destinations programmed into the block.
 
What can you do with a QR code?
Consumers are finding codes in magazine ads, maps, food packaging, posters, leaflets, business cards, emails, websites, billboards, on the sides of buses, and more. With these vehicles in mind, the current technology could be used in the following manner:

Encode a 2 page document
Enable an easy connection by a mobile device to a website. You could also encode a map with directions for company visitors
Link to a video
Track print-based media effectiveness – track by concept, list, creative, etc.
If you can put it on a website, you can direct them to it through scanning the code

PROS
· 70% of cell phones have cameras
· 2D reader software available for easy (and usually FREE) download
· You don’t have to type in a URL to navigate to a website
· Codes are cheap to create
· Fast way to provide complex information to mobile users
 
CONS
· Not widely used in the USA yet
· Probability of short term user confusion as 2D codes are known by many names
· Most cell phones in the US do not come with 2D reader software installed
· QR codes can not be edited, they must be replaced
· The more information you store in a code, the harder it is to decode.
 
So, get ready for the future. The most effective way to determine how QR codes can work for you – test them. Need some help? We’d be glad to fire up the Delorean and come visit.

Brant Burt is the manager of the Web Design team here at PlattForm. He was involved in a horrific car accident on January 27. Brant’s injuries were so severe that the police had started filling out the death report at the scene. Miraculously, Brant survived … but with serious head trauma.

After a nearly month-long coma, Brant started to stir. Of course, no one knew the extent of his brain injury or what to expect. One minute Brant was minding his business driving to work on a snowy January morning. The next minute this father of three was fighting for his life.

Brant’s condition continues to improve every day. He’s awake, alert and is constantly trying to hug his kids. He’s also becoming a bit more chatty as he starts to remember things. If there was ever a poster child for a miracle — it’s Brant — or as his family calls him “BB”.

Brant’s wife keeps friends and family (and the entire ad agency) up-to-date about Brant on a website. It’s a novel and new fangled approach to giving status updates. You can read more about Brant at http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/brantburt.

From my time working with him at PlattForm, I found him to be a social, gentle spirit with an extreme passion for his family and all things outdoors. Brant has months and months of recovery ahead of him. PlattForm continues to help in any way they can. And the family is holding a massive fundraiser on May 16 to raise funds for much-needed therapy and continued rehabilitation. A slew of PFormers will be involved and yours truly is emceeing the event. It’s just reinforces how close-knit our agency really is.

If anyone can survive a horrendous car accident and live to tell about it … it’s Brant. The man has a lot to live for. His brain spent nearly a month re-wiring itself. And now the prognosis for recovery looks promising. So we’re all keeping our fingers crossed and wishing the best for Brant. We miss you! And, for the record, I’ll never look at a mountain biker the same way again. The next time I think I have a hurdle to overcome, I’ll think of Brant. Everyone appreciates his amazing strength and fortitude. Looks like this is just one more mountain he’ll tackle and overcome.

Designers like myself sometimes need inspiration. There are books and sites dedicated to providing designers with inspiration (usually in the form of other design). But I’ve found a better source: Colour Lovers. It’s an online community of people who just love color. They love discussing it, admiring it, and matching it with other colors. The discussions are both interesting and informative (scroll to the bottom of the homepage for blog posts), but the matching that’s the real beauty in that site. Color palettes. Thousands of them, all chosen by creative individuals with an eye for design.

The palettes are given keywords to describe them, and the keywords are searchable on the site. So if I’m looking for a set of vintage colors, or a palette that evokes citrus or autumn, they’re easy to find. Users also rank the palettes, so you can browse through the palettes that the users of the site liked the best. Just browsing through the first few pages, here are a few good combinations I found:

Giant Goldfish
London Bus
Trip Through Clouds
Choc Mint
Sugar Bamboo

Colour Lovers also has an option to search for a color range. So you can narrow the color range to, say, shades of crimson and find all palettes that contain at least one color in that range. This is great if you’re trying to find colors to match a logo or a picture, or if you’re trying to find a color to paint the walls of your house to match your furniture.

I this method over looking at other websites because it’s a much more raw source of inspiration. There’s no fretting about copying a design, or needing to change it enough so it’s not just an imitation of the inspiration. Certain combinations of colors evoke certain feelings, but it’s still up to the designer to interpret those feelings and present them properly.

There have been many recent additions to the Content Management System (CMS) family in the past few years. In this article, I would like to state some of the pros and cons of the ones that I use the most: Drupal, WordPress, and Code Igniter. Named in order by personal preference, each of these systems provide different features that can make your website building experience pleasant. None the less, there are some features that may give you a headache that you probably can do without.

Drupal

Personally, Drupal is the lesser of the 3. Not that it’s lacking any major factor that I would like, but simply because it is too complex for its purpose. It is built for with the aim of ease of usage for the developer, but ends up being a lot more than needed. Drupal does have many modules that are creative and useful for focusing on social media networking and a large network of dedicated users who provide help and assistance for other users. The hardest thing to do in Drupal is styling which forces the developer then to focus more on the design rather than the functionality. Don’t get me wrong, it is a very useful system for someone who never intends to touch the site’s files or make any changes to a downloaded theme. I would recommend Drupal to anyone who’s computer programming skill level is beginner.

WordPress

This may be the easiest “CMS” system to manipulate in terms of having a fully usable admin panel, the ability to add other users and the flexibility to edit site files and style sheets from the web browser. What WordPress does do, is limit the users to a single content type of ‘post’. This is not good for advanced developers who prefer to have dynamic websites with numerous types of content most likely with different fieldnames and types in the database. However, just like Drupal, WordPress has Support forum and a big user network of other developers that can answer any questions. This is very useful for ANYONE who wants to have a website up and running in 5 minutes. I prefer WordPress over Drupal simply because Drupal is a nightmare for developers who need to do some advanced styling.

Code Igniter

Code Igniter, to me, is the best option for ALL developers, beginners or advanced. Some may ask why… It doesn’t provide any admin interface nor does it automatically create any of your database tables unless you tell it to, who why would I recommend it to everyone? Because it helps the developer to actually learn what is happening in the background so that they could handle any issues that come up. It provides functions that make the coding more centralized, similar to the WordPress and Drupal backend, which the developer can use as needed and just like the other two systems, Code Igniter has a support forum for helping developers. Code igniter has useful features such as the ability to cache pages as they are loaded (user specified), easy URL redirection and it even allows you to create your website in such a manner, that if you decided to change servers, the move would be a snap.

Each one of these systems has their own trait and provides developers with a starting point to be more creative. My personal favorite is Code Igniter for corporate or personal websites so give it a spin and let me know what you think.

Imagine the Vice President of Client Services of an ad agency walking into an office and finding a man in ripped jeans, sandals, and a Ghostbusters t-shirt on the phone with one of the clients.

“What are you doing?” she might ask.

“I’m talking to a client about the best marketing strategy for their product,” the man replies.

“But Jim, you’re not on our business team. You’re a network administrator,” she says.

“I know, but I took a business class in high school. Also, my son has a small business selling lemonade on the sidewalk, so you could say I have some experience as well.”

Sound ridiculous? Well, it is. But this is what creative professionals have to deal with on an almost weekly basis. Consider some of the comments we’ve heard throughout the years:

“My secretary drew up a design for our new Web site in Microsoft Paint. Could you show that to your design team?”

“Let’s make all of the headers into images. I know that violates accessibility standards and borders on discrimination, but I really like that font.”

“Maybe we could put bright red text on a bright yellow background. You know, the hot dog palette.”

We’re taught in grade school that everyone is creative, and we’re taught later in life that creativity is present in everyone, lying dormant in some but waiting to be awakened gloriously and applied brilliantly. And, to some degree, this is true. But, in reality, some people are more creative than others. Part of this has to do with the way some people think, but part of this also has to do with experience. Writers who read and write often are almost always better than writers who don’t, and the same holds just as true in other applications of creativity as well.

On top of that, creativity is only half of what goes into conceiving a great Web site. There are also things like readability, accessibility, usability, color psychology, cross-browser differences, file sizes, and server technology, to name a few. For instance, did you know that reading text over a yellow background is extremely hard on the eyes and, over time, can lead to vision loss? Did you know that designing Web sites that are accessible to those with visual disabilities isn’t just a nice idea—it’s the law? These are things Web designers grapple with every day.

Now, I’m not saying that designers should run wild and do whatever they want. I fully realize that the only reason we have the jobs we do is because of clients and that our whole job is to meet our clients’ needs—and trust me when I say that creative types need some constraints to actually get any work done. All I’m trying to say is that we’ve worked hard to develop an expertise in our area. We cater to client needs, but sometimes the clients don’t fully understand the issues involved in their needs.

Oftentimes, creative teams are handed tasks that have been determined by earlier conversations between client service representatives and clients. While this works, projects could potentially be much more effective if experts from the creative team were present for the discussion of the client’s needs and the actual formation of their solutions. (Please note that this is something that PlattForm actually does. I’m not trying to call out anyone in our company.)

So step one to making the creative types and the business types play nice together: play to each of their strengths. Let the business people be the experts in the business side of things and let the creative people be the experts in the creative side of things, and integrate both types into decision-making processes with clients. Next article: putting constraints on creativity without hampering it.