When I first got into web development I didn’t realize the difference between Interactive and IT disciplines. Perhaps it was naiveté, or perhaps they weren’t so well defined at that time. I thought building web sites was technical; anyway, it was the first time ad agencies employed programmers.

The Internet was born out of IT. So I guess hardcore ITers have a sense of ownership over it. But IT blew it. They could have kept the Internet for themselves and dominated the web market, but IT didn’t have what it takes to create web sites that effectively communicate and still doesn’t.

Along came Interactive born from ad agencies and communications firms. Interactive’s initial job was to convert traditional messages to the web, the new medium. Since that meager start, Interactive has grown into a full fledged discipline, pushing the web farther and faster than it ever would have gotten with IT alone.

My experience in an Interactive environment is much different than mine with an IT one. Interactive folks usually love the increased capability to do something cool technologically. Interactive designers are always fighting technology’s boundaries and good IT people help enlarge their sandbox. They like that, but they don’t like it when their work relies on an IT person to implement it and can’t execute it properly. In an Interactive environment, an IT person quickly learns about details. IT folks don’t seem to have any respect for Interactive. Graphics are not important when compared to functionality and a lowly script monkey can’t have a better approach than a “real” programmer that knows C++.

Interactive has grown up and there are very talented, intelligent programmers that do not have the IT mindset. The tools used in Interactive work have become powerful and complex. Interactive is encroaching on IT’s space, but IT hasn’t countered. They still can’t communicate well and can’t create good interfaces.

However, these two strange bed fellows need each other: art oriented Interactive and science based IT. A few companies have successfully merged the two, but that is a rare find. What strikes me as odd, today, at a time when the two disciplines are closer than ever before when it comes to level of skill; the two are no closer in how they are perceived in the corporate world. An example of this is how Human Resources Departments treat the two disciplines. A web developer from an Interactive shop does not compare well to a web developer from IT department of a large corporation even if they have the same skills. Job title and pay scales are often different. Another instance is many companies’ web departments are part of the marketing department. Why not the IT department? It seems IT is trying to keep Interactive people from crossing over into their world - competition I guess.

Good work is both technical and creative and a web site cannot succeed without either. It is information technology AND interactive. The sooner these two disciplines learn to play nicely the better off the industry is. After all, we’re all working for clients and share similar experiences.

I understand you’d like to make some changes to the design of your web site. It's certainly your prerogative to do so, but please allow me to provide some rationale and justification for the design and recommend the best way to make changes.

While planning the design, specific requirements were determined that dictated several aspects of the design: style, structure, features, and ease of maintenance to name a few. During the creative process these requirements were integrated into the design along with current designs trends, compatibility with existing collateral, and coexistence with the company logo. The designer and creative team also infused their vision and expert judgement into the design and the results are the culmination of several iterations of this process.

Once completed, a design has balance between individual elements and overall integrity. Any changes to these elements should be done to maintain this balance and integrity. The best way this is achieved is by using, through repetition and variation, the graphical lexicon already available from the design: colors, type choices, textures, lines, shapes and effects. Introduction of any new elements into this lexicon can easily upset the balance and weaken the integrity of the design.

You like the design, or at least you say you do. We like the design. It represents your company well in the market place. It stands up against current trends and styles and it meets the requirements. Before changing anything, we ask to go through the same process as initially done, letting those you trusted to create the site workout a solution that addresses the need for a change. Don’t just go with someone’s suggestions even though they may seem valid at first and the person is respected. Before making changes, the benefits of the changes should be fully considered and weighed against the potential impact and resulting expense.

This is how a brand uses the Internet effectively.

http://www.cpbgroup.com/awards/vwgtiintegrated.html

This guy is funny, clever and is using the web very effectively for his own betterment. Go ZeFrank!

This is the first thing I saw of his a couple years ago. Priceless.

I attended the St. Louis Web Developers monthly meeting last night. The topic was Ruby On Rails. As I’ve written before, I’m interested in RoR, for the huge productivity agains (5X-20X) and its simplicity. The complexity of ASP.NET, my primary programming technology, does not sit well with me for small projects and RoR may be the alternative I’m looking for.

The presenter compared the excitement over RoR to the Java revolution a decade ago, but as of yet this fledgling language and framework hasn’t eked out any enterprise market share. My biggest concern is resource availability. It’s difficult for me to justify building a site with this for a client. Then they can’t find anyone to work on it other than me. I advocate using technologies that are widely accepted for that reason. Another reason to be tentative is hosting options. It’s also easy to be seduced by how quickly one can generate a simple app performing CRUD operations, but what happens when requirements demand a piece of complex functionality and being new to the technology hinders one’s ability to predict difficulties ahead.

I guess I need to get a book and learn more. If I start using this language perhaps my comfort level will increase, and as demand rises, I may be ahead of the curve – not a bad place to be.

10-19-73 is the portofolio of my friend and designer Jason Kelley.

Great work, texture, type and photography.

I haven’t found many St. Louis ad folks using the web - not just on the web, but actually using it. Paul Macfarlane, of The 1101 Experiment, uses the web in his own unique fashion.  His site is different in its presentation - refreshing actually - and he has a diary too. 

Paul’s an interesting person. One wouldn’t expect someone like Paul to be in the ad biz, but Paul’s creative energy needs a venue. His work is outstanding. It always has an edge, makes a point and works on several levels. I’ve known him for quite a while and always wanted to work with him. A conversation with Paul is always a joy.

Paul has recorded some monologs with Act 3 Studios, a STL web shop, that are worth a listen. Act 3 is also using the web by specializing in audio and Podcasts under the moniker, Designing the Story.

I met Arnold Newman about 10 years ago. Mr. Newman is photography royalty. He came to St. Louis for an ASMP lecture. Brian Kuhlman and I had the opportunity to spend quite a bit of time with him during his visit. Mr. Newman was very kind and accommodating.

It's funny how when one's reputation precedes them the actual meeting is somewhat surreal and unexpectedly quiet. The work is larger than the man, if that's possible.

He signed posters and told anecdotes. He seemed like it was just another day at work for him. And it was, but not for us. Arnold Newman died last week.

Thank you Mr. Newman.

STLToday has its new homepage up. From seeing the news page yesterday, I envisioned it would look better. I was wrong. It’s big. Really big. Wide and long. A sea of high-contrast. Why so much same size, no leading, bold type?

I guess you can say it’s newspaper-like because of its size, but it’s certainly not good web. Above the fold is prime web real estate. Could more space be wasted at the top? The feature callout in the center is weak, but I see Flash is suitable for their advertisers now. There’s inconsistent use of section headers. No hierarchy of content other than placement. What’s with the random colors in the “What You’re Looking For” section?

With all the fine examples of news sites and portals out there how can anyone think this design is acceptable? I give them a ‘F’.

STLToday, stop trying to design this site yourself. You don’t have what it takes. Hire professionals. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch newspaper was recently redesigned by professionals and it looks good. Do the same for this. Please!

A creative fellow, Transfatty, with a terminal disease trying to make a difference.

I worked with the team that originally designed STLToday. The idea was to have a news site with a magazine layout: white space, uncluttered copy, limited use of banners ads, easy look at, and style. The Managing Director, who is no longer there, had a cutting-edge vision for a news web site.

When the site launched in 2000 the St. Louis Post-Dispatch newspaper, the owner, also had their news site running, postnet.com, but STLToday aggregated news from several sources – no easy task – and was intended to be different from the newspaper’s site.

Almost immediately the vision began to fade.

Within the first month all Flash was removed from the site. At that time the Macromedia Flash player has 92% market penetration and the few people that complained got their way. Luckily, we were able to replace the Flash elements with DHTML and kept the design intact.

The site lost money because of its policy not to have a lot of ads. They pursued sponsors for sections and tastefully displayed that affiliation, but it wasn’t profitable. The visionary Director was replaced and the site’s metamorphosis hastened.

Slowly, the new Creative Director began to change the look and in a few months the site did not resemble its original self; bevels, drop shadows and bad graphics invaded the tasteful layout. About that time the newspaper closed its site and decided STLToday would stand for all. Here came banner ads, a lot of banners. They also began to employ Flash overlay ads – those are sexy. White space was no more and clutter, compressed clutter, dominated the design.

Last year the site was completely redesigned. A hard-to-look-at red and 3D Photoshop effects prevailed. This design was ridiculous. People must have complained. (As of 6/14/2006 the homepage is this design.)

St. Louis’ number one web site, according to the STLToday, has a new look, or as of today, 6/14/2006, part of a new look.

The new design, shown on the main news and other sections, keeps the red, but it’s toned down a bit. The ads are still everywhere, but there’s more white space and they have widened the layout for 1024px wide screens. I bet they’ll hear about that. Gone are the Photoshop effects – must be a new Creative Director. This is a move in the right direction, but I wouldn’t call the design good, but it is much easier to look at. Hopefully they’ll continue to improve it and get rid of that red altogether.

I’d like to see STLToday be successful and look good, but they have a lot of work ahead. One of their biggest problems is their owner. Another is they run the site on an IBM Lotus Notes system and Domino server. This is not the easiest animal to tame. They would be better served with a different technology. There’s also the whole Web Standards thing. This is a perfect case for Web Standards. Just think of the flexibility they’ll have, less bandwidth use and improved accessibility.

I wish they would have left it as it was originally. Maybe it wasn’t perfect, but it was much better than anything they’ve had since.

I’ve never claimed the title of web designer. I find good designers to work with on projects, but I’m very slowly stepping into the realm of web design. Sure, I’ve designed a few sites, am pretty good with Photoshop, have an art degree, a professional photography career and worked with some very talented people, but that isn’t the same as being a designer, although it hasn’t hurt. As part of my continuing education in design, I study typefaces; good designers use type well and type is tough – so many choices – so much bad use.

Type is so important. It is the thing people stare at most when looking at a web page and the web is not type friendly. The low, screen resolution destroys subtlety in rastorized type and the limited variety of system fonts for HTML text can be boring. However, new web design trends have focused more on typography. Mixing serif and sans-serif styles in unique ways, oversized headline type, pixel fonts and CSS techniques haven given the web new flavor and improved readability.

I have found several notable font resources in my quest to learn more about type. Here are a few favorites:

http://www.fontlover.com/ - portal

http://www.fontscape.com/ - portal

http://store.adobe.com/type/index.html - nice histories for each face

http://www.emigre.com/ - cool type foundry

http://www.p22.com/ - artistic fonts

http://www.microsoft.com/typography/default.mspx - yes, Microsoft. They have a nice resource list and have been doing quite a bit of R & D into new screen type faces.

An article on Vitamin by David Greiner from Campaign Monitor sharing some good info on building HTML emails.

For the past year I have witnessed, an unfortunate saga: a web project led by a marketing firm that partnered with an IT vendor gone bad. The marketing firm has some web experience, but not substantial enough to produce the site alone. An IT “partner” was needed for technical resources and experience in the client’s business sector.

Here’s a list of events and circumstances that have transpired with this relationship:

• Partner could not satisfy interface design requirements. The marketing firm ended up doing a lot of extra work not budgeted
• The first demo of the beta site was not ready and had a lot of bugs. The presentation had to be conducted carefully skipping the functionality that did not perform correctly
• During periodic reviews, revisions were not implemented correctly, or in a timely manner, creating more unbudgeted work for the marketing firm
• Requirements continued to be unmet creating a great deal of frustration and doubts of the project’s success. The “partner” even refused to comply with contractual requirements for no legitimate reason
• Subsequent site demos were done with mixed and often embarrassing results
• After site launch, errors were occurring, excuses, assumptions and accusations abound
• Now the focus has turned to contractual obligations and possible litigation

It’s a shame there are unprofessional companies like the vendor in this story. This company lied, cut corners, had no respect for their client, or the project and obviously bit off more than they could chew.

All these issues are a Quality Control (QC) problem. A good QC plan could have brought attention to the trouble early and early usually means with less costs, or consequences.

A good QC plan:

• Is part of the contract or separate service agreement
• Details the QC process
• Lists requirements, tolerances, expectations, practices
• Assigns roles and responsibilities
• Has a schedule for periodic, performance reviews (with short intervals)
• Explains the consequences for failing to meet requirements

Marketing firms, agencies and other communication firms involved in web development often do not have the resources for this responsibility. A solution would be to hire a consultant to handle quality control. He/She would audit the vendor and assure compliance to contractual requirements and make sure best practices are adhered to during development. The money spent on this consultant would have minimized the extra burden on the marketing firm’s resources. If this person had the right skill set, he/she could also have assisted in development at times where the vendor faulted, keeping the quality of the project intact.

Don’t put your company in this situation. Plan for how Quality Control will be addressed and how these risks will be mitigated. You’ll sleep better for it.

Very well done.

http://www.koreus.com/media/animator-vs-animation.html

I’m for copyright protection as much as anyone, but it seems there are times when it goes too far. Three examples come to mind. The most recent is the litigation surrounding the term Web 2.0. The term was coined by a company for a conference, but has grown to represent more than that.

Two other, bigger, instances of copyright protection gone awry are Final Four, the NCAA basketball tournament, and Superbowl. Recently broadcast media and advertisers have had to awkwardly dance around these two terms. Copyright them if you like, but allow the use for reasonable purposes. They have grown to larger than life proportion and it doesn’t make sense to prohibit their use, since most uses benefit the authors. Copyright can still be enforced in case of malicious activity.