What colours mean

Designers often develop associations with different colours. Some are instinctual, and some are cultural. Actually, they're probably mostly cultural. Here's mine:

• Gray: Nothingness; Insanity
• Black: Mystery; the Unknown
• Green: Change
• Red: Excitement; Danger
• Blue: Freedom
• Pink: Safety
• White: Clean; Emptiness

What are some of your colour associations?

And did you know that each hue has a frequency? I suspect that the colour combinations we know and love -- the relationships, I mean, like primary, tertiary etc -- are analogous to musical chords.

Does anybody know how many octaves are in a rainbow?

"The 7 Notes of the Octaves of Light and Music: 

Red	Orange	Yellow	Green	Blue	Indigo	Violet
C	D	E	F	G	A	B

- The Metaphysics of Music and Harmony

So that's why deaf people can watch music. That's cool.

The little details... like search engine listings text

This is why it's a good idea to Google your own business... you might end up noticing some embarrassing details like this one:


Unless you're deliberate about which text gets added to your URL in a Google search result, it could end up grabbing the worst possible thing off the page: the text that's not about your business.

Here's another example of the same problem in a different spot:

This happens to so many newsletters. The first piece of text the browser sees is the thing about images. Everybody knows about this, and the email should communicate effectively and look great without images loading. Watch out for this.

The Institution of Me: Selling Yourself vs. Adding Value

I do not know how to begin this article, because it's about a phenomenon that I can't pin down. It's about employment, youth, and the current economic climate.

A few things are adding up these days:

• Being an employee isn't so great anymore. It no longer gives you job security, a role in the decision-making, or a share of the company's identity. That means that people are navigating a course through one role after another, for one company after another.
• Our marketable skill base continues to diversify. People can't tell how focused they should be with their skill-building, and are aiming for the sweet spot between being the best at a trade that may disappear at any moment, or being a "jack-of-all-trades, expert at none." Of course I believe that one's implementation of their set of skills and talents forms their proficiency.
• The focus of prescribed youth culture has alighted upon discovery of and promotion of one's personality and skillset. From what I can see, it's been a collective effort of our societal focus on individuality and personal growth, as well as the dominating effect of hip hop culture which encourages youth to be their own biggest advocate, unabashedly singing their own praises and beating their own drums.
• All this focus on individuality is a bandwagon in itself, and the culture and language of self-promotion has spread and standardized itself. It's become the collective mantra of the next generation. I think that, paradoxically, it hampers creative individual discovery.

I'd like to come to my point now: I'm concerned that personal development can easily get overshadowed by self-promotion. When somebody can say "I've been working on this and have learned how to do that," it expresses something that is real, and that is beyond speculation. It's not bragging and it's not formulated specifically to influence other people's perception of a personal brand.

Really, we're all just people with unique combinations of activities and interests. If I develop an approach to some field of work, then that approach itself can be seen as a brand. If I use it to deal with several different services or products, each of those could be branded and promoted on its own, but what's the point in setting oneself up with more branding responsibilities than is necessary? If, on the other hand, I decide that I myself am the brand, and everything I do falls under one umbrella, that's another impossible branding challenge, because a personality just isn't tangible enough, and slapping a unifying label on everything I do would change the way I think of myself and develop. That just creates other problems.

So what I'm proposing is a middle-path solution to branding and self-promotion:

1. The pursuit of one's own interests and curiosity adds value to a uniquely diverse skill-set, whereas the construction of a prescribed, generic skill-set tends to limit one's opportunities.
2. It's easier for a person to talk about the things they're actually doing or curious about doing than to discuss their own qualities and proficiencies. It also makes it easier for others to set them up with opportunities.
3. It just looks better from the outside to see someone working hard on the things that excite them, than it does when they're working hard to get others to get others excited.
4. It's better to be known as an accomplished and active person than as a driven and ambitious one.
5. It's often easier for someone to excel at doing something in their own way, and to deal with the challenges of communicating that unique approach, than it is to make a generic and common approach work for them. It's also easier to find one's niches, and it seems like niches are where all the value is.

I certainly know both kinds of people.

I have a friend who's doing tremendously well with developing her career in production. She's not afraid to switch gears and learn new things even if it puts her back into the position of being a novice, because she knows that new skills add value to old ones. She never runs out of interesting things to talk about because she's always focused on doing rather than saying. She gets discouraged by setbacks but doesn't stop doing what she's doing, because to her it's not all about "me: the brand," it's about "the work I'm doing."

And I have a friend who's always talking about what he's going to be doing, asking people around him to recommend him to other people, and talking about the future. About the company he's building, about how he deals with people, about all the obstacles and people trying to keep him from achieving his goals. Meanwhile, not a lot of work is getting done on his actual materials. Hours are wasted on the phone, and months go by without any actual development being done. He's stuck, and because he's being told by people on all sides that he's got to "sell" himself, and because that's all he's ever been told, he feels really isolated and just digs himself in deeper, ramping up his self-promotion efforts instead of developing what he's offering for sale.

I've always felt like, in terms of my music career, I'd prefer to have a few really serious fans, who absolutely love my music and will love it forever, than a ton of fans who are just kind of into it. And it's the same with anything else.

Here are some rules of thumb that relate to this:

• Quality over quantity
• Show me (don't tell me)
• It doesn't have to be perfect (just better)
• Don't stop doing what you're doing ('cause you're doing it right)

Why NOT to Have a Website

For small business people and artists, maintaining a website, especially a traditional website, and especially a really slick one, is a big task to add to the to-do list. And even with a lot of initial effort and the regular content updates that make a site worthwhile, it's still not enough - in order to stay fresh and functional as things change, it'll need to be changed and redesigned from time to time. Most people have an easier time changing their signage and business cards than their website, and they end up wondering whether it's helping or hurting their goals.

For users who clearly don't need a custom site, I recommend blogging instead, because it serves most people's needs and doesn't cost them much. Web designers (like me) who previously had a hard time offering good value to small businesses are now finding ways to visibly re-brand Wordpress, Blogger and Tumblr accounts, making them more appealing to clients who don't like the idea of geeky logos appearing on their sites.

Most people, however, don't need to do any web publishing. They just need the equivalent of a business card and a sign - online. They need to communicate the basic format of what they're offering, whether it's great sandwitches or great dog photos, and how they can be contacted.

For people using the internet to find products and services, what matters most is being able to find the information they're looking for, and assess how fresh and accurate it is. They'll do a search, check whichever sources of information look promising, and then choose among them depending on which seems most accurate.

Let's examine a typical internet task:

1. Search for store name + city name
2. Scan the top results that look related, and open the official site, as well as a community business listing, in new tabs.
3. Since the business listing and the official site list different hours, get phone number off official site, as it's more likely to be accurate.
   At this point, having to make a phone call for information that should be available online may derail the task, especially if a competing business offers information with a recent date on the content.
4. The business has to deal with another extra phone call.

This is pretty typical on the internet. This business could improve their initial interaction with the customer in three ways:

1. Maintaining awareness of their own online presence, so they knew where their information would need to be updated, and take control over their third-party community listing, and
2. Indicating when the information was last changed, assuring web users that the information has been recently approved by management.
3. Providing a calendar of any closure dates - statutory and bank holidays for example.

Here are some advantages of using 3rd-party listings, social networking and media sharing sites instead of or in addition to an official website.

• Users trust and understand them already.
• It's easy to make it clear that the information is official and up-to-date.
• They're maintained by large companies with research & development budgets, so they can worry about keeping them up-to-date, on their dime.
• Even if their site is tacky, it only reflects on them, not your business.
• Listings sites index very well in search engines - usually better than private websites.
• They usually allow for user comments, which enhances credibility.
• They're well-supported because of their size, so if you need help with something, it's easy to find the answers.
• It's more reliable - less likely to go offline, get attacked, be accidentally blocked by Google, or suffer from traffic overload.
• Businesses benefit by being listed together, providing a context of competitive representation that attracts people's attention, just like stores benefit from themed districts in a city.
• It's much easier to prepare and present the content, because each listings or sharing site has a format that's easy to follow.
• Maintaining several different listings and accounts might seem like a repetitive hassle, but each of them serves a different kind of community in a way that suits them. Each site is an opportunity to present information in a way that maximizes that format and engages that audience.

Some online directories, such as online yellow pages, are open-ended, and some are specific to an industry or a niche, like TripAdvisor.

The real meat of engaging with one's online presence is researching these opportunities, and they're different for everyone and every business. With a little research, anyone can find out where they belong online - and then it's just a matter of keeping things up-to-date, responding to comments, and continuing the research as the landscape changes in reaction to their efforts.

So as usual, the message is, you don't need to spend a bunch of money or waste a bunch of time to look good and get things done on the 'net. It just takes a bit of patience, like everything else about doing business.

Even if you are maintaining profiles on 3rd-party sites, it's nice to have an official site to "anchor" and connect all the online profiles. And it's a good reason to develop an internet presence before creating a private website. But if it takes time away from responding to comments and keeping your profiles and listings fresh, and especially if it doesn't contain content that's not available elsewhere and couldn't be presented better elsewhere, then it's slowing things down.

Anatomy of a "Web-Assisted Sale"

A sales inquiry can come through a chain of events, starting with a search, a link, or a referral, and doesn't necessarily involve a custom website

Here's how internet traffic can be funneled into a phone call that will actually get you some cash:

So here's a typical web-assisted sale:

1. A "wanna turn into a" buyer is trying to solve a problem of theirs: they need and do not have something that you happen to have for sale (and just to brag, if you're among my clients, you're fortunately their best choice). So that's about whether or not they find you while on the hunt for something that you can get them. If, on the other hand, they're interested in you specifically, curious about what you offer, then a tiny, miniscule amount of work on your part can make you easily findable, which solves their problem, and then yours.
   
2. Whether they're searching for "lawn care in Toronto" or "A&B Landscapers," the search results will vary according to how online you are. The results might include your website, or it may turn up 3rd-party public listings sites, blogs, discussion sites and social referrals from their online friends. If you've been skillful or lucky, then your official page will be at the top of the results, followed by the other sites I mentioned. If "you" are already well-documented, then most of the work towards that goal is already done.
   
3. Your website or profile can help potential patrons decide what they're interested in, the specific enquiries that can help them to make a decision. It can also help them decide specifically which of your people to contact. It can even help them decide on their timing. This is how you can optimize your sales and customer service hours so much, you'll be able to give your front desk people additional responsibilities.
   
4. Your staff can devote their time to answering questions that are specific to each case, and use the internet to present information to the customer.

Bottom-line:

• A continuous and relaxed web strategy should pay for itself
• Increased sales, increased satisfaction and decreased presentation costs should recoup costs associated with an internet presence
• If web work is done incrementally, costs can be recouped continuously and a sensible budget can be maintained

Photo Gallery solutions that work with Blogger: SimpleViewer and Galleriffic

Blogger is great, but it's not easy to get a great photo album web gallery plugin that works with it.

I found two options, and explored them by implementing them on active projects. I'd like to provide stand-alone demonstrations to make sharing these solutions more convenient, but for now I've included links to the project pages. They can still be used to figure out how to implement on your own projects, and at least they're proof-of-concept prototypes.

Paul Van Roekel's Picasa Web Albums Simpleviewer Embed Code Generator

I demonstrated this with my roommate search page.

• takes about five minutes to set up
• takes the form of a flash viewer with acceptable performance
• the look and arrangement of elements is not editable
• pulls your gallery right from Picasa Web Albums, so you can edit
• it's not always best for commercial implementation


• the last slide in each gallery is an attribution slide mentioning Paul Van Roekel
• Simpleviewer branding appears when the plugin loads and in a little square to the bottom-right of the plugin, however the little square can be covered up by other HTML/CSS elements


• photos are inaccesible for download or viewing in another page, which could be a good or bad thing depending on whether your project favors accessibility or protection of the media

The Galleriffic JQuery Gallery Plugin

I demonstrated this with a client website.

• takes about an hour to properly adapt the plugin to our blog, if you've done it before
• the first time I implemented this, it took about eight hours to figure out the ins and outs of the plugin, and that's once I got it working outside Blogger, which was relatively easy
• uses CSS that needs to be modified to ensure that it doesn't conflict with Blogger CSS
• I haven't figured out a way to make it automatically grab gallery XML from Picasa Web Albums, so I've had to copy and paste photo URLs from there
• you can host (or pull) photos from wherever you want - Flickr, your own server, etc
• very customizable - all the effects, look and feel, etc are very flexible and can be easily edited with sensible CSS
• several "themes" are available from the authors to help make sense of the CSS and start from a point that's closest to your desired result
• as long as the CSS is modified judiciously, it performs well in all browsers across all systems, including when Javascript is unavailable, and it uses great HTML markup and CSS styling
• it's very ready for commercial deployment


• no branding or attribution is forced
• custom branding can be applied along with a custom look and feel


• photos can be sourced from the viewer, which makes them easy to share (or steal, if you're the type of person who thinks of it as theft)

Re-branding blogger: removing the blogger navbar, attribution and other Bloggerisms from your blog

I'm often asked by clients whether the website I make for them using blogger will have Blogger branding on it. The short answer is "no," and the long answer is "not after I spend a few minutes making all that disappear."

So the deal is, Google doesn't make it super easy to remove the navbar, the "powered by blogger" footer, or other bloggerisms that tip a user off that they're on a blog.

But they do make it kind of easy, using CSS. Just add this custom CSS to your blog. Some of this stuff won't work if it's in Blogger's easy-to-use "add CSS" feature in the template editor, so just go into the HTML and put it below all the other CSS:

.blogger-clickTrap, .post-feeds, .blog-feeds, .blog-pager#blog-pager, .widget.Attribution#Attribution1, #navbar {display: none;}


Here's what each of these selectors is (so you can omit the ones you want to leave in):

• .blogger-clickTrap is the thing that gets in your way when you're trying to use a browser's inspector feature to pick apart your layout and try out CSS changes. If you don't understand what that means, then you can omit this from the above CSS (and remember to remove the comma after it as well).
• .post-feeds and .blog-feeds are the things that create that weird "subscribe to (atom)" thing.
  
• .blog-pager#blog-pager is the thing that will put things like "next entry" and "previous entry" under your articles. It's for when you want your site not to be paginated like a blog, or if you want to trick Blogger into acting like a normal site by telling it to show only one post on the home page, and then making a post out of your home page, and making sure it's always dated as the most recent post.
• .widget.Attribution#Attribution1 is the thing in your footer from which you can't remove the words "powered by blogger."
• is the Blogger navigation bar at the top of your screen.

Now you have to realize, you've removed some pretty great functionality from your site and you should put it back - on your own terms, and with your branding:

• A Search This Blog button. It can be added as a "Gadget" in the Design: Page Elements panel.
• A "subcribe" or "follow" feature. "Follow by E-mail" is what you need. It's also one of Blogger's handy Gadgets and does a much better job than what we're using it to replace.
• If you have no form of navigation, and you have more than one post, you stranded the user on one page by removing the blog pager thing. So I recommend tagging each of your posts with at least one of your categories, and then making yourself a "Tags" gadget, either in the form of a cloud or a list, and using it as a menu.
  

Now as for being on a blogspot subdomain, it's easy to remove "blogspot" from your domain name, by using Blogger itself to associate your blog with your custom domain. You can ever buy it right from Blogger. It's in the "settings" tab somewhere.