Allchorn Design

In amongst some really interesting projects we’re working on, I read. And while reading the usuals, I was quite intrigued to note that some of my colleagues at FormFunction and Altersage were writing for and being published in Mail & Guardian Online’s relatively new website Techleader. I slowly turned green, and thought I’d ask Joey what it takes to be an author on the site. He put me in contact with the powers that be, and they approved me quite rapidly and sent me my author’s login details.

After a brief foot finding session in a user interface that I am more than familiar with (Wordpress MU), customised to be inline with their company, and surely tightened up for security, I wrote a piece that you can’t go wrong on. A top 10 list of open source software…. for Windows Vista no less.

I did this last night (9th July) and tonight I am the featured contributor. Maybe a flash in the pan start, but I’m chuffed.

Since I’ve recently taken a step back from certain aspects of website design and development (specifically hosting, coding and marketing), I’m delving more and more into the layout and aesthetic concerns of creating a website. That doesn’t mean that I don’t go through the proper discovery steps that precede the design phases, but since I am only consulting on the other topics, the meat of my work is design now.

Being back in the creative cockpit has made me look at ways of sprucing things up using either some slick AJAX or Adobe Flash.

If you know me, you’re probably gasping at the fact that I’d even consider Flash, but I have had a look at things, and if I can pull it off semantically and without interfering with any search engine visibility, I am willing to give it a bash.

The Pitfalls of Flash

My main reasons for not using Flash (on the most part) in the past:

1. Search Engines cannot index flash content (without some form of trickery involved)
2. Sections within a Flash site cannot be bookmarked in the traditional sense either using your browser’s bookmarks OR something like Delicious.
3. Without strict control by someone that knows the pitfalls, it can easily be abused and prove detrimental on a project’s final outcome.
4. Circumventing reason 1, 2 and 3 can add unnecessary time and budget to a project that would make little sense when it comes to ROI.

These have been my major gripes with the use of Flash in the past, although as I’ve also stated in the past, it’s a brilliant and versatile technology that when used correctly for the right thing, it’s results can be amazing.

I reckon that certain aspects of Flash are not going to be changing in any sort of hurry, and as such, I will only make use of Flash when there is either a damn good reason, and that it doesn’t harm things that would be done more effectively in another way. Sometimes KISS just makes more sense.

How Can Flash Be Used Effectively?

Since most of my sites and my client’s sites are built to perform some form of business function, I am pretty sticky on the fact that good, valid, semantic HTML styled with CSS is a must. I think very few people would dispute that fact.

I do very few don’t do Flash only sites, and there are not a lot of industries that can benefit from them. Sure, my friends over at Prezence do a lot of all Flash sites for music artists, movie launches and the like, but that is a very specialised market, and requires the visual versatility that Flash offers. Paul Tooze at Wireframe also does some amazing Flash projects for his clients, but suffice to say, a lot of it is educational and or best suited to Flash’s abilities.

Sure, HTML and CSS could be used to create the “aesthetic” that both Prezence and Wireframe create, but does not offer the same fluid animation and slick motion you can get with Flash. Javascript has come a long way, but it’s still limited and subject to considerable browser issues. Flash however, with it’s pervasive adoption is the ideal candidate to do what it does, and might I add, without any serious competition.

Okay, so you get that I’m not going to be making an HTML document and throwing an SWF (pronounced swiff I believe) file in the middle and doing the rest in Flash. For my clients, that would be search engine suicide!

I am looking at ways of including semantic content for things that are already in the Flash files, and there are some options. One of them is having the content in normal code, and somehow not displaying it (pointless to visually duplicate the content), so the search engines can index you for what you are all about.

There are ways of doing this that will get you penalised by the SE’s but there are some work arounds. Nothing completely fool proof at this stage (or that I can find), but advancements are being made.

Eric Enge discusses this in more depth with his SEOMoz invitiational blog post on A Comprehensive Guide to Hidden Text & Search Engines.

I think the best way to approach this whole thing is the use of flash sparingly, and only as loose elements where they are absolutely required to give some of that visual “wow” factor.

As you might have noticed, I am not referring much to “dynamic” flash where it connects to a database, or has an external XML ot TXT file to feed it content. I’m assuming that this is done if it’s needed. It still doesn’t get indexed by SE’s, hence my search for a viable semantic workaround.

Where To From Here?

Well, I am going to be doing some intensive reconstructive surgery on this website which will be ready in the next few months. Still using Wordpress as my CMS, and still having a good dose of HTML content, but with some embellishments that you’ll either love or hate.

Being the fact that SEO on a website designer’s site is like spending money on marketing the sale of bottled salt water at the beach, I doubt I’ll damage my search engine rankings much.

Right now, I need to dive back into the storyboarding for the new allchorn.com!

Mr/Mrs Client:

“Whip me together a quick newsletter to send to my subscribers. Oh, and make it look like this design”…

I am then handed a design created by a print designer. Background images, fancy fonts, overlaying text etc.

“It needs to look exactly like that and must work in all mail clients.”

Wow, thanks… I’ll get right on it. Should only take me a few minutes… right? wrong!

Designing and coding newsletters… where do I start? Do you think us web professionals have problems getting our work to render correctly in browsers like Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari? Not nearly as much as we suffer with the exceptionally poor rendering of the mail clients. Gmail, AOL, Lotus Notes, Microsoft Outlook… they all have their wierd quirks and rules.

Don’t get me wrong, some of these quirks are security related, and I won’t begrudge them the fact that some of them are sterling products and services. But creating email newsletters that look the same, or at least similar in all of them is almost an impossible task. One fraught with immense amounts of testing time and to-and-fro bug fixes.

The Newsletter Designer’s Saving Grace

Thankfully, the people that send your newsletters are aware of the problems and have even gone to the lengths of creating an email standards organisation.

Side Note: First, let me say that if you’re not using something like Campaign Monitor or Aweber, you’re not really sending newsletters. Sorry to be blunt, but you’re doing the equivilant of a flyer drop from a helicopter. Marketing is useless if you can’t measure it.

Campaign Monitor are especially on the ball and actually keep a very informative blog up to date and full of useful information. The most recent of which being an article on 2008 Email Design Guidelines. Read it, either being a client or a designer/coder. It’s worth the extra general knowledge at least.

Aweber are also keeping with the game, and this is actually the service I use to send email newsletters to my subscribers at Circuitchaser.com. They’ve recently introduced some advanced analytical features to better analyse the effect of your email broadcasts.

But now I’m going off topic again…

KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid)

I probably heard this at school first. It rings true now, more than 20yrs later. Simpler is better with email newsletters. Treat them as a calling card. An enticement tool that allows recipients to visit your website for further information/action.

Keep the images minimal. Don’t plague your visitors with images that make up important parts of your email. A lot of mail clients block images at first and this can break your email if there is important images in them.

Test thoroughly, test it some more, and then when you’re done testing, test it again! There is information out there for this, and believe it or not, it comes from Campaign Monitor no less (helpful guys these aren’t they?).

Summing Up

So Mr/Mrs One Click, quick quick, design me a newsletter; hopefully you now know and understand more or less what goes into creating a newsletter, and when your designer sighs when you give him an hour’s notice to send something important, you’ll know why.

Oh, and if your designer disputes this post’s facts and maintains that he/she can design and code and send a custom newsletter in a couple of minutes… ask them to prove it and show you how they render in (your client’s) mail clients! I bet they either won’t know what you’re talking about or will catch a very quick wake up when they realise what they’re doing wrong. They will probably then go back to their normal secretarial/admin/plumbing/invoicing work that the boss asked them to do an hour ago.

Managing my time is something I used to struggle with. Nowadays, I seem to have more spare time than a lot of people and even making a decent living. I don’t believe I’ve stumbled onto some secret, but rather through reading up a bit about it and actually acting on advice (some good, some bad), I’ve managed to find a happy medium where I don’t work like a slave for a pittance, but when things need to get done, they do.

My fiancee commented today that I’m actually quite diligent about my work time and although I don’t clock in at 8am and clock out at 5pm with a 30min lunch break from 1pm - 1:30pm, I do tend to work a full 8hr day and usually more.

Occasionally (more often than not), I start around 9am or just after and tend to get stuck into some recommended reading. Of course industry related stuff and I attend to most email enquiries and urgent IM discussions in the early part of the day.

The most of the rest of the daytime duties include emailing quotes, writing emails and general client communication and updates. Sometimes with a design comp. being worked on in Photoshop on the extra screen.

Come mid afternoon (around 3pm onwards) I reach my creative peak, and generally get stuck into something which requires a fully operational mind. This is my time spent on important quotes, writing scope documents, conceptualizing strategies, ploughing through design concepts and generally doing all the meat of my work.

This peak time can go well into the night with only necessary breaks being in the way of me working right through (eating, bathroom and the occasional clear-my-mind walk around the house). I generally don’t let it go past 11pm though, and if I start early, or there is some important “domestic” thing to do (grocery shopping etc.), I can usually pick up on things the following day.

If my time is not filled or I am waiting on someone to send something through before I can continue, I usually get stuck into improving my efficiancy by building templates for important documents, honing my skills by watching or reading tutorials, and working on new design concepts for my own personal projects which I may or may not ever use.

I believe that if you have a passion for what you do, you need to treat every moment you can as one that can be used to improve on what you know and how you do things. This has made me a bit of a forum junkie, and my online browsing experience is heavily modified and optimised to my interests using the Google Home Page.

There is heaps of advice online about time management, and my method won’t work for someone merely trying to make money. My day is structured around someone who is passionate about the internet, computing, design and running an effective, professional business.

I don’t wear a tie if I can avoid it, I prefer people not call me after hours (within reason) and I have the freedom to pick and choose when, where and how I work. As long as my clients and I (and my bank account) are happy… whose to argue with my lifestyle?

Last word: Creative productivity does not come from 8hrs of scheduled labour. Productivity in a creative field comes from passion, diligence, patience and hard work that doesn’t necessarily keep office hours.

Please note: This is all meant in good humour, but it’s the gospel truth, so pay heed.

Really people. I know it’s exciting when you first start using the internet and you think:

“wow, imagine if there was a web site where people could list their company, and I could charge them to list, and I can target every industry and niche and small mom and pop side cafe in the known universe, and I’ll be RICH beyond all my wildest dreams!… muwahahahaha!”

Do you think you’re the first person to consider this?

Do you think that with the nature of the internet being such that you can create web pages in freely downloadable software packages, upload it to low cost, or even free web hosting provider’s servers using more free software and even integrate a database into the site with even more free software and technology… nobody has thought of this before? Surely not!

Sorry, someone has thought of it… and quite a few people at that, and over quite a few years, and some have poured millions of $ into the idea!

Take for instance the most obvious example. The Yellow Pages. A few years back, it was pretty badly made in this country, and me being in the business of developing websites often heard this justification of building their silver bullet website to compete with them. Even then I politely declined.

Here are some excepts from real emails to some of these enquirers:

“…to be perfectly honest, I am not entirely certain as to the viability of the job in question. I think the job is going to cost more than it’s going to be worth as the system (while inventive) is too close to many, many other web directories. I just think the market is too flooded.”

“…I pride myself in my ethics and honesty in business. As such, I feel it is my obligation to decline the offer to carry this project out for you but I do wish you the best of luck…”

I can also state that the projects those emails related to were passed onto other web companies who eventually abandoned them or are still trying to develop the system years later and are still not close to what you’ll find on the yellow pages or something like dmoz.org.

The Web Directory’s Saving Grace - Niches

The one place I’ll gladly admit a web directory to being a worthy addition to the internet is when it is niche related and only focuses on a certain industry or topic.

Take for instance, a directory about motorycles. Listing shops, tyre fitment centres, battery suppliers, leather, gloves, boots, helmets, accessories, spare parts etc. Now that is a legitimate an useful service to the web browser and one I’d readily bookmark if it’s content was up to date and reliable.

Keeping a directory up to date can constitute immense admin labour. Especially if it grows to a size that will actually be making money for you to buy more than a 6 pack every quarter. Bare this in mind, and remember that time is money. Especially if it’s not your time…

Well, thats enough about that, and I guess I’ve got that sufficiently out of my system.

It’s good to be busy again. It seemed as if things went into a bit of a recession over the last few months, but lately things have been getting busier around here. Some nice new clients, some exciting work for existing clients, and a lot of my own stuff on the go has kept me out of mischief.

I’m really finding Wordpress to be a pleasure to work with. Semantic, valid code aside, it’s really easy to use, it’s pretty stable and forgiving and whats even better is that my clients seem to love it.

Do You Think A CMS Is Worth Using?

I have been discussing the use of Wordpress with a friend and colleague of mine lately, and while we seem to be agreeing to disagree, he feels that a simple site should be just plain old HTML with CSS. We’re not talking aesthetics here, but rather the structure of the site.

Now this guy is no fool. Far from it. He’s one of the most talented and experienced programmers I know and someone whose opinion I regard highly. We just happen to disagree on this.

My take on the subject is that regardless of whether you’re using Wordpress or some other content management system; as long as it produces valid, semantic code to the browser, you’re likely making your life a lot easier by using it.

He mentions the fact that setting up a static site is much easier. My opinion is that for a one pager maybe… but if there is more than one page, and things are likely to grow, you are doing yourself or your client a major disservice by not even considering a CMS.

Sure, designing a site and integrating it into a CMS package may take you a little longer than just setting up a static site, but considering the code output to the browser is as good quality, if not better than most hand coders/dreamweaver’s output… where was I going with this? I’m sure you can figure it out.

Look at the benefits of a CMS:

• Add a page on the fly.
• Add a news item, page element or add to your gallery/existing pages on the fly.
• Restructure page ordering, take them down and work on them till they’re public ready again.
• All of this and more without touching Dreamweaver, a code editor or even and FTP program.

Well, I’ve managed to convince myself. I guess thats what matters to me.

Call me slow, or whatever. I have finally decided to give Flickr a serious chance. I’ve always known about it and had a profile on there for as long as I can remember. For some reason I always just saw it as another one of those “photo sharing” tools that were okay to post pictures of your last vacation or new toys, but not the kind of thing you want to use to promote yourself as a serious professional photographer.

Times they are a changing. Social media has grown so much over the years that things are actually turning back on themselves… in a good way. At first there was apprehension and a lot of people had the same attitude as mine on the use of things like Flickr.

Surely it devalues the industry? Yes and no. If you’re not educated enough on the topics of copyrights and image usage rights, then you could easily be taken for a ride. If you do your homework however, you have a brilliant medium to showcase your work and you can pick and choose commissions or photo sales from enquirers at your discretion. Just as you would in the world outside of social networking.

Surely you’re mixing it in amongst the amateurs and hobbyists? Yes, but is that a bad thing when you stand out like a diamond in the rough? If Sally and Bob are posting images of their doggies and kitties and trips to the dentist, and you’re posting your high quality images showing a distinct theme or pattern of your strengths… who is someone looking for a photographer likely to call?

Microstock sites are an entirely different discussion, but play a part in so far as the fact that they are slowly feeling the pinch of the professionals coming back with a vengeance on systems like Flickr.

A professional stock photographer has to sell one image hundreds or thousands of times to make the same amount of money a traditional professional photographer can make in the sale of one. Given, the systems are all set up and it’s a different business model targeting a different market segment, but rather than throwing breadcrumbs to the pigeons, I’d prefer to set up a professional shop front and entice the serious buyers in.

I’ll be integrating my photostream into this site in due course, but while I do that, please check it out on Flickr.

I’ve decided that I am going to re-brand myself. Starting with a new logo. Quite honestly, I’m sick of my glassy globe with cheesily gradiented AD.

The direct metaphor of the earth representing the “world” wide web being the audience of my creations is replaced with a pretty direct graphic representing design in the form of a fairly realistic looking fountain pen drawing a vector line over the d.

If I remember correctly, I did the fountain pen illustration a few years back in a concept for use on one of my websites, but never managed to fit it in anywhere. Some aspects of the vectors aren’t quite up to the standards I set for myself these days, but thats just a matter of tweaking it.

I will refine the vectors, but in the meantime, I’m happy to use it on the web (in 72dpi). Before going to print with cards, I’m going to make it 100% for just about any medium. Right now, it works equally well on white and 90% black, or anything in between.

There is a whole website redesign in process too, which is currently in the theming phase. I’ll hold off on showing that till it’s actually live. Put it this way… it’s a complete change in direction, style and colour.

More soon.

High levels of stress and a reasonably obvious truth have driven me to write this post. A rather corny title it may be, it’s pretty spot on to what this is all about. It all stems from the true nature of the internet, and the common misconceptions of what that true nature really is.

Defining The True Nature Of The Internet

Is it like print, where you design or typeset your way to a happy conclusion? Possibly fight a bit with colours and plate registration, but ultimately end up with something you can reproduce?

Or perhaps it’s like television where you produce a linear presentation of audio visual goodness?

Nope, it’s actually like both of those, but with more factors drawn into the mix which -in my opinion- closely resemble that of vehicle maintenance rather than some facet of any advertising aspect.

Am I nuts? Maybe, but hear me out.

The internet is a living breathing entity which has ins and outs. It is fed with information (text, video, files, images etc.) and it allows for this information to be extracted, viewed, manipulated, deleted and well… used.

With this interactive nature and the fact that it is constantly changing, there is always margin for error. There is always a loophole for malicious action. There is also the amazing opportunity for which the internet is used for at large and thats it’s main intent; facilitating greatly enhanced communication.

So How Is Website Design Like Motorcycle Maintenance?

Can I rephrase that to “Motorcycle Design, Production and Mantenance”? Sure I can. This is my blog!

The reason I see it this way is through my experience of designing, maintaining, developing, moving, deleting and administrating websites since 1999. All websites start somewhere. Maybe in the mind of an entrepreneur, or perhaps in the marketing department’s weekly board meeting. Regardless what the website’s inception was, it had a beginning, and from there it grew into what it is now.

Designing the website -if you’ve read anything I’ve written- doesn’t relate only to the pretty colour scheme you used and the frilly edges, but rather the the overall design. The proverbial engine behind the website (be that straight HTML, or a fully fledged Content Management System) as well as the page layouts, the structure and flow of information etc. It all needs to be “designed”. If not, you’re using someone else’s design (ready made software/solutions), but either way, it was or is designed by someone.

Production of a website can come at whatever phase the team or individual finds to be the most effective time to do so. Whether things are meticulously planned out with all the i’s dotted and all the t’s crossed, or if a single page objective document was drawn up and an evolutionary project was embarked on. It’s the same thing at the end of the day and the end result is subjective and up to those web “builders”.

Maintenance of a website. This is where things get interesting. Does the website maintain itself? Does a website fix itself when a human or non-human error causes something to go wrong. Does a website with user generated content work indefinitely without some form of moderation?

The answer to all of those questions is a resounding no. It does not. You can fake it. You can make it do some form of moderation and clean out naughty words, or go with the best hosting provider money can buy. At the end of the day, no the website will not stand the test of time, neither in looks (another subjective matter that) nor in it’s structure.

A motorcycle’s valves wear. It’s pistons grind up against the barrel and it’s constantly exposed to varying degrees of intensity of use and heat and cold.

Similarly, a website sits on a server. It’s visited by varying quantities of visitors. Information is pumped into it and drawn out of it and not only by humans. There are automated programmings scraping information from it. There are search engine spiders following links. There are spam bots posting anoying links to their Viagra sites.

Maybe your host is insufficient? You take it out of that provider’s warm comfy bedded engine mountings and plonk it into an unknown environment and things break. They need to be fixed. Folder permissions change and the engine’s fuel line is effectively clogged. The website slowly or quickly suffers and dies.

Okay, Enough Drama

You should now understand what I mean in my metaphoric comparison of Websites to Motorcycles, and if not, read it again. If you still think I’m wrong, then maybe I’m crazy, or you are.

There are other aspects to a website that aren’t mentioned above. Things like online marketing and SEO, optimising content for the web (believe it or not, you cannot copy and paste from Word without creating an invalid botch job of your site) or just keeping things fresh by tweaking colours, focal points, specials, announcements etc.

A new browser might come out and get very quickly adopted (Firefox as an example grew from nothing to almost a 30% market share). If your website doesn’t work in the new browser… are you willing to exclude 30% of your target audience?

Have a think. I reckon my point makes sense.

I’m busy writing about three articles concurrently. All of which lose my interest after sitting in front of them for longer than 10 minutes. I need to step back from them for a bit and this is why I’m writing this interim post. One is a piece on big brands with horrible websites, another is self defining article to try and put my thumb on who I am, and then there is a follow up of the first one showing outstanding websites.

While I write those, have a look at 37 Signals’ book entitled Getting Real. It truly is one for your bookmarks if you’re a programmer or designer, or even a client interested in having something developed or designed.

I came across the site after reading someone’s mention of 37signals‘ business model and subsequently followed the natural progression of link following. You know how it goes. “They have a book… cool, let’s check it out *click*. They have a PDF version, cool. $19 is fair. Ah, there is a paperback version too. Nice. They have a FREE version! *click*.” And this is where I ended up.

I found a section in chapter 2 particularly interesting. It basically states that budgets and timelines can be fixed in application development should be kept flexible. It makes sense to me that if you’re to launch a piece of software, rather make it with 5 solid, well rounded features than 10 badly thought out and issued ones. An excerpt:

If you can’t fit everything in within the time and budget allotted then don’t expand the time and budget. Instead, pull back the scope. There’s always time to add stuff later — later is eternal, now is fleeting.

A 100% free 16 chapter book on keeping things real in application design. A must have for any serious geek. I mean, Basecamp… who can argue that that was not built by designers and developers in the upper 99 percentile.