Design with Reason

Short Message Service

2012-02-08T12:56:00.000-08:00

Facebook and Twitter are great channels that marketers can use to reach new audiences and participate in two-way interactions with consumers. Unfortunately, both social networks are also undeniably scattershot as marketing tools. Segmenting and personalizing your communications effectively using either one is difficult, and even your most dedicated fans and followers will likely not read many of your messages.

The chronological layout of Twitter timelines, coupled with the sheer volume of tweets many users receive, makes it almost inevitable that your followers will miss some of your tweets. And Facebook's EdgeRank algorithm can prevent your posts from appearing in your fans' News Feeds if you're not creating content that's consistently interesting to them.

Those facts make a good case for the need to write compelling social media content. They also underscore the value of converting your social media followers into SMS- and email-marketing subscribers. As people who have a genuine, expressed interest in your products and services, your fans and followers are the perfect targets for those efforts.

By recruiting your social fans and followers to your email and SMS lists, you can forge deeper relationships with them by offering more personalized and targeted content than you ever could via social media alone.

You can also increase the likelihood that your communications will be read—particularly in the case of SMS, since 83% of all text messages are read within an hour of being received.

For more information regarding branding your business. Contact me at db@davidbadajoz.com or visit www.davidbadajoz.com.

05 Rules for eDM & Newsletter Design

2011-12-30T09:53:00.000-08:00

Here are five tips to help you get the most out of your eDMs and eNewsletters:

No. 01: Cleanliness Counts

Keep files clean and tidy. Always create two groups in Photoshop files: text and image. This way, when it comes to the build, it’s clear for the developer to see the different elements of the design. If an animated GIF is used, put this in a separate group with a semi-transparent block of colour sitting over the design as a guide. Labelling this with the GIF filename also helps if you have multiple animations in your design.

No. 02: Consistency Counts

For emails to look the same across all email clients, don’t design with background images behind text. As a rule, after finishing designing a newsletter, always create a new layer below all of the text and create blocks of solid colour, so there aren’t any unnoticed gradients or textures hiding behind the copy.

No. 03: Breathing Is Important

Give your text plenty of room to expand to the sides and below. When various email clients and browsers render the text differently, you don't want any unexpected line breaks.

No. 04: Personality Counts

Add an animated GIF or two. In the sample birthday campaign, they added a subtly animated balloon to mimic the animation on the site. It created a relationship between the eDM and the site and added a finishing touche to the design.

No. 05: Design Between The Lines

When designing the email, think about design in horizontal strips, particularly if using multiple columns of text. This makes the build of the email much smoother in terms of tables and makes debugging easier.

For more information regarding great eMail and eNewsletter campaigns contact me at db@davidbadajoz.com or visit www.davidbadajoz.com.

Building your Brand with Google+

2011-12-22T11:52:00.000-08:00

Navigating a new social platform can be challenging, especially for larger brands that have a global presence, multiple brands and millions of fans. Last week Google announced its relationships with a handful of third-party social media management software companies that will provide tools for brands to manage their presences on Google+, including the ability to manage Circles, publish to Google+ and access analytics. These tools will help streamline publishing to multiple Google+ pages and effectively manage Circles in a scalable manner, while enabling access to analytics across a brand’s Google+ presence.

For more information regarding branding your business on Google+ for business contact me at db@davidbadajoz.com or visit www.davidbadajoz.com.

Optimizng PDF's for SEO

2011-12-19T11:03:00.000-08:00

The debate rages on about whether or not your marketing content such as ebooks and webinars should be gated behind lead-capture forms. However, there is plenty of content such as case studies, FAQs, fact sheets, and brochures that aren't very suitable for lead generation and can benefit from being ungated and readily available in organic search.

This type of content is frequently published in PDF form, and as an important part of your inbound marketing strategy, it should get the same SEO treatment as everything else you publish. The next time you're ready to release new PDFs out into the world, follow these 5 steps to quickly optimize them before you publish to ensure crawlers can find and index them for searchers.

01. Create your PDF in a text-based program.

When you use Microsoft Word or Adobe Acrobat, crawlers can read and index the content.

02. Follow SEO best practices when writing your content.

Optimize your content as you would any other content for your site. Use relevant keywords in your content, H1 and H2 tags in the copy, and make sure your images include alt tags.

03. Crawlers can read links in a PDF, too.

Build in links to relevant pages on your website so readers can get back to your site from the PDF. This is particularly important if your PDF is shared via email or social networks, as those readers may not have been to your site before.

04. Save the file as a PDF with a relevant file name.

For example, my PDF on vegetarian Thanksgiving recipes would be called Vegetarian-Thanksgiving-Recipes.pdf. This will also help users identify the content of the PDF if they share it with others or save it for later use.

05. Find popular pages on your site.

Once you click OK, publish your PDF to pages on your site that are frequently crawled so it's easier for search engines to find and index the PDF.

Pretty easy, right? Optimizing PDFs is a quick, simple step you can take to make content like case studies, fact sheets, brochures, product overviews, and other valuable content assets more search engine-friendly.

HubSpot

For more information regarding SEO campaigns contact me at db@davidbadajoz.com or visit www.davidbadajoz.com.

Daft Punk Coca Cola Box Set

2011-10-04T14:19:00.000-07:00

After the Daft Punk inspired Club Coke 2011 bottles launched earlier this year, here is the official Daft Punk x Coca Cola collaboration bottles.
The classic Coke glass bottle comes with gold and silver Coca-Cola logo application and matching Daft Punk bottle crown sitting on top.
The silver one is actually 925 silver and the gold one features 18k yellow gold. Hand finished the bottles are sitting in a box designed by Daft Punk.

The signed box set is limited to only 20 sets worldwide. You can enter to win a box set, which is signed by the artists, at www.daftcoke.com.

The Story Behind Ferrari's Famed Prancing Horse Logo

2011-09-22T16:22:00.000-07:00

Ferrari has one of the most recognizable logos in the world, a mark that today would precede from endless market research and hundreds of iterations dreamed up by some savvy corporate-branding agency. The genesis of Ferrari’s leaping black stallion, though, was distinctly more spontaneous, as this fascinating video from the Italian carmaker reveals:

According to Ferrari, Papà Enzo took the logo from an image of a red horse painted on the fuselage of Count Francesco Baracca, an ace pilot in the Italian air force and a World War I hero. Apparently, Enzo only ever spoke of the logo’s provenance once. And this is what he had to say:

"In ‘23, I met Count Enrico Baracca, the hero’s father and then his mother, Countess Paolina, who said to me one day, ‘Ferrari, put my son’s prancing horse on your cars. It will bring you good luck.’ The horse was, and still is, black. And I added the canary-yellow background, which is the color of Modena (Enzo’s birthplace)."

What the film leaves out - and what Wikipedia filled in - is that Francesco Baracca died in action, possibly after his airplane got shot by ground troops and crashed in a fiery mess. The reason Ferrari's horse is black, not red, is because it was meant to be a symbol of mourning for the fallen pilot. It’s a touching detail, but one that the big PR machine of modern-day Ferrari chose to omit. Guess they don’t want anyone to hear Ferrari and think “death by burning vehicle.”

For more information regarding professional identity campaigns contact me at db@davidbadajoz.com or visit www.davidbadajoz.com.

Ferrari's World Design Contest 2011

2011-08-11T09:26:00.000-07:00

First Prize:
'Eternità' by Kim Cheong Ju, Ahn Dre and Lee Sahngseok from the Hongik University, Seoul

Ferrari World Design Contest is a competition - launched by the marque from Maranello in collaboration with Autodesk, the project's technical partner and official sponsor – for schools and universities from the automotive and design sectors in Italy and abroad to create the Ferrari of the future.

The participants are asked to create a pure hypercar with technology and materials from the latest generation, a car with an extreme architecture, while functional under every aspect. The contest runs until July 2011. The jury, under the presidency of Luca di Montezemolo, will award an internship at Ferrari's Centro Stile, lead by Flavio Manzoni, to the first and second placed participants as well as monetary prizes.

Second Prize:
'Xezri' by Samir Sadikhov from IED Turin, Italy

Third Prize:
'Cavallo Bianco' by Henry Cloke and Qi Haitao, from the Royal College of Art, UK

'Ferrari Achilleo' by Jose Casas, from the College for Creative Studies, Detroit, USA

'F80' by Jae Han Song, from the College for Creative Studies, Detroit, USA

Autodesk

Autodesk, Inc., is a leader in 3D design, engineering and entertainment software. Customers across the manufacturing, architecture, building, construction, and media and entertainment industries - including the last 16 Academy Award winners for Best Visual Effects - use Autodesk software to design, visualize and simulate their ideas. Since its introduction of AutoCAD software in 1982, Autodesk continues to develop the broadest portfolio of state-of-the-art software for global markets. For additional information about Autodesk, visit www.autodesk.com

Autodesk Education Initiatives

Autodesk wants students of all ages to imagine, design and create a better world. By partnering with academic leaders and institutions, Autodesk is helping educators to build skills and engagement, both in and out of the classroom, in order to prepare for successful careers in architecture, engineering, and digital arts. Autodesk offers the technology and learning resources that inspire the next generation of professionals, while providing institutions with educational pricing, training, curricula and community resources. For more information about Autodesk education programs and solutions, visit www.autodesk.com/education.

10 Social Media Mistakes Small Businesses Can Avoid

2011-08-04T11:52:00.000-07:00

No. 01: Not Having a Plan

Even though many social media applications are free, they still cost small businesses time – and time equals money. To avoid wasting valuable time and money, start by putting together a social media marketing plan. Ask yourself what you hope to achieve from social media and how you plan to get there. Determine the amount of time and resources you are willing to devote to the program. Once you have a plan in place, it will be easier to focus on achieving the results you want.

No. 02: Too Much Too Soon

After establishing a plan, often small business owners jump into all aspects of the social space at once. This can be a huge mistake because it’s easy to get overwhelmed very quickly. Not all social networks make sense for every business or business owner. Do some research to determine which platforms best fit your business goals. What sites are your competitors and customers on? Consider starting with a platform you are familiar with and that you already have established network on.

No. 03: Not Measuring Your Success and Return on Investment

As a small business, you have limited time and resources, so it’s important to measure every aspect of your business to be sure it’s worth the investment. A social media program is no exception. Make sure you set goals for your program and that you have ways to monitor these. Most social media applications have some type of analytics associated with their platforms, as well as help sections that explain how to use the tools.

No. 04: Underutilizing Social Platforms for Branding

Every social media platform includes multiple fields for businesses to insert their brand messages and images. Many small business owners will leave multiple fields on their profiles blank. This is a big mistake. Your company information, logo, and any other links or images on your profile are the sales tools you have to pique a potential customer’s interest in your business. If your profile is half complete it reflects poorly on your company. Plus, the more complete the information is on your social profile, the more likely you are to be found in search results.

No. 05: Promoting Without Listening or Engaging

Have you ever been to a party and met someone who constantly talked about themselves? It’s a real turn off. Social media is very similar; if you constantly talk about your business and what your business offers without listening or engaging with others, your network will fall flat. Don’t be afraid to jump into conversations with new people or to ask questions. Likewise, if someone asks you a question or makes a comment to you, make sure you respond.

No. 06: Not Addressing Negative Comments or Feedback

Occasionally, business owners will have disgruntled customers and clients who post negative messages about their business or services. The initial reaction is to immediately delete the post. Do not do this! Social media is based upon transparency and authenticity. When you delete a post, you indicate to others that you are uncomfortable with what your brand is doing or represents. Instead of deleting the post, face it head-on and fully address the concern. Dealing with it will earn you more brand loyalty than you had before. Remember, these are the people who essentially pay your bills; if you believe in your product and service; you have nothing to hide from them.

No. 07: Not Claiming Existing Profiles

Did you know that a lot of your company information is a matter of public record? This means that regardless if you want to be involved socially or not, your company might already be. Services such as Google Places and Yelp may list information about your company whether you’ve created a profile or not. Don’t feel violated or angry; use this as an opportunity to expand your Web presence. All of these services give you the option to control what’s shown about your company and how it’s shown. Claim all of the profiles that mention your company and update the information. Be consistent on each network so the same information is listed.

No. 08: Skimping on Time

Building an online presence takes time. If you are truly interested in expanding your network online, you need to be prepared to put in the time. For your social media marketing plan to succeed, it’s crucial that you consistently interact online; even if it’s just 10 minutes a day. If you can’t put in the time, it’s best not to start.

No. 09: Lacking Passion

Social media marketing requires passion to be successful. As the owner, you know your brand better than anyone else, but if you aren’t passionate about interacting online, your social media efforts won’t work. If you have the resources, consider having one of your employees or an intern run the program. Social media can make a big impact on your business, but (like anything) you need to have a certain level of interest and passion to make it successful.

No. 10: Not Knowing When Social Media Isn’t Right for Your Business

Just because lots of businesses are using social, doesn’t mean you have to. For many small businesses, social media isn’t the right outlet, and you can waste a lot of time on it. If you decide social isn’t your forte, that’s fine. At the very least, make sure you heed the advice in Mistake No. 07.

Social media marketing can do amazing things for small businesses, but only if it is utilized properly. Whether you like it or not, your brand is online, so even if you aren’t ready to create a full social media program, you should at the very least make sure you take control of sites you are already listed on.

Written by Pamela Springer

For more information regarding Organic SEO campaigns and social media contact me at db@davidbadajoz.com or visit www.davidbadajoz.com.

NASA Graphic Standards Manual & Applications

2011-07-28T10:33:00.000-07:00

I'm not only more than interested in branding and identity, I still nurture a childhood romanticism for aerospace. This collection satiates both passions.

Danne & Blackburn, New York, New York, 1975

Credits

Design firm: Danne & Blackburn

Credits

Design director: Richard Danne

Designers: Stephen Loges, Richard Danne, Bruce Blackburn

Credits

Project manager: Bob Schulman, NASA

Client

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Shunmyo Masuno - Zen and the Art of the Garden

2011-04-12T15:42:00.000-07:00

ISHIDATE-SO . . . the title given to Zen priests of days gone by, who as part of their ascetic practice,expressed themselves through the art of landscape gardening with great importance given to rock placement. Shunmyo Masuno of Kenkoh-ji temple is a modern day Zen priest who through this art form, strives to express his spiritual self.

The gardens of Japan remain among the country's spellbinding emblems. Created to be looked at, not to be walked through, they are living pictures.

In their most evolved form there is always a place, often a turn in a path or a small teahouse, for a visitor to stand at exactly the right angle.

Earth, trees, stones, water, moss, ferns, flowering shrubs, paths, light and shade all play their parts, none loudly.

"Each component is important, not only the stones or the trees, but sometimes the way a twig is blown with the wind. Each component gives tranquillity and space to visitors and that is where I find peace and success," he says.

If there is a star in the Japanese garden it is the rock. Whole chapters in landscaping manuals are devoted to matters of selection, alignment and character. The world's oldest book on gardening, a treatise called Sakuteiki: Visions of the Japanese Garden, was published about 1000 years ago and began with "the art of setting stones" as its first words. Placed properly, designers say, rocks in a Japanese garden should look like a calf playing near a seated cow or a pack of dogs crouching near the ground.

Scattered like that, they defy symmetry, another clue to success in a Zen garden. "The crooked tree leans at the top of the cliff," he says, in an eerily Carradine-esque moment. "You might think it will fall but it will not and in the garden we can create visual and physical balance."

Mr Masuno, who has created gardens in Norway, Germany and Canada, was this month commissioned to build one in Latvia. In his 350-page manual on creating gardens outside Japan, he despairs at how "extremely difficult" it is to find elegant stones for the garden in foreign countries. He recounts futile field trips to quarries where there are only the cracked, broken or pulverised variety. Even for a Buddhist, life is too short to live with bad rock.

View More Garden Design by Shunmyo Masuno

The Art Project by Google

2011-04-01T15:24:00.000-07:00

Google Art Project offers gigapixel images of art classics, indoor Street Views of Museums

Google's been hard at work over the past 18 months on something not many of us have been paying attention to lately: art. Specifically, the search giant has hooked up with 17 art museums around the world to offer tours of their internal galleries, using its familiar Street View tricycles, while also doing high-res images of 1,061 artworks that may be viewed on the newly launched Art Project web portal. Also there, you will find 17 special gigapixel images -- 7,000-megapixel versions of each participating venue's proudest possession. The resulting level of detail is nothing short of astounding and we've got videos of how it's all done after the break.

The Art Project Features Include:

Explore museums with Street View technology: using this feature, people can move around the gallery virtually on www.googleartproject.com, selecting works of art that interest them and clicking to discover more or diving into the high resolution images, where available. The info panel allows people to read more about an artwork, find more works by that artist and watch related YouTube videos.

A specially designed Street View 'trolley' took 360 degree images of the interior of selected galleries which were then stitched together, enabling smooth navigation of over 385 rooms within the museums. The gallery interiors can also be explored directly from within Street View in Google Maps.

Super high resolution feature artworks: each of the 17 museums selected one artwork to be photographed in extraordinary detail using super high resolution or 'gigapixel' photo capturing technology. Each such image contains around 7 billion pixels, enabling the viewer to study details of the brushwork and patina beyond that possible with the naked eye. Hard to see details suddenly become clear such as the tiny Latin couplet which appears in Hans Holbein the Younger's 'The Merchant Georg Gisze'. Or the people hidden behind the tree in Ivanov's 'The Apparition of Christ to the People'.

In addition, museums provided images for a selection totalling more than 1000 works of art. The resolution of these images, combined with a custom built zoom viewer, allows art-lovers to discover minute aspects of paintings they may never have seen up close before, such as the miniaturized people in the river of El Greco's 'View of Toledo', or individual dots in Seurat's 'Grandcamp, Evening.'

Create your own collection:
The 'Create an Artwork Collection' feature allows users to save specific views of any of 1000+ artworks and build their own personalised collection. Comments can be added to each painting and the whole collection can then be shared with friends and family. It's an ideal tool for students or groups to work on collaborative projects or collections.

10 Elements - How Mobile Sites Differ from Desktop Sites

2011-03-31T10:51:00.000-07:00

Based on research, which looked at a number of mobile sites from various industries, there are 10 fundamental ways in which mobile sites differ from desktop web sites:

In comparison to desktop Web sites, which usually contain a wide range of content and information, mobile sites usually include only the most crucial and time- and location-specific functions and features.
On desktop Web sites, horizontal navigation at the top of a page is a widely accepted way of structuring and presenting a site’s content. However, vertical navigation replaces horizontal navigation on more than 90% of the mobile sites we analyzed.
Hypertext is the signature component of the Internet and the Web. However, on mobile sites, there are few or no hypertexts on pages.
On desktop Web sites, designers use graphics for many different purposes, including promoting, marketing, and navigating. Mobile sites avoid using promotional and marketing graphics and use minimal graphics for navigation.
Various types of navigation are available on desktop Web sites. Some are global, so are consistent across a site, while others are contextual and change depending on where users are on a site. In contrast, while most mobile sites have global navigation, contextual navigation is rare on mobile sites.
On desktop Web sites, footers typically provide either links to content users might expect to see on a site’s home page or quick links that are available across a site to provide access to content users often need. Mobile sites employ a minimal form of the first type of footer, but they do not use footers containing quick links.
On desktop Web sites, breadcrumbs reassure users that they are on the right page and let them backtrack on their navigational path. Breadcrumbs are rare on mobiles sites and really aren’t necessary, because of the relatively flat structure of mobile sites.
Process funnels on desktop Web sites frequently use a progress indicator at the top of each page to guide users through the process. Such progress indicators do not appear on mobile sites.
Mobile sites offer better integration with phone functions—and present marketing opportunities such as facilitating direct orders by phone or sending promotional text messages.
Mobile sites can take advantage of technology that automatically detects where users are to present local search results. When users set up their preferences or profile, personalized search results become even more relevant and valuable to them.

JIM DENEVAN -The Sandman

2011-03-22T00:06:00.000-07:00

ART Inspiration

Jim Denevan is an American artist from Santa Cruz, California famed for his inspiring temporary land art.

He makes temporary drawings on Sand, Earth & Ice that are eventually erased by waves and weather.

"There's a freedom and an ability to go anywhere when I'm marking the surface." - Jim Denevan.
The photographs of his work have been exhibited at PS1, part of New York's Museum of Modern Art.

Incidentally, Jim also happens to be an accomplished chef starting his career at age 17 and moving on to be the executive chef at Gabriella Cafe, a 4-Star eatery in downtown Santa Cruz.

To know more about Jim Denevan, you can visit his website at www.jimdenevan.com

Fruit Juice Packaging by Naoto Fukasawa

2011-03-21T09:32:00.000-07:00

DESIGN Inspiration

Japanese industrial designer Naoto Fukasawa has created a series of creative fruit juice packages that have the look and feel of the fruit they contain.

“I imagined that if the surface of the package imitated the colour and texture of the fruit skin, then the object would reproduce the feeling of the real skin.” Along with banana Naoto Fukasawa also offers, strawberry and kiwi fruit “juice skins”.

Automobile Maker Volvo Turns Auto Into 3D Graffiti

2011-03-17T11:57:00.000-07:00

BRAND Inspiration

Volvo in Switzerland invited 10 "street artists" to paint, spray and design a white Volvo S60 against a white background. A high-end camera snapped an image every ten seconds for the timelapse video above. The event kicked off on February 9th, with each artist given a half-day session as part of a public work-in-progress art event that was held in the grand hall of Zurich's main train station.

Japan Ribbon

2011-03-17T09:07:00.000-07:00

LIFE Inspiration

The Ribbon for Japan is conceived to support the disaster relief effort. An electronic version of the design is available to download, for attachment to websites and emails. Donations of any amount can be made online at https://american.redcross.org

'The Joy of Living'

2011-03-16T14:39:00.000-07:00

ART Inspiration

'Graphology' takes its form from a recent chair design by its a anonymous creator

By Malaika Byng

Author and design commentator Max Fraser has reached into his bulging contacts book for a good cause, charging the likes of Tom Dixon, Barber Osgerby and Max Lamb to create a work of art that expresses the 'Joy of Living' in aid of Maggie's Cancer Caring Centres. From a donut-like sculpture inspired by a chair design to a hand-stitched piece based on the Ishihara Plate test for colour-blindness, the resulting designs - which all started with a simple piece of graph paper - are now on sale at London's Somerset House.

See more of the 'Joy of Living' artworks
Each signed artwork is priced at $500 but the name of the designer is not revealed until the item is purchased. Other contributing designers include Martino Gamper, Troika, Tomoko Azumi and John Pawson.

Fraser, who was introduced to Maggie's soon after his mother died from the disease, chose the graph paper because it 'seems to trigger a certain nostalgia for designers, reminding them of the early days of drafting before computers took over.' The brief to the designers came from the mantra of Maggie’s co-founder Maggie Keswick Jencks, who said that what matters above all, when facing cancer, is to ‘not to lose the joy of living in the fear of dying’.