Tall Tales & Falsehoods

In the design world we get to explore with unique ways of expressing message and meaning. What one comes up with is not the same as someone else. By being able to look at a situation and come up with multiple solutions we are able to clearly identify new ways of expressing thought. In doing so we open design up to a wider audience with differently cultural takes on the same subject. However one has to be carful not to over simplify the thought process and send out the wrong message.

Assignment:

Five unique, creative, designed ways of illustrating one of the following:

• Final
• Empty
• Unity
• Listening
• Hate

Think of photography, typography, illustration, video, sound an entire design piece.

Due: Jan. 25th, 2010 to go over in class.

The other day I got a simple email from a client stating, “How much do you charge for SEO?”It has taken me almost a week to respond.

With the SEO stuff it is tricky. That is why I am hesitant to answer. People think SEO is this miracle pill that will send your sells over the top. You have these companies out there who charge $$ for big promises. They are everywhere. They have set this president that SEO is instant. They all state that they have the secret formula to Google’s search algorithm. SEO has taken an akin to “Take this pill, eat what you want and you don’t even have to exercise. In four weeks you will have lost 25lbs.”

We feel a bit differently about it at 803. We can’t claim to know what Google does or why they do it. What we do know is that certain aspects of web development haven’t changed over the years and it is those aspects that payoff within search results. We look at the big picture and the long hall. We formulate marketing strategies – not SEO miracle pills. We have a good understanding of  pay-per-click programs, link relevancy and strategic market placement. We also understand the need to take pride in what you do. While we can help clients achieve their web goals success doesn’t come over night.

I would love to say we can work with you to formulate a marketing strategy to help you achieve your web goals, but  in a world of fast food diets this is not what some clients want to hear. Just like with life you have to work at achieving your business goals.

If you could answer the question “What is your goal of your website?” or “Why do you think you need SEO?” I can help you formulate a marketing strategy. From there we can start to implement it in stages, resulting in goal achievement.

Sorry for the long winded answer. I just thought it best that you understood where “SEO” fits within an overall marketing campaign.

All of these supposed SEO companies out there really has turned my world into a frenzy. Clients telling me they need this or they need that – when what they really need is a plan. It is amazing that when some new hot new term pops up hat everybody what to jump on the bandwagon. What they really should be doing is looking at their overall marketing ideas and making sure that they are staying true to there goals. If your goal is to be the top ranked web page for a particular search term then that is fine – lets work towards that goal. If your goal is to make sure that your business is relevant, sound and user friendly to a wider online audience – lets work towards that goal. Sometimes achieving one goal will result in achieving multiple goals at the same time. Clients really just need to identify what their goals are.

Bad News Robot is up and running. An idea that has been fostering away for over five years has now come to fruition. Paul Reynolds of the Bakers Dog fame has once again lent his talents to make the Bad News Robot a reality. So for all of you out there who has bad news to send, but are to afraid to do it yourself, I encourage you to use The Bad News Robot!

Bad News Robot

PS. If you are planning on leaving negative comments on how bad the program sucks can you send it though Bad News Robot!

Don’t forget to follow all of the bad news on Twitter as well!

A few weeks back my brother introduced me to a new album by Ziggy Marley, “Family Time.” He was looking for an album that was family friendly to listen in the car and somebody recommended it to him. Nakia in turned recommenced it to me. Ever since, it has been added to the nightly rotation to Memphis’ bed time jam. The other album added was Bob Marley’s “B Is For Bob.” The two albums are penetrating my daughters mind as she sleeps on a regular basis. I am so pleased to be able to introduce my little girl to such great music at such a young age.

Wow, It has been a year since the birth of my child – Memphis Addison Pope. Over that time I have learned a lot about her and hopefully she has learned some about me. I know at this stage in her life I hold major influence over her; her likes and dislikes, her taste in music and art and even her eating habits. I am trying to make the best of it by showing here some of the the things that have influenced me over the years and that may (or may not) influence her.

My wife asked  me to design an invitation for her first birthday party and while I normally turned down these opportunities I deiced to go for it. I have a hard time designing for myself. There are too many options, too many possibilities that I can do which makes it hard for me to settle on just one idea. All I knew for this is that I didn’t want to go the traditional princess route. I know her mind will be warped soon enough so I wanted to go in a different direction.

Memphis Pope First Birthday Invitation

As you can see I pulled the reference from the great Sun Records logo and built the invitation around that. It is a gate fold in the center of the 45 and opens up to a traditional “faux” letterpress poster. I would have loved to actually had it letter pressed by Hatch Show prints our of Nashville or Yee Haw Industries out of Knoxville. Maybe another time.

Memphis Addison Pope I love you and hope you are not to mad at me for trying to raise you to like some of the things that I think are cool. I know soon enough that you will want to have a princess theme birtday party but for now how about some Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley, and Jerry Lee Lewis?

This was the first large comic book convention that I have been to. I have been to a few smaller ones, but none on this scale.

On Saturday my Wife, Memphis and myself attended Heroes Con in Charlotte, NC. Prior to that day I was excited about the convention. I had rough plans of meeting up with a few people, checking out the vendors and looking forward to the indie tables. While I followed online conversations between Dave Slusher and Derek Coward about their planning and list gathering and nervousness I joked about “Plan, what plan? I am going to have fun.”  I didn’t realize what type of production went into attending a comic book convention.

The day of the convention Heidi, Memphis and myself got to the convention hall around 11:30. We paid our fee and quickly went down to get a lay of the land. Soon after we entered it became apparent that there was huge crowds. I hate crowds. It was also very had to push a stroller trough the aisles and amongst the lines of fans waiting to get autographs. We got a good scope of everything and I stated to wondering around picking through this and that, while the whole time looking for friends along the way. Memphis started to get cranky and I could tell it was lunch time.

My wonderful wife said that she could feed Memphis and that I could stay and look around. This was super cool because to be honest I was a little frustrated with trying to look at things while at the same time making sure Memphis wasn’t eating a $400 comic. So a little time had passed and I knew that I had to get back up to the wife and kid for a bite to eat. Still haven’t seen any of my friends, I picked up the phone and gave Dave a call. He was down for some food, so off we went.

Over lunch I confessed to Dave and Heidi that I thought that I was not the convention type. I am not a star struck fan, I don’t care that much about autographs, I hate large crowds and at best I am a passive reader of books. I was glad to be there, but I wasn’t having that much fun. However there was still some stuff that I wanted to do and check out so after lunch we headed back to the convention for another quick round.

Still huge crowds, long lines and a bunch of people that I don’t know about – plus Memphis was ready for a nap. Once again my great wife to the rescue said that she would take Memphis up for a nap and let me look around. I finally got to make my way around to the indie tables, where I met a few cool people and picked up a ton of books. I figured that I can find most everything else at my local comic book store (who also had a booth there) so why not spend my limited cash funds on some indie comics. It was cool to talk with people, find out where they were from and there creative process. I think I invited everyone that I talked to, to next year’s CREATE South .

By this time it was getting late and I still haven’t met up with Derek or Kreg Steppe . Heidi came back down with Memphis and we went through the vendors long boxes far a few comics that I had on my wish list. However do to the fact that Comicbookdb.com was down for two days prior to the convention and the WiFi in the hall was spotty at best I was limited in my memory of what I wanted to try and find. I didn’t know which vendor was which, who had the better deals and what to really focus on while looking through all of the long boxes. I picked up a few titles and told Heidi I was ready to call it a day.

On the drive home I realized a few things that I leaned from the convention:

1. I had fun. (I know you can’t tell it from my ranting above but I did.)
2. My wife is the greatest.
3. Get phone numbers of the friends you want to met up with.
4. Look over the convention booklet. I would have liked to attended the panels, but I didn’t know when or where – plus Memphis would not have been a huge fan of them either.
5. HAVE A PLAN! – It is a big place so have a plan of what you must see and do. Then if you get that done in enough time do other things.
6. Narrow your wish list and bring a hard copy. I spent a lot of time jumping around from box to box without knowing exactly what I wanted and how much I was willing to spend.
7. Just cause they are indie doesn’t mean that they are good (or bad). I would say that about 90% of the indie comics that I picked up where just plan bad. Supporting people trying to do there thing is cool but  take a closer look before you buy.
8. Try and go for a few days, there was a lot to see and do.
9. Plan on hanging out as much as you can afterwords.
10. Baby’s are super hard at conventions. But I love her dearly.

I had a great time at the convention, but I was also new to the game. I may have been a little too hasty saying that “I wasn’t the convention type.” I think with my new knowledge that next year I can have an even better time.

Design has become a numbers game lately. As the internet develops and matures so does how we handle advertising. Accurate statistical data can now be gathered to track the progress of an ad campaign, to whom the target audience as and even be assign a dollar value according to how much direct revenue it has brought in. While to most this is great news, to me this is a little sad.

Lately I have been in a design hole lately. Clients want results, they want them fast and they want them cheep. They expect all of this out of 125×125 pixel ads. No longer do I paint beautiful thought provoking ad campaigns across a wide canvas of direct mail, billboards, newspaper, radio and tv. Now I get to test my creative abilities in a 125×125 box. (That is roughly 1.75 inches by 1.75 inches.) I am all for design challenges, but it now has turned into a day-in-day-out thing. If its not 125×125, it’s 800×125, 120×75, 600×100. Email blast, cubes, headers – it is all becoming the same to me now.

Not only that, but clients (as well as myself) want and expect to see results – or at least the numbers of people who clicked on the ad, where the ad was located, where they went to, how long they stayed there, where they went to next – and what I am planning on doing about it. It’s all about the numbers.

Now the internet lets you do some pretty cool little things such as build personal url’s, geo-target clients, have real time conversations and monitor your business in real time. This is all great and I welcome all of it. However most clients are uneducated in the ways of the internet and are feed a lot of half truths from sales reps. (I constantly have to tear down misnomers and flat out lies told to clients form newspaper sales reps in our area. 1) Because they really don’t have a clue what they are selling and 2) they really don’t care what they are selling – “just show the clients big numbers.”) This makes my job even harder. I have to convince clients they they shouldn’t care to much for impressions or any of the other BS feed to them but actual look at the hard numbers (which are really easily found). I expect to see this data because I have taught my clients to see this data.

For me the really challenge is that I wear many hats. I am designer, so I want to do big bold stuff. I am a novice web guy, who knows enough to know that he doesn’t know what he should. And I’m in marketing, meaning I know that the numbers matter. I see the whole picture.

The world of 125×125 is forcing many companies to become multifaceted in number reporting and design. That is where I am at right now. Show me results 125×125, if not start all over again until you find one that does. Don’t become outdated and keep me posted of progress. Oh yeah, since you are so small 125×125, you do not cost much money to produce right?

That is one of the main elements clients do not understand. 125×125 is hard to design for. It takes just as long to knock out an 125×125 online ad as it does a postcard. The client gets pixels in return and doesn’t value it the same way as a printed product. They think that since it is only pixels and so small that it should cost them next to noting to produce. It is even hard to convince them that statistical data is valuable.

125×125 is become the norm. So I better get used to it. I have to reeducate my clients of its value, try and get others to do the same, and be happy about it. I know there is a ton of cool stuff you can do with 125×125 and/or its linking url, I just have to reinvent myself with the knowledge of how to achieve it. The designer inside me may have to step aside for the numbers guy and the programmer hopefully hidden in me.

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I remember when I hated doing 4×6 postcard direct mail pieces, trying to cram all of the clients text into that little space. I whole heatedly outright love them now. Bring them on BABY!

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I read this article in the NY Times that got me thinking about all of this stuff.

Another year has come and gone for CREATE South. It was a great experience this year. As one of the co-founders of CREATE South my hands touch all facets of the conference. For better or worse that is just how it is. We learned a tremendous amount from 2008 and even more form 2009. CREATE South 2010 should be even better.

As I look back on getting CREATE South 2009 together I wanted to make sure I posted some of the key points that I think will lead us to an even better conference in 2010.

• Remember to have fun
• Don’t forget to ask for help
• Know your strengths and weaknesses
• Plan ahead
• Have contingencies
• Find more sponsors

I like to tell myself that this is a grassroots conference. This takes a little pressure off. With a grassroots effort, things tend to a be a little more laid back, expectations from others aren’t so high, and the ability to change everything at the last minute is ok.

Andre @ CREATE South 2009 By Chrys

I do not like structured environments and I want to make sure that CREATE South stays true to the grassroots feel. One day I want to be able to hand off CREATE South to the new blood and let them run with the philosophy that we have instilled in it.

One of the best things we did this year was partner up with Horry Georgetown Technical College. In doing so we had a new found partner with some of the same goals. They were able to provide real life, hands on applications for their students to test their skills. CREATE South in returned received a venue to have the conference and an ongoing working relationship with a leader in the community. For that I am grateful.

Between planning, organizing and cooking I got to have a little fun and meet some really cool people. For me the conference isn’t what I learn in the session but rather what I take away from the people that I meet there. This year was a great exercise in networking for myself and my ideas.

I feel as if CREATE South 2009 was a big success. It laid down a firm foundation to build an even better conference with in 2010.

Until then check out some of the other CREATE South 2009 links:

Tiffany Trent Blog Post

CREATE South 2009 Flickr Group Pool

The Twitter Talk

I now know there is a point and time in your life when you have to be selfish. It is not a good thing, but a necessary thing. It is weird to say, I know, but it is the truth. I have always thought of myself as a very giving person. When it comes to work, helping or money – if I have it then it is yours. However, as I have recently discovered, sometimes you have to say NO.

You work hard to provide a future for you and your family. Sometime circumstances creep in that threaten to take away that future. You have to make hard choices. You give a little and when that is not enough, you give more. But what happens when you have to give even more, give to a point that stretches you so thin you are not sure where it is going to come from? You have to become selfish. You have to say no. At the same time understand, that when you say no, it is ultimately going to hurt somebody else.

You can say “it’s nothing personal,” but deep down it’s all personal. Maybe not to the person it directly affects, but personal to you. Because if you don’t say no, it’s going to hurt you and your family.

This is the point where I am at right now. It sucks.