Thanks for the interview, Brian. Hopefully some useful information was transferred through the tubes and into your loyal readers.

Here’s a short snippet from the interview:

What are three things you do every day to stay motivated, inspired, and innovative?

My family and client work keeps me motivated, the ever changing climate of web design and development keeps me inspired, and just keeping my ears open for ideas keeps us innovative…

Head on over to the full interview to read the rest.

OnWired, a full-service graphic design, web development and online marketing firm, is on a quest to find a superstar sales consultant. We’re looking for someone with a creative mind, attention to detail, self-motivation, exceptional communication skills, and the ability to learn quickly. Most importantly, we need someone who really gets what we do.

You’ll get to work with a small, highly talented team of people who are incredibly passionate about what they do. We’ve got a gig waiting for the right person. It’s part-time and commission-only to start, but we’ll play it by ear and see where things go.

Now we come to the pay-off. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to send your resume along with the world’s greatest cover letter to HireMe@OnWired.com. Explain your love affair with the web. Dazzle and amaze us with stories of amazing deals you’ve closed. Promise us that if we hire you, all of our wildest dreams will come true. If you’re convincing enough, we’ll be in touch.

By the way, we’re based in Cary, NC. You don’t necessarily have to come to the office every day, but we do expect you to be available for face-to-face meetings with clients from time to time.

Let’s start this post off with a view of some absolutely incredible sidewalk chalk drawings by the aptly named ”sidewalk chalk guy”
Courtesy of Flickr.

What the Font

Have you come across a font on a website that you just love? It’s killing you what that typeface is right? Fear no more, simply upload an image of that tasty little font to WhatTheFont! and let their handy little database of fonts do the matching for you.

Smashing Wireframes

Wireframes, the backbone of any good website. Smashing Magazine has graciously supplied us, their web minions, with 35 Excellent Wireframe Resources.

Speaking of Smashing, you may know they have a book coming in September (yes this month). At this time they’re taking pre-orders and rumor has it, OnWired may be included in the ‘Learning From Experts: Interviews And Insights’. Not 100% sure as I don’t know if we’ve made the final cut. They did interview us though, for whatever that’s worth.

Website Showcase Galleries

Gallery sites, yes they are a dime a dozen now days. There are, however, more niche design gallery sites arriving at a rapid rate. Two to note are eCommerce Gallery by our Twitter buddy @jamespaden. His focus is to showcase, hand selected, ecommerce websites.

The other is a gallery started by yours truly—meet FooterFetish.com. Footer Fetish is our way of showcasing the lost art of web design footers; ours is hand selected as well—fulfill your fetish.

That’s a wrap folks. See you next week. 

OnWired, a full-service web design/development firm and all-around cool place to work, is on a quest to find our next superstar web developer. We’re looking for someone with a creative mind, a keen understanding of user experience, exceptional communication skills, attention to detail, self-motivation, and the ability to hit the deadline every time.

On the technical side, you should be able to wrangle CSS, XHTML, Ruby, PHP, and SQL along with the occasional Javascript and AJAX. If you’re familiar with MVC (model-view-controller), that’s a huge plus. We’re not sticklers for fancy degrees. We just want someone who can get the job done.

You’ll get to work with a small, highly talented team of people who are incredibly passionate about what they do. We’ve got a full-time gig waiting for the right person in our Cary, NC office, and we really need someone who can hit the ground running.

Now we come to the pay-off. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to send your resume along with the world’s greatest cover letter to HireMe@OnWired.com. Explain your love affair with web standards. Dazzle and amaze us with your past work. Promise us that if we hire you, all of our wildest dreams will come true. If you are convincing enough, we’ll be in touch.

By the way, as we said, this position is based in our Cary, NC office. If you’re not already in town or if you’re not willing to relocate, we’re going to have to pass. If you run one of those outsourcing firms in India, please don’t email us offering to span the globe with your low-cost coding skills. And if you happen to be the widow of a deposed Nigerian military officer, we kindly decline your offer to share your immense wealth with us.

Please include your salary requirements when applying.

Desired Technologies

• Modern Web technologies
• Ruby
• SQL
• PHP
• MVC
• AJAX (all languages included)
• Work within XHTML/CSS environments - no tables

Bonus Technologies

• ExpressionEngine
• Drupal
• WordPress
• CodeIgniter
• jQuery
• Have your own Wii-mote

Lulu Blog

If you’re not familiar with Lulu, they are basically an online publishing company with great service and rates to match. I’m sure that doesn’t tell you much so I’ll let Lulu tell you in their own words:

Lulu is changing the world of publishing by empowering authors to publish their work themselves for free with complete editorial and copyright control.

We needed someone to print our newly created leave-behind sales book so who better than our friendly neighborhood Lulu-man, Dan London. Apparently they enjoyed the book and asked if we’d mind being featured in their blog. Of course not; here is the result.

Six Questions on SixRevisions.com

Jacob Gube, our buddy and occasional critic on PleaseCritiqueMe.com, approached me on being the subject of one of his popular Six Questions interviews. I was pretty excited to say the least. Jon suggested getting some high quality images of ourselves created so we turned to another local, Scott Clevenger, and high quality is what we received.

Thanks a bunch, Jacob! To our trusted readers, please enjoy the interview.

John O’Nolan

I met John O’Nolan via Twitter and have since been interviewed by him for his own blog. We’ve also turned to him for some custom, top secret, WordPress development needs of our own.

After being teased with possible interviews in the past, this was my first bona-fide attempt, so I was pretty nervous. I believe it turned out well and actually helped John bring in some extra readers to his blog.

That about covers our blog rounds of late, but we should be referenced in an upcoming popular web design magazine along with some quotes in a soon to be released book. Stay tuned — things happen fast in the web world.

It wasn’t long ago that I moved to Raleigh from up north. I’d only been in the area a few weeks before I had OnWired and another local agency in my radar. After meeting with the team here, I knew where I belonged. Everybody was cool, trendy and young. I saw working alongside like-minded people fresh out of design school as a huge perk. I have no regrets.

There’s been some great projects I’ve got to head since coming on board. I really enjoyed working along my good friend Brett Buddin on NewsBeat, in particular. Your Web Job and Please Critique Me meant a great deal to me on a personal level, and both of those ventures have gone on to have a great deal of success. Webmaster Jam Session in Atlanta was a good time (stealing the Mail Chimp not so much), as was all the birthday cake and free food.

OnWired is going to go on and do some great things in the future. There’s a solid team in place here. Tony and Jon have the right chemistry as business partners, and I’ll be forever grateful to them for taking a chance on me when I was fresh off the slab.

To my co-workers Brett, Megan, Pat, Troy, Jen, Julie, Corey and Joe: the camaraderie will be sorely missed. I learned something from you guys every day. Truth be told, there’s nobody I’d rather have been in the trenches with throughout my tenure. I wish you all nothing but the best.

To all you readers, followers, O-Dub groupies out there: thank you for keeping tabs on my passage, and thank you especially for believing in what we’ve done as a group. I’ve made some career-lasting allies in you, whether via e-mail or Twitter or meeting at conferences, and I can’t wait to see what the future holds!

I don’t want to make this sound like it’s my OnWired funeral. I’m still going to help out at Please Critique Me (I may actually have some time now), as well as contribute to some unannounced internal ventures I committed to doing. I’ll be around.

In the meantime, you can find me out on the trail, still getting my hands dirty in the community. I’ve been blessed with a lot of great opportunities since I started here. I appreciate it all — truly — and I’ll be forever in this agency’s debt for spring-boarding my career.

Thanks for the memories, OnWired. Keep up the good fight.

Cut to the Core.

Stripping your site to the bones may not sound appealing, but it’s always necessary. Easier said than done, right? The key here is to analyze and thin your content in order to reduce redundant clutter and pave a clean path for your users. Thinning and organizing your content will help users take action quickly and avoid mistakes.

This is the approach Robert Hoekman Jr. suggests in Designing the Obvious. Hoekman says, “To create a focused application, stick to building 20 percent of features that are essential, and you’ll take care of 80 percent of the user’s needs.” Only 80 percent?… lets face it we’re never going to fulfill every need of every user.

He’s basically saying stick to what’s essential and cut the crap. Sometimes the client thinks everything is essential, but the truth is it isn’t. As information architects we know that the most essential aspect is that the user can actually use the site. What’s the use of having information up on the web if people won’t be willing to stick around to see it?

This is where it can get a little hairy between the client and designer. For example: I have people pleasing syndrome; I like to make people happy, so for clients that means giving them what they want, right? Wrong. Clients don’t always know what is best for their website. They have incredible insight on their business and a rough idea of what should be represented, but are by no means qualified to dictate your IA process. That’s why they’ve come to you for help in the first place.

I’m not saying you should go around screaming in client’s faces, especially if they’re Lou Ferrigno. Be nice to clients, but show them tough love too. Simple, clean functionality has top priority over content because if the user can’t understand, get to, or even see the content for all the crap on the page it might as well not even be there. Negotiating content type and amount will be a never-ending battle, I promise. The client will always try to slip in more content.

Overall, cutting your content should involve eliminating features, text, & design that doesn’t directly serve the activity and purpose of the site. In turn you will de-clutter your site and provide a better experience for your users. It’s hard to let go of the wicked cool features but most of the time, for the sake of the design and the user, they should be tossed. Clear a path and remove anything that could get in the user’s way. Your client will thank you in the end. Here is a little more incentive from Hoekman: “The difficulty of accomplishing tasks in your application means that users don’t stick around to fight their way through it, and they don’t bother coming back.” So harsh, but so true.

Unify the Pieces.

Unity throughout design is a huge deal! It helps sustain the users comfort level as they browse or search a site. Avoid confusion by keeping a consistent font family, synchronizing font weights/styles and color emphasis, and lining up similar interface elements.

Take a huge leap towards unity by keeping instances of color and text in sync throughout your design. Use color to help the user create a relation between different pieces in your interface. For example: if you use a darker grey on one link, use it on all links throughout your site. The same goes for text, If you bold the text on a button once, do it on all those buttons. It’s little similarities like this that will pull your site together.

Maintaining font consistency throughout your site is kind of a big deal, not only with links or buttons, but in text blocks as well. Using more than two fonts in a site design can be annoying to the user. They may not realize what is annoying them, but if you’re using Comic Sans for one text block and Papyrus (gag) for the next, the user will notice something is off. Users want to be able to smoothly transition from text block to text block without thinking about why there is a difference between the two. On the other hand, different weights and styles within one font can help you emphasize different elements such as block quotes throughout your site.

Unity isn’t just in the small things, in fact, it can pose a huge problem on a much larger scale. Carrying header and footer elements over to all pages lets the user know they are still on the same site. The placement of interface elements is also very important. If you have a navigation running along the bottom of your header and move this same navigation to the side bar on the next page, this will trigger the user to actually think! Now, we don’t want to disappoint Steve Krug do we? Keeping placement sustains unity but so does lining and sizing up related elements. This includes lining up text blocks with subheads, keeping form fields aligned, and properly spacing navigation tabs.

Focus on unifying your interface elements and your users will be much more willing to stick around.

Stick to the Plan.

The last step will ensure that the customer receives the site they’ve requested and the user finds what they are looking for.

Collecting a list of three main site goals at the beginning of the information architecture phase is a must. These goals should become a foundation for the rest of the project and should be in the back of your mind throughout every step of the process. This will help tremendously with cutting to the core of your content. With each feature and element ask yourself if it is absolutely necessary to accomplish the goals of the site. If it is, it’s safe until the next round of cuts; if not, chuck it. Treating your features like they are soccer players trying out for the team may sound silly but it’s a good way to focus on what really is or isn’t necessary.

Keep in mind, C.U.S.ing is an art and requires practice. Don’t expect to just start C.U.S.ing and be an expert like O’Reilly. The next time a big design project rolls in don’t forget to Cut to the Core, Unify the Pieces & Stick to the Plan.

OnWired’s site looks really great, but it seems like quality drops off a bit when it comes to some of the work in your portfolio.

I’ll be the first to admit that I agree with the comment. I spent months lovingly pushing pixels to create the design for our own site. There was no deadline. No budget. No set of limitations. I was free to design the site however I wanted, so I did.

With client work, however, I can’t do whatever I want. None of us can. We try, and we certainly make a case for our suggestions, but sometimes people just don’t listen. They hire us because of our expertise, but then some of them tie our hands and act like back seat drivers. Unfortunately, as we hear all too often, “the customer is always right.”

That said, I’ve compiled a list of things that clients have actually said. If you’re a designer, you’ll probably laugh knowingly as you read this list because you’ve heard the same. If you’re a client, please take note and don’t say these things to the poor soul you’ve hired.

You can only use Arial.

Over the years, I’ve seen a lot of wacky rules in corporate style guides — horrible color combinations, poor naming conventions, and plenty of wacky font choices. But Arial? Seriously? That is your official font? There are no alternates? No secondary fonts that can be used for headlines or callouts? Oh…Arial Bold and Arial Italic. Awesome.

You have to use these blurry, underexposed, pixelated and/or inappropriate photos.

As any designer knows, a good photo will make or break a design. Over the years, I’ve spent countless hours looking through stock imagery and even shooting some of my own pictures to get just the right look for a site. It always breaks my heart when you’ve created something really great and are then asked to replace the main photo on the home page with one taken with somebody’s mobile phone.

Make the logo bigger.

Designers like grids for layouts. They like it when things fit nicely into their grids. They really want everything on a given page to be nice and proportional. But then you get a request to double the size of the logo. Why? Because a competitor’s logo is bigger. Let me say now that just because someone else’s logo is bigger or smaller doesn’t make their site any better or worse. Well…ok…that’s not true. It could definitely make their site worse, because I’ve seen it with my own eyes. Either way, comparing logo sizes is not the best way to judge good design. Trust your designer.

By the way, this one is so common that it’s spawned an internet phenomenon: Make My Logo Bigger Cream!

Make the logo animated.

Right after asking for a ginormous logo, this is usually the next request. Frenzied, bouncing, jiggling, exploding logos attract attention, so they must be good…right? I’ll concede that there may be a time and a place for a logo with slight, simple animation. However, when it detracts from the site — when it distracts or annoys the visitor because it keeps moving and jumping and catching on fire over and over and over again — it’s bad. Really bad.

We want to keep our lame old logo, even though you’re offering to design a newer, better one for free.

I’ve seen some terrible logos in my time. One was so bad that it would instantly crap up any design it was used in. Being the nice guys we are, we offered to design a new logo free of charge. We just wanted to take what they had, clean it up a bit, and come up with some better type treatment — something other than Times New Roman, which really wasn’t a good fit for their business. They refused. We ultimately didn’t take the project.

Make it exactly like X.

This is the second time this had made it onto one of my lists. Last time, I was talking about red flags that pop up when talking to prospective clients. We’re generally not in the business of ripping things off from other designers, so we talk people out of it early on. Of course, sometimes it comes back up during the design process. The client may want some icon or button or feature or photo or whatever that is exactly like something else. Now if it fits — if it works with the concept of the site — then it might be worth putting our own spin on the idea and coming up with something similar. However, just because someone else has funny kitten videos from YouTube on their home page doesn’t mean it’s right for your client’s site, especially when your client is a lawyer or accountant or something like that (unless they specialize in law or accounting for veterinarians or pet stores).

This looks too good for government work.

A friend of mine works for an engineering firm that gets lots of government contracts, particularly from FEMA. His job is to design documentation, graphics, charts, presentations, etc., for those government projects. He recently turned in a very well-designed report — something that looked truly great but was still very professional. He was told to redo it because it looked too good.

So what’s the takeaway?

I could go on and on, but you get the idea. We as designers all have bills to pay. Clients pay us, which in turn allows us to keep our lights on and feed our children, so sometimes we have to bow to the wishes of those clients even if we don’t agree.

So to anyone making the aforementioned comment about the disparity between our own site and our portfolio, there’s your answer: there is a difference in quality because clients were involved in the process.

And to those hiring designers, please trust them. Don’t tie their hands. Let them do their jobs. Believe me — they are capable of creating beautiful masterpieces if you’ll just let them do their thing, and the end product will be better for it.

Micro-blogging has exploded onto the social networking scene with Twitter, years behind the status update features of Myspace and Facebook. Unlike the two aforementioned, however, Twitter doesn’t come with fairly dimensional layers and the lengthy learning curve. You put in your e-mail account, grab a few buddies (“followers”), and start updating your profile with opinions and thoughts (what’s called a “tweet”).

For those users simply out to make friends and chatter, Twitter is easy as pie. But, for those of you out there like myself — who want to make noise in our professional communities — Twitter stands for a lot more. We want to network, share links and feedback, and stage our work for our peers. The social network is a promotional piece in itself… one with fine lines and tight limitations. One catch with Twitter is that it only gives its users 140 characters to swoon the world, so making lengthy statements calls for a crafty and careful approach. It only takes one lousy misstep to hang yourself in the eyes of others.

Be Appealing

Your actions on Twitter reflect your characteristics offline, whether that be a good thing or not. If you’re using Twitter just to connect with friends, well, being silly and ludicrous is perfectly acceptable (Note: prospective employers use Twitter too, you know?). That’s your prerogative. Personally, I’m one of those users who find Twitter to be a springboard. As a designer, my image within my community is important to me, therefore I watch what I say or do unless I fully understand the repercussions.

Speaking of image, that’s a surefire ploy to turn heads and open eyes on Twitter. A friend of mine recently wrote about giving your Twitter a little flare by customizing your profile — an undeniable way to come off as somebody who cares about their appearance (thus, somebody who takes their work and tweets seriously, too).

The Relevant & Everyone Else

I personally use my Twitter page as a means to promote design; rarely do I tweet about something unrelated to the realm in which I professionally associate myself with. I micro-blog about typography, illustrations, branding, inspiring web designs and, on occasion, toss in the shameless self-promotion. The followers on my list stay with me because I give them relevant bits of information and inspiration, or things they can personally relate to. People know what to expect when they start following me: the rare pinch of personal information, lots of professional pork.

There’s nothing wrong with being personable on Twitter. Tossing the rare “Pizza sucks” message out there keeps you looking human and less robot-like. Nonetheless, do your best to keep your integrity in check. Giddy your Twitter followers in relation to the industry you service in. A week-long flame war over the best brand of tap bottled water is not something I expect to see from a fellow artist, nor would I care.

If the elections of last year proved anything, it was that people on Twitter don’t like being flooded with stuff they’re not passionate about (even if they should be).

Social Sharks

I don’t want to go into great detail on the following topic, but I do want to say that Twitter is no different than Myspace or Facebook in that there are people out there only trying to get another name on their friend list.

People will follow you with the expectation that you’ll follow back. Some of those very same people — “social sharks” they’re called — will then ditch you the moment the follow is returned, all because you’re a number to them. Pathetic, I know.

On the other side of the coin, there’s nothing wrong with following somebody you personally find interesting, even if they don’t return the favor (some people are simply too busy to keep up with their own followers).

The number next to your follower list on Twitter is by no means a way to measure your professional worth. Trust me, there are some downright awful “designers” who have Twitter numbers I’ll never dare reach… and I’m not losing sleep at night.

Retweeting

A common trend on Twitter is something called “retweeting” — inner-slang for forwarding a message. Retweeting (you may see people use “RT” or “R/T” for short ) is when a user copies somebody else’s tweet, usually verbatim, and blasts it out to his or her followers. If this sounds like a helpful trend that’s because it is. There’s tens of thousands of links being handed out by people on Twitter everyday, so being able to catch even a smidgen of them is a feat — retweeting helps spread that information to even the darkest, dreariest corners of Twitterverse. And sharing is kind.

The problem with retweeting, however, is that it’s recently turned into a game of “How many ‘RT’s’ can I fit into a post?”. I’ve seen complete posts where five people have individually retweeted the same message — to the point where all I’m reading in the message is “RT: RT: RT: RT: RT:”. Think I’m kidding? I dug the following example out of Twitter Search from earlier today:

RT @Shaylynne: RT @ericloganvanman RT @truesprit RT RT RT smile RT @loubortone New Web 2.0 pick-up lines…

Needless to say, retweeting isn’t foolproof. Why do we need to know that you’re the fifth person (on a virtual assembly line) to rehash a tweet? Use the delete button on your keyboard — that’s what it’s there for.

Admiration Awaits

There are a lot of really good articles out there that detail Twitter’s platform in greater depth; I recommend reading a couple (particularly this one) and educating yourself on the features, benefits and trends.

While it’s not for everybody, Twitter can be an effective tool to help move your career forward, no matter what it is you do for a living. Let your tweets be driven, self-aware and, above all else, original.

Companies that remain committed to advertising during a sluggish economy usually bounce back much quicker when the economy is on the upswing again. Advertising is not simply for the immediate future, but is an investment for many months or even years into the future.

In an economic slowdown, people do not stop purchasing goods and services. Potential customers do tend to be more selective in these times though. When buyers are more selective, a strategy to carefully distinguish your company from the competition is more important than ever.

Another thing to consider is that many companies will, in fact, cut back on advertising. This, in theory, should allow more aggressive advertisers to experience bargain-advertising rates that will make the money spent on advertising extremely efficient.

Sales and advertising are closely related to each other. If advertising is scaled back, then sales will decrease, and the perceived savings that were supposed to be gained by the advertising dollar cutbacks will be lost. Usually, much more harm is done to the bottom line than the advertising cutbacks would have appeared to save in the first place.

During any lengthy economic slowdown, a business must find ways to be as efficient as possible. Doing otherwise would be foolhardy. The advertising budget should be one of the last possible areas to cut. Everything else the business does today and in the future depends on advertising. The old adage is as true as ever. In business, nothing happens until somebody sells something. When the economy is booming, advertising is a very good idea. During an economic downturn, maintaining a healthy advertising budget is a necessity.

Why Are We Doing This?

I recall the days when I was the only designer here at OnWired, and I clearly remember being much more productive between 10pm and 4am. Oh, the nights of sitting at the kitchen table with Fireworks and Dreamweaver, and the aching back staying up late provided.

I don’t design much anymore, but I’ve been brainstorming on how to get the most out of the awesome talent we have on staff. Obviously, as a company we need to deal with clients during the daylight hours, though, a few of us produce our best stuff in the moonlight. It just comes natural to some people.

Staying up 24 hours isn’t always feasible; the human body isn’t built to handle sleepless nights for long. Still, as the owner of a creative firm, I never want to limit the spark of my employees — if my people work better at night, like I do, why disallow them the opportunity to do so? I encouraged some of the team to work a few nights at the office at their own discretion — come in, relax, crank up the music, dim the lights, do whatever it is they’d do in their own home work environment (well, maybe not whatever).

As Brett works all night as it is, he was game right away. Sean reminisced of his college days and jumped at the bit as well. Our significant others aren’t so keen to the idea, but they’ve been reassured it’s only an occasional thing.

The Benefits

Less distractions! Just not having the phone ring, solicitors selling cookies, the reduction of emails, and less chatter pays tremendous dividends to working at night. Your mind relaxes and opens up to a slew of creativity — it’s easy to get into the zone when you’re at ease.

Go ahead, give it a try. Just don’t do it on a night before a morning meeting. Trust me: nobody wants to see you drooling over your big-gulp sized Caribou coffee.

Image supplied compliments of flickr user estimmel

Inspirational Blog of 2008:

Winner: 24 Ways

With a staff of experienced professionals, 24 Ways brings design and development into a single blog better than anybody. On 24 Ways, client sales, project management, and wireframing are good examples of important topics not usually found on your typical blog farm. It truly covers a little of everything for people in our trade.

There’s really not much to dislike about 24 Ways… except waiting for December to roll around again.

Honorable Mention: Freelance Switch

2008 Papyrus Award:

Winner [que obnoxious drumroll]: Sketch Rockwell

For better or worse, there was no other font that came close to being as widely used as Artill’s Sketch Rockwell in 2008. Hardly shunning the spotlight, this handset font became the poster child for coffee houses, non-profits and “trend” bloggers across the globe. You knew the Sketch Rockwell fad had arrived when Starbucks got in on the action in April — nestled comfortably on its homepage, no less.

Like a lingering illness with a late punch, Sketch only became more common as 2008 went on, leaving the world to wonder how long it will take for Microsoft to buy it for their operating systems.

Honorable Mention: Gotham Bold & Black

[Biased] Complete Font of 2008:

Winner: Archer

Archer is simply fantastic! Whether for web displays or printed materials, it has enough scalability in weights to cover everything you’d need — plus it’s flat out gorgeous in detail. 2008 would have been better if I could have used and abused it more.

Honorable Mention: Jubilat and Gloriola

[Biased] “Whoa, Cool!” Font of 2008:

Winner: Burgues Script

It was a toss up again this year with Burgues and Calgary, two incredibly beautiful fonts that made waves in the early-half of the year. Ale Paul does it again with the seemingly limitless Burgues, an OpenType font that will act as a cornerstone to your script library.

Honorable Mention: Calgary Script, Metroscript and Studio Lettering

2009’s First Font to Watch:

Winner: Sugar Pie

When the specimen leaked in July for Sugar Pie, type blogs began flooding with questions of norm. When would it come out? Would it be Open? Sugar Pie just dropped a few weeks back, giving ’09 its first strong loopy-swash face of the year. It should start showing up in display type near you soon.

Best CSS Web Gallery:

Winner: The Best Designs

While there are sites that give better previews and have easier search categories, there is no gallery with better return statistics than The Best Designs (TBD). A few galleries have given OnWired more hits over a lengthier time, but the fact that TBD doesn’t update often (and searches well to boot) means that its listed websites carry steam longer.

Honorable Mention: Best Web Gallery, CSS Elite and ScrnShots

Best Web Trend of 2008:

Winner: Vintage & Hand-Drawn

Like handset fonts over the past 18 months, the vintage and texture trend was hot in 2008. While gloss and sheen took a backseat, illustrators of the world danced in the streets as they found work in the web. Identities, self-promotions and typography got in their “Doc” Emmett Brown DeLorean’s and went back in time. Crafty, hand-drawn elements gave the web (and print) a human-like feel, as textures pushed “just alright” web designs over the edge.

Call it eternal, call it timeless, call it what you will — there’s no denying that vintage, old-school patterns, type and textures are the “it” of web design going into the new year.

2009’s Portfolio Trend to Avoid:

Winner: Wood

I’m speaking to the web designers of the world…

If you’ve been a designer long, chances are you have used a wood texture and/or background. I have — before and after it was cool (guilty as charged). But as hot as mulberry and chestnut may have been in 2007, it’s equally as unoriginal and anti-innovative today. While the hip-factor seems to be finally decreasing, it’d be fair to say that the wood trend still acts as one of the most commonly used styles for designer portfolios.

Wood is a beautiful aesthetic for the right clients, make no doubts, but we’re not carpenters and we don’t sell furnishings; let’s keep our own portfolios wood-free in 2009!

Best CMS of 2008:

Most Intriguing: Symphony 2

I asked my colleagues in the development lab this question, knowing they’d jump at the opportunity to get their two cents in. While they told me that there’s no such thing as a “best” content management system, Symphony 2 is the most fresh and innovative rolling onwards. “XSLT is a natural choice for site templating, so to build a CMS around that idea is really neat,” Brett mentioned.

While it has a somewhat underground following now, look for Symphony to become a big player in the wild world of CMS platforms in ’09.

Quick Picks:

Best Logo Blog: Brand New

Best Packaging Design Blog: The Dieline

Best Print Magazine: Print

Best Web Design Magazine: Web Designer (UK)

Best Tutorial Website: Abduzeedo

Staff Picks:

Tony’s Frequented Websites: Think Vitamin, Marketing Profs, Web Monkey and Andy Rutledge

Megan’s Frequented Websites: Pattern Tap, Web Creme and Yanko Design

Sean’s Frequented Websites: Logo Lounge, Grain Edit, AIGA, Design is Kinky and Six Revisions

Brett’s Frequented Websites: Coding Horror, Stack Overflow and Kate Beaton

If the economy is so bad, why aren’t we seeing a slowdown in potential web design and development projects? In fact, we’re getting more than we ever have, and the average price point has gone up significantly over the last few months. I don’t understand it, but if this is what happens in a “bad economy”, bring it on.

During times when we’re going through a so-called recession, the instinct is to take on whatever work comes along because you don’t know when the next project will roll in. I’ve heard other web designers and developers say those very words. I disagree. I think you have to be just as picky about which clients you choose to work with as you were a year or two ago. You still have standards. You still don’t want to sell your soul for a paycheck. Don’t give in.

Just to remind us of the things we should watch for when evaluating a potential project, here are a number of big red flags (in no particular order) that shouldn’t be overlooked:

We designed this in house, but we need you to build it.

I’ll be the first to admit that some companies do have great internal design teams but don’t have the technical resources to actually build a site. However, in most cases, when I see these few words, the screenshot of the site-to-be that follows is enough to make my eyes bleed.

We’re on a tight budget right now, but we’ve got a lot more work to toss your way.

When somebody says this, they are usually fishing for a deal. If we do this first project on the cheap, they say they’ll come back with more work. Of course, it never really works that way. They either don’t come back at all or expect the same super-duper discount deal again and again.

My other designer bailed out half-way through the project. Can you take over?

Why exactly did your former designer quit? Are you one of the clients that Zeldman was talking about?

We’ve got a great idea, but you need to sign a non-disclosure agreement before we talk.

Yes, there are some cases where people have truly brilliant ideas (like a certain person we met a few weeks ago). However, in most cases, the mere mention of an NDA means that we’re about to hear the most ridiculous idea ever. Believe me — I’ve heard some doozies.

This is a high-profile site, so you’ll get a lot of recognition out of it.

Again, this person is fishing for a deal. We actually had someone suggest that we do their site for free because of all the traffic it would get and all the potential deals we would receive. I think not.

I’ve got $2,000 to build something like Facebook.

Good luck with that. Have you tried elance or craigslist?

Why do you think this project will take so long?

Well, let’s take a quick look at our process. We start with some research — looking at your needs and seeing what your competitors are doing. We plan out the site architecture and create wireframes for each unique page template. Then we do the actual visual design work. Then, it’s off to slicing and coding and trying to get browsers to play nicely. Then you may or may not need a content management system before all of the content can be added and the site can be launched. You’re looking at 200 hours of work to do things right. And no, we’re not willing to sacrifice our process. If you want something faster than that, there’s always TemplateMonster.

We’re evaluating lots of other agencies.

I’m all for shopping around, but we ultimately want a client who wants to partner with us because of our expertise and our body of work, not because we were the one they just happened to pick out of their list of 30 web design shops.

Can you send us a mockup of what the site will look like?

We haven’t even spoken to you yet. We don’t know your needs or your style. We haven’t seen your content. We have no idea what you want, other than a facelift for your site. Besides, even if we did know all that stuff, we don’t do spec work.

Can you build me a site just like X?

Yes, we could, but why? You obviously aren’t them, so I doubt that what you need is exactly the same as what they’ve done. Oh, you mean EXACTLY like theirs? You want us to steal their design, drop in your logo, replace their name with yours, and call it done? No thanks. I like to avoid intellectual property infringement.

We’re making a decision based on the lowest bid.

We’re not the lowest bidder in town. We’re definitely not cheaper than your neighbor’s pimply pre-teen son. Not that there’s anything wrong with pimply pre-teen sons who happen to be designers. We happen to know a few who are extremely talented. Either way, you get my drift…

Can you do it by Monday morning?

Um, no. It’s 3PM on Friday. Even if I wanted to work on your project all weekend long without sleeping, it’s physically impossible to do 375 hours of work in a 67 hour period, unless you can provide me with either a pimped-out De Lorean or a certain blue police call box.

Please enjoy a unique OnWired twist on an old holiday favorite.

Twas the night before the site launch when all through the web
Not a line of code was stirring, not even a <head>
The tabs were all hung by the nav bar with care
In hopes that OnWired soon would be there.

The developers were nestled all snug in their caves,
While visions of breadcrumbs danced in their brains.
And Tony in his kerchief, and Jon in his cap,

Had just closed their MacBooks for a short winter’s nap.

When over in the design room there arose such laughter,

Jon sprang from his yoga ball to see what was the matter.

Into the design room he flew like a flash,

Where Megan & Sean were having a laugh.

When what to his wondering eyes should appear,
But a miniature developer, and eight tiny computers.

With little old fingers, so lively and quick,

He knew in a moment it must be St. Brett.

More rapid than eagles his CSS came,

And he whistled, and shouted, and called it by name!



“Now margin! now, width! now, padding and color!

On, float! On, background! on display and border!

To the top of the browser and into your grid!
Leave Textmate behind and get on to the server!



So on to the server the code how it flew,

With a body full of design, and some Java script too.

The pages, how they flowed! The search placed so neatly!

The block text intriguing, and the links loaded promptly!

The custom new logo was drawn by a pro,

And the sleek liquid background was white as the snow.

Then, with a wink, and a Lil’ Wayne skip 

St. Brett boarded his little hypertext spaceship
And I heard him exclaim, as he flew out of sight,
“Happy browsing to all, and to all a good-site!”

Ok, ok, it’s quite cheesy, but we had fun with it. Happy Holidays!

Root Access & Developer Tools

The first thing you’ll need to do is turn on root access and install developer tools on your (dv) server. These options can be found in your Account Center under the primary domain.

Yellowdog Updater, Modified

Once you have root access turned on and the developer tools installed you can move on to install YUM. YUM will allow you to easily install a whole slew of software; including hits like Subversion and Git. Instead of having to compile and install the target software and all of its dependencies on your own, YUM will handle all of this for you. YUM also makes it easy to update and remove that software.

First you’ll need to log into your server as root. From command line you can do that by typing this in terminal (and entering your password after it connects):

1. ssh root@yourwebdomain.com

Once you’re in, type the following:

1. rpm -Uvh http://mirror.centos.org/centos/5/os/i386/CentOS/yum-
   metadata-parser-1.1.2-2.el5.i386.rpm

2. rpm -Uvh http://mirror.centos.org/centos/5/os/i386/CentOS/yum-
   3.2.8-9.el5.centos.1.noarch.rpm

3. yum update

…Booyah! You should be ready to roll. For very quick reference, be sure to check out this page.

Note: The URLs above are subject to change and in the event that they do (since there are version numbers in the URL) you’ll need to find the latest RPM for these on that server or someplace else.