Design is often a very personal thing.  People seem to instinctively know what they like, what they dislike, what looks pretty and what qualifies as “good” design.  From a young age, we are trained to form our own opinions.  Parents reason that this enstils a sense of valued independence within their children. Unfortunately, this bias poses a potential issue, hindering our ability to make educated decisions and causing us to overlook important facts – in turn, dismissing good ideas from others. Read more →

We’ve been involved in the internet business long enough to know that one of the key differentiators between an agency that is good and another that is great is their ability to pull out and reinvest in education.  This past week we have been doing just that, attending The Art of Leadership in Vancouver on March 29, 2012 and An Event Apart Seattle from April 2-3, 2012.

Here are our top selections of the most important running themes from these conferences.

Good design serves its users
Jared Spool and Whitney Hess both reminded us that, as leaders in web design, development, and content strategy, we must always be considering and respecting the individuals on the other side of the solutions: the people who read our content, user our interfaces and navigate the sites and experiences we build.  Jeffery Zeldman wisely stated that “Design that does not serve people does not serve business” Read more →

As you probably are aware, trends in social media are in a constant state of flux – always changing as the medium further develops.    This morning, Facebook announced a change that will affect all Pages by March 30, 2012, where Page layouts will be reconfigured to the new Timeline view.

Why did they do this?

To create a more unified look and feel for the site and to improve the branding capabilities for businesses and organizations.
Read more →