The Blog Studio

I’ve redesigned theblogstudio.com again. That may have been the shortest lived design of my career!

In this case, I’ve stripped the design back to its very essense. It’s an exercise in raw minimalism. And it will continue to evolve.

Like Darth Vader, I knew this design had some good in it. But I had to dig right down to the heart of it to find that good. Now that I have, I’ll continue to build on it as necessary to meet our ever changing goals.

I’ll make short posts like this when the design has been updated, so that those of you reading this via RSS can check in to see what’s up.

Thanks very much to Toby for pointing out this post at marketingprofs.com

The post, titled First Impressions, Blogs, and Your Personal Brand nicely summarizes what Ive been preaching here for some time. The author, David Armano writes

Design and how you write can differentiate your blog from others and help you define your own personal brand. Take Diva Marketing, for example. Now theres a great first impression. Its unique, fun, consistent, easy to use and the theme is simply delightful as is the writing style. They go hand and hand. Diva Marketing definitely has blog brand

Im fighting the urge to quote the entire article. You can read the whole thing here

All good things must come to an end. Right?

I’ve been thinking a bit about the end of blogs. Despite having named by company The Blog Studio, I hate the word blog. It’s ugly, and I don’t like the way it falls out of the mouth. The only constant is change, and in our age, change happens at hyperspeed.

The day will come when the concept of “blog” drifts from use. The question for me (and you) is “what will replace it?”

I’m not suggesting that blogs themseleves will disappear. On the contrary, I think blogs are arguably the single greatest tool for human expression and communications ever invented. As such, we simply won’t give them up without a terrific fight. That being said, I think the concept of a blog as an entity separate from a web site will disappear (as will the standard web site).

Today, my presence on the web is scattered: I have a couple of blogs, a static web site or two, membership and profiles on various forums and special interest sites, a couple of lenses, etc. My belief is that the future – the near future – will bring an amalgamation of these disparate presences. Instead of blogs, we’ll talk about personal portals, or more simply, sites.

A site will be the collection of all your stuff, all in one site, all in one place. This will be powered and enabled by two technologies: search and rss.

As search engines get smarter, they will able to deliver the most relevant information on a given topic independent of its place of origin. Right now, a search for, say, “blue cheese” will favor those sites that fully dedicate themselves to the topic. That is changing – very quickly. That change is made possible via improved search algorithms and the vast interlinking of permalinks.

In the near future, I envision search engines determining ranking based on the author of the post, not its location.

RSS already allows one to create a portal site of almost all of one’s online presence. This is somewhat complex at the moment. But given the investment and energy being put into this area, it won’t be for long.

So in short order, I’ll be posting here, there and everywhere. I’ll comment on 100 different sites. And my site will track it all.

Blogs (the communication tools) are just the start – the tip of the iceberg. Blog (the word) will eventually fade from use, it’s meaning having suffused into the very nature of the web.

So where does this put The Blog Studio? It’s an interesting question, and one I’m putting a bit of thought into. I’m in Austin as SXSW as I write this, sitting in on a panel on blogging. It’s one of about 50 blogging related panels going on this weekend. Clearly, the term blogging isn’t disappearing today.

All the same, language is a funny thing. It will be interesting to watch where this goes.

I love to design logos. It’s an intellectual challenge; a puzzle, if you will. Trying to distill the values and essense of a company using nothing more than shapes, colours, and type??? I get all dreamy eyed just thinking about it.

I was recently asked to design a logo and stationery package for an up and coming software development firm. The company, bloomCompany, develops applications aimed at florists.

The logo needed to position the company as young, fresh, and innovative. It needed to be elegant, yet not overly serious. We had only two weeks to get from first meeting to finished work, so we had to hit it right out of the gate.

The name bloomCompany immediately conjures mental images of flowers, petals, and lush colour. Just like every other flower shop logo out there. I didn’t want to take the obvious route. Instead, I wanted to convey the essense of what bloomComapny does. They don’t sell flowers, they sell software. Software that supports and enables the sale of flowers.

Instead of focussing on the flower, we decided to focus on the leaves and the stem. These are the physical elements that support the growth of a flower. Just as bloomCompany’s software supports the growth of a florist’s business.

Both my client and I are very happy with the result. The logo itself is very flexible, and inviting. The stationery package is unique, yet simple. Oh, and I had a lot of fun working on this one!

Ok, this one is WEIRD! Online, your reputation is your life. I am proud of the fact that we’re building our business by doing good work for good people. We’re starting to get a bit of reputation for being good people to work with. That is the the single most valuable business asset I could ever own.

So, it makes me especially cranky when I’m accused of spamming.

This story starts with a fan of our redesign posting a story on digg linking back here. I’m super stoked that someone would want to tell the rest of the world what we’re doing, and to do it in such an incredible way. Some people though have clearly interpreted this as an attempt spam digg. The comments say as much.

This incident is pretty minor, but once again it’s got me thinking about reputation, and just how incredibly important it is with online business.

Reputation is the currency of the online world. I’m a bit freaked out at how easy it would be to do serious damage to one’s reputation. It would be kind of interesting to conduct an experiment. One could slander his or herself around the blogosthing, and see what happens, then share the results. I’m not volunteering.