The Blog Studio

A trend has been been making itself apparent to me lately: people seem to love doing things the hard way. Over the last few weeks, talking to clients, co-workers friends and my Mom, I’ve notice that many people spend an inordinate amount of time performing tasks on their computers that should just take a few seconds. Why? They just don’t know that there is a faster, more elegant way to get things done. I was one of these people for most of my life. One day I started hanging out with some geeks who are beyond obsessed with discovering the quickest way to get any task completed. While I haven’t graduated to full-fledged optimization wizard myself, I have picked up a few tricks. I’d like to share some of my favorite apps and hacks to speed up your work day.

These are the basic apps that I use every single day, and have become absolutely indispensable. If there were a way to effectively quantify the time these apps have saved me, I would conservatively estimate it would total in the weeks. Think of this as Optimization 101. It’s my hope that you can read this post, download these apps, set them up and integrate them into your workflow in no time. Setting up apps to save you time, should be easy and...save you time. Let us know how these apps work out for you in the comments, and if you have other apps that improve your workflow we definitely want to hear about them.

Skitch

If you do any work on the web at all, there are probably a few points in your day where you need to do something with a photo. Snag a photo for a blogpost, resize it, change the format, share it, email it, annotate it or grab a screenshot to make a point. This was a clunky process for me, requiring a series of cobbled together programs, a couple of save states and way too much time. Then I discovered Skitch. Skitch is really the Swiss Army Knife for imaging. If you aren’t a designer who regularly fires up Adobe, then Skitch is what you need. It covers all the imaging basics in one interface. Screenshots, adding notes and arrows, saving in just about every format, sharing and resizing are all done in one window.  There is no learning curve. For the last 3 years, Skitch has become my go to tool for anything involving photos. Skitch also has one the best user interfaces I’ve ever used; it’s lovely.

1Password

In the real world, there are two schools of password thought. You use the same password for everything, because it’s convenient. We all know this is an incredibly insecure bad practice, just waiting for a nightmare hack to bite you in the ass. The other school is using a different password for everything, but with the amount of accounts we all have it becomes an organizational nightmare remembering which password belongs to which account. I woke up one day and realized I had about 50 different accounts, and spent more time resetting forgotten passwords then I did actually working in those apps. Cue 1Password.

1Password is the perfect password manager. You only need to remember the master password, and the app takes care of the rest. It creates complicated, secure passwords for all your logins, and organizes them in a nice interface. Once unlocked, it will auto fill your username and password for all your sites right in the browser with a single click. It keeps track when you change login information automatically. It works with Dropbox, so you can backup your master password list and retrieve it on the fly. 1Password handles multiple “Identities”, making it simple to organize work, personal and other password lists by how you use them. There’s a great, secure wallet feature for managing different credit cards and purchasing information. It is constantly being updated by the good folks at Agile Web Solutions, so there is never a compatibility issue. Best of all, it’s dead simple and it just works, every time, day after day.

Evernote

Prior to using Evernote, I would constantly bookmark articles, websites and little bits of the web to return to later. In every browser, my bookmark list would become cluttered and unusable after a week. My bookmarks looked like someone taped an M-80 to a dictionary and then taped it back together. Using Evernote has let me build a customized system for keeping track of everything I find interesting, or worth hanging onto on the web. It is handy for work, personal interests and organizing trains of thought and projects among groups of people where link sharing is a requirement.

The simple organizational style is what separates Evernote from every other similar app or bookmarking method out there. Find something interesting? Just click the Evernote button, select the appropriate tags, add a personal note if you like, and you’re done. The app takes care of the syncing and storage. When you’re looking to retrieve something, you can search your notes by tag, date or content. It’s also possible to just browse through your notes, which can be a great way to create “Aha!” moments. I frequently stumble onto items I’ve saved in the past, but have forgotten about. It’s a bit like an online diary composed of your train of web browsing thought.

Possibly the most brilliant feature of Evernote is its’ ability to work with the camera on your mobile phone or computer. You can take a snapshot of a flier, book, record or some other visual cue and make a note out of that. This is amazing for remembering items that catch your eye on the go that you might otherwise forget. This feature has become indispensable. When someone has a book that looks interesting, I snap the cover and make a note. Through this method I have built a massive “To Read” list. I’ve run into other people who use the photo feature on Evernote to track business receipts and keep track of menus at restaurants they love.

After using Evernote for a while, you’ll discover that you have compiled your own custom reference library, which is a valuable tool for anyone that does creative work. Evernote works across just about every browser, platform and mobile device so you’ll always have access to your notes. It’s a truly simple, bulletproof organizational tool even for people like me who are disorganized by nature.

Clips

Clips takes one of the most basic, but useful features of any computer, the clipboard, and hugely expands what it is able to do. Clips can help you make short work of repetitive tasks. Instead of just saving the last item you copy or cut, Clips just keeps on saving them and presents them in a list. This lets you visually choose from a list of clipboard items. If you’re making a list, sending multiple responses or editing a document, this is an enormous time saver. It’s also possible to build a pre-loading clipboard with some phrases or items you find yourself having to type frequently. Clips includes clipboard sharing, and the hot-keys, formatting and arrangements of how the app appears are all totally customizable to fit right into your workflow. I used to find myself typing the same things again and again, but now I just keep a clipboard of my most frequently typed phrases and insert them with a single click. I actually feel like I haven’t event tapped the full potential of Clips. If you were so inclined, it would be possible to really go crazy, and build massive lists of sentences, links, signatures and other items that pop up all the time. Any way that you use it, Clips will become an essential time saver from the second you load it onto your computer.

These apps are a good start for anyone looking to streamline their workflow, and save time doing what is essentially busywork. We all have a lack of time, so if there is a faster way to get things done, why not take advantage of it? Good luck, and be sure to fill us in on how your quest for optimization works out.

We love a good infographic. Truthfully though, who doesn’t? Over the last two years, I’ve begun to notice that infographics are one of the most popular items that you see blogged, tweeted, re-tweeted and passed around online. Infographics look pretty. They take what are often complicated data-sets or bits of information, and make them simple to understand. You can digest an infographic quickly. The people who create infographics are able to make a point fast, and the evidence, in the form of data is included right in the argument itself. They are compact, to the point, attractive, data rich and clever. Looking over the analytics for a wide variety of our clients, the numbers show that infographics grab the clicks on blogs, Twitter and Facebook across all kinds of audiences. Infographics are the perfect format for sharing information in the social media world.

A few days ago, we were discussing creating an infographic here at The Blog Studio. It isn’t easy, was the conclusion we came to pretty fast. You need data. You need to make a point with that data. You need design skills. You need to create a way to display that data so it makes your point. Then you need to make it look pretty. It’s a tall order, and there are a lot of very disparate skills involved. The person who crunches the numbers may not have the design chops to make the end product. The designer may need a hand figuring out how to make the graphics tell their story.

We did some poking around, and discovered the Google Public Data Explorer. Leave it to Google Labs to take a complicated process, and simplify it enough so that anyone has a shot of creating an informative, attractive infographic. That’s what Public Data Explorer is all about.

To get started creating your infographic masterpiece, begin by exploring the data sets that Google provides as part of the web app. Stat geeks are going to lose it when they see what’s available here. There is deep financial data: GDP, personal income, unemployment and retail sales are all available. Population data is covered by country, both currently and historically. A vast amount of health data, like info on prevalent STD’s, flu outbreaks and cancer cases is presented by location. The environment, education, greenhouse gasses and whole lot more data is available for your number crunching pleasure. Since Data Explorer is relatively new, I imagine more datasets will become available as time goes on. It’s also possible to add your own datasets in a variety of formats to work with.

Once you’ve decided on the data you’d like to work with, you’re presented with many ways to parse and compare this data. It’s possible to break things down by location, time frame, density, performance and many more useful ways. Decide what data comparisons make your point, and then quickly see them graphed and displayed. You have the option to display the data in several graphic formats, including overlaying it on Google Maps. The colors, size and many of the graphic elements are completely configurable to make a wholly unique infographic. There are tons of filters and customization options available, depending on the data you’re working with. I can safely say you won’t feel limited in any way as you are creating your infographic masterpiece.

The final results are outstanding. While the infographics lack the last bit of sparkle you’ll find in an infographic done up from scratch by a talented designer, they still look great.  You would be happy to pass along something you created with the Public Data Explorer to your Twitter friends, or use it in a professional presentation. A tiny bit of additional polish from an Illustrator wizard could easily make one of these infographics as visually appealing as any I’ve come across.

To the best of my knowledge, Google Public Data Explorer is a first. It’s the only serviceable, self-contained, infographic creation tool I’ve come across. I’ve tried some other apps that claim to do the same thing, but the results have been very sub-par. Not here. I already have plans to create some infographics with this tool for blog posts and presentations I’m working on now. It’s that good.

If you’re a stats nerd, a designer, a speaker or someone with clever ideas that could use the graphics treatment, you will find the Google Public Data Explorer supremely useful. It took me two hours of playing with the app to become a full fledged convert. If you’ve been wanting to make some infographics, but needed help in some area of creation this is the app for you. This FAQ from Google will get you up and running fast.

You can definitely expect to see lots of infographics by The Blog Studio popping up soon.

The Google Art Project is the best use of the web I have seen in a very, very long time. GAP is a web interface that uses the Google Street View engine to let you explore museums. It looks very similar to your favorite first person shooter. The concept is dead simple. It is the executing that makes this app so fantastic.

It loads right into your browser, with no downloads or plug-ins needed. You select a museum from the list, which includes many of the best of the world. Moma, National Gallery in London, Uffizi in Firenze and two dozen more. The list is impressive and covers a big range of time periods, styles and mediums. From here, feel free to wander the virtual museum of your choice. The interiors you walk around were photographed with the same tricycles that create the Google StreetView visuals, and look excellent. Walking around is smooth, and the artwork is clearly visible. You can easily kill hours wandering around and taking in the best paintings in the world. The quality of the art is high enough that you can enjoy staring at it for a while, and not feel like a second rate sucker.

Here’s the real kicker. Certain works of art in each museum have been given what Google calls “The Gigapixel Treatment”. These are photos that are 14 billion pixels deep. You can zoom in so close you can see the ridges in the paint, and the individual lines of the brush strokes. Digital representations like this are clearly the future of how we are going to view art online from here on out. It isn’t the same as viewing works of art in person, but it’s pretty close, and absolutely enjoyable. There is also huge potential for students, and anyone who wants to increase their knowledge of fine art.

Once again, Google has taken an idea that many people have had, and created something truly wonderful. Using a combination of photos, access and creativity with an eye towards enjoyment they have built something that people will be using for years. The lesson here is that perfect execution can make any idea into something groundbreaking.

Web designers are less than a dime a dozen these days. They’re more like a dime a gross. Everyone with a web connection and a copy of Fireworks hangs their shingle out and calls themselves a web expert. It’s a lot like social media experts, but that’s another topic for another day. When you’re looking for a web designer, how do you separate the bad from the good, and the good from the great?

This is a topic near and dear to The Blog Studio, and something everyone who works with us discusses on an hourly basis. Choosing the best designer for your project isn’t easy. Here’s 3 topics you should explore when looking to hire a pixel slinger for your project.

1. Does their work appeal to other designers, or to your potential market? Some designers achieve notoriety because their work appeals to the creative fancy of other designers. This isn’t always the most practical choice for a commercial product. A good, successful design will appeal to the end users, the public & not only to the design community. These aren’t mutually exclusive, but in many cases it’s a choice between one or the other. Choose the designer that has your users needs in focus.

2. How many sites in their portfolio are still up and running? When you view a designers portfolio, take a second and chase down those sites live on the web. Are the sites still live and in business? Are they successful? Take a look at the site traffic on a site like Alexa, are they generating numbers? Have the sites been re-designed by someone else? It’s one thing for a designer to have a portfolio of great looking sites, but it’s another for a designer to have a track record of sites that have become commercially viable. Ask the hard questions above to get on the right track for success.

3. Is your designer active in the design community? While you don’t want a designer that is so wrapped up in the ‘art’ of design, they don’t put your audience first, you also don’t want a designer who works in a vacuum. Take a spin around the internet and see what other designers have said about their work. Find out which magazines, blogs and podcasts they consume. Have they won any awards, or participated in any design initiatives? Are they active in writing about design or commenting on other designers work? Check some of the Twitter hashtags like #design and #web and see if they pop up. Participation in the design community ensures they’re up to date on the newest trends and design techniques. You don’t want to hire a dinosaur.

This is just a jumping off point, because choosing a designer should be a conversation between the designer and yourself. I hope these questions spark some thoughts and conversations the next time you’re starting a new endeavor. What are your favorite questions to ask a potential web designer? We’d love to hear your successes and your horror stories, so drop some science in the comments.

Colour selection is a key element when building a strong brand. At The Blog Studio, colour selection has always been an element that clients seem to struggle most with. Some clients overlook the importance of colour in branding their product or service, while others are unable to decide on a colour that best reflects the brand.

Choosing the right colour is worth the time and effort. It has been
reported by current marketing research that approximately 80% of
what we assimilate through the senses is visual.


More than Personal Preference I often hear clients say, “I don’t like red. I don’t like green. I don’t want it to be blue, but I love pink.” These comments are based on personal preference. It is important that an individual like the branding and design of their product and website. It is equally important to think of what emotions are evoked by the end-user in response to your colour selection.


Colour can be a tricky topic to negotiate.You have to step into your
clients’ shoes, and ask how they perceive the colour choices for a particular
project. Do they have the same positive emotional response you have?
Examine your colour design choices from every possible angle, including
aesthethics, and the geography of your audience.
Color choices may signify one thing in the West, and have a different, or
wholly opposite meaning in the East. The best colour selection combines
personal preference with public perception.


Emotions Associated with Colours
Colors, like smells and sounds, conjure an immediate emotional reaction in people. As a designer, it is necessary to know the emotions that are associated with the
different colours. To denote calm, excitement, or complexity to your clients, thought
must go into choosing the right color. You need to figure out how people respond to colours used in a specific design capacity. You must choose colors that will bring
maximum emotional impact, while appearing attractive.


Consider how your clients will respond to colour choices. Part of this is knowing
which colours evoke emotions that represent your brand and industry. A company within a conservative industry may not want to use loud colours, because they lack the needed gravity. Then again, a company could purposefully use an unexpected colour to distinguish itself from the competition, but it must be a carefully considered choice.


Colour selections can complement one another, or contrast one another. There are strategic uses for each case. Colours that complement each other are more appealing to the eye. Colours that contrast each other can help items stand
out. Decide which is a better fit for your project right in the beginning. It will
make selecting the correct palate much simpler.


Usability
You may have created the most gorgeous site or logo, with an exquisite pallette,
but if no one can read it, it’s an automatic failure. Colours play a practical role in how people receive information. As most people realize, black on white is the easiest to read, on paper and on computer screens. The most legible of all
colour combinations are black on yellow, green on white, and red on white.

Here are some simple guidelines to help you choose the right colors for nearly any project.


Tips on Choosing Colours for Emotional Impact

• Of the primary colours, blue is considered the most calming and suppresses appetite. Red is said to increase blood pressure and heartbeat, while yellow evokes cheerfulness. Children tend to prefer primary colours.
• Nonprimary colours are more calming than primary colours. Pink is said to enhance appetite, while black (like blue) suppresses appetite.
• Colour shade also matters when trying to evoke different emotions. Green gives the feeling of nature, calmness, and freshness, but certain shades can also give the feeling of envy and
possessiveness. Black can be gloomy and scary, but can also be elegant and sleek. Red can be associated with the joy of Christmas, but also with blood.
• Colour can help determine the worth of an item, so choose thoughtfully. Forest green and burgundy appeal to the wealthiest 3% of Americans and often raises the perceived price of an item.
Conversely, orange is often used to make an expensive item seem less expensive.
• Too many colours can make things busy and chaotic, which generally will make a website less user-friendly.