On Monday and Tuesday of this past week, I had the pleasure of teaching Introduction to Web Design and Development at Emory. I’ve been teaching the class for over a year, and I’m always impressed by the caliber of students. This class was no exception—as it turned out, I had a local celebrity of sorts in attendance.

Ted Freeman, a student, designed and created an incredible art installation for the Modern Atlanta Week festival in his “spare time”, and called it the Melting Fan. After the installation was built it was placed prominently in the Five Points Marta Station. The placement of the sculpture was celebrated with an unveiling ceremony at MARTA.

Ted was thrilled to have his work displayed at the station, and thought that this would be the extent of it. Imagine his surprise when one of the project coordinators called him to inform him that a photo of his sculpture was featured in the NYTimes, and on their website. Incredibly, the popularity of the photo continued to explode as it surfaced in the websites of the Times, the Wall Street Journal, and YahooNews. It was one of the 14 “pictures of the day” on the CBS Nightline site, appeared on the Daily Mail site, the NPR Radiolab site, and was Tumblr’d over 22,000 times.

Ted emailed me before class on Tuesday and posed the question: how could he leverage the overwhelming press he received for his work? In the social media portion of my class, I opened discussion into how he could best utilize tools such as Wordpress, Flickr, Facebook and Twitter to continue the viral journey of his installation.

Ted didn’t have a website, so he needed to act quickly. Our solution - create a 4-page site via Wordpress, including basic pages such as About, Portfolio, Press, and Modern Atlanta. Wordpress is a free open source blogging platform and it gives users without HTML experience the ability to create and launch a site quickly. Utilizing a blog will allow for comments so the discussion around his art can continue and grow. We also recommended incorporating creative, interactive elements such as a video project in which we go to the station and video the sculpture and record how people react to it. Additionally, he would need to link all of the press pieces to the new website, and contact the various sources to supply them the web address and contact information. To continue riding the social media wave, he’ll need to create a Facebook page to capture fans, a YouTube channel to stream his video, and a Flickr account to house his imagery - all of these outlets will help him gain even more exposure. We didn’t feel like Twitter was necessary at this point because he has to create a following, definitely a consideration for the future. And of course, a PR initiative will be crucial in order to tap into offline buzz as well. Since our classes end on Tuesday, Ted has made some great progress with the creation of his website/blog Creatometry.com.

As you can imagine, it was quite exciting to have a living, breathing, and tangible project to discuss and brainstorm about with the students during class. The students applauded him for his success—with a little help and an aggressive social media and PR strategy, he’ll continue to be applauded and recognized for his brilliant work.

Be sure to stay tuned to our blog as we chronicle the developments of the media project for Ted’s Melting Fan sculpture.

Lil Jon’s “Celebrity Apprentice” stint not only boosted his fan base—it spiked an interest in his charity-of-choice: The United Methodist Children’s Home in Decatur, GA. UMCH called upon us to help them capitalize on the popularity of the show, draw national media attention and increase an interest in the organization through social media and their website.

UMCH was founded 140 years ago, and originally served as an orphanage for post-Civil War orphans. Today, it’s a haven that fosters young children, teenagers and families who need help getting back on their feet.

We began by revamping UMCH’s website just in time for the “Celebrity Apprentice” premiere. Website traffic spiked more than 200% throughout the duration of the show, and UMCH’s Facebook fan base increased 200% as well.

While Lil Jon went to work for Trump in the Big Apple, we hit the media circuit in Atlanta. With the assistance of Lil Jon’s publicist and management team, we secured coverage of Lil Jon’s UMCH connection through various publications and television stations, including the AJC, Decatur-Avondale Estates Patch, AP Wire, News One, 11 Alive News and CBS Atlanta, to name a few.

Lil Jon managed to be one of the last final four contestants standing before Donald finally let him go. Amazingly, during his time on the show, he raised a staggering $80,000 for UMCH. Upon his return, we coordinated a star-studded and heart-warming reception honoring the rapper. The event was held on May 24 on the UMCH campus. We pulled out all the stops, inviting prominent community leaders such as Dekalb County CEO Burrell Ellis, who deemed that day, “Lil Jon Day.” During an initial press conference, Lil Jon was presented with an award for his fundraising efforts by his mom. In a hilarious turn, Jon’s brother, Chris, showed up in a huge Lil Jon mask, complete with gold teeth and dreadlocks.

After the press conference, the good times continued as Lil Jon met with children under the care of UMCH, enjoyed a private lunch and was treated to a talent show. There were plenty of photo ops, and I was able to get in the fun and pose with Lil Jon for a picture.

But by far, the most rewarding experience was to see the impact of our PR and media relations strategy—it was instrumental in increasing interest in the United Methodist Children’s Home and its noble mission.

This holiday season we took our creativity to the kitchen with the making of SolFood - an eclectic cookbook that takes readers through our love affair with food and the recipes that inspire us. We had a blast compiling and sharing our favorite drinks and dishes - we hope they excite your palate and spark your culinary imagination! We’d love to hear your response to the book and cherished recipes. Happy Holidays from all of us at SolDesign.

Download your copy now!

Kirsten and I recently took a day trip up to Chattanooga, TN, to present “Designing for Non-Designers: Tips, Tricks and Techniques” for the Lookout Chapter of the Public Relations Society of America. We were welcomed by a good dose of Tennessee summer heat and Southern hospitality (including giant pieces of chocolate and vanilla cake to accompany a delicious lunch!). We’d like to give a special thanks to Kristiina Braden for her warm welcome and introductions.

The audience was an engaged and diverse group. One member had a degree in graphic design and was transitioning into a PR position. A good amount of PR professionals had experience with Adobe InDesign, and they came from varied industries, including insurance, healthcare, and the nonprofit sector.

Kirsten started out asking what everyone was working on in order to get a better sense of how to tailor her presentation. Attendees had a wide array of projects ranging from print to web. Before going into overviews of technical information, Kirsten talked about getting past a problem we all experience: creative blocks. Before starting on projects, she recommends we give ourselves time to brainstorm and sketch. Brainstorming can be play in which we create multiple designs, collage and look for inspiration in sources from designs to photos to colors we like.

The first technical topic sparked quite a few questions from the audience: Designing for print vs. designing for Web. One audience member was curious which type is best for the Web. Kirsten listed Verdana, Arial, Tahoma, Times New Roman and Georgia among others as good choices. This question became a smooth transition to the next technical topic, typography.

After confessing her “love affair with typography,” Kirsten spent just the right amount of time on it, summarizing type anatomy, serifs vs. san-serifs, leading, text alignment, line length, ways type can communicate tones, and the audience’s favorite: the do’s and don’ts of decorative type. Kirsten listed four favorite fonts people tend to overuse: Rosewood, Comic Sans, Curlz, and Giddyup. She explained how these fonts actually take away from your message because they’ve become so cliché. Attendees laughed and agreed when she joked, “If someone tells you, ‘Make this friendly; use Comic Sans!’ say ‘No!’ and run away!”

At the end of the presentation, after Kirsten had just a second to taste the cake, attendees came up and thanked her for providing such practical information with appropriate detail and depth. One member found the presentation especially helpful to catch him up to speed after spending several years outside the field of PR. Other attendees said the presentation empowered them to juggle the multiple hats PR professionals now have to wear.

If you’re interested in learning more about the basics of design, click here to download a PDF of Kirsten’s complete presentation. We also welcome your comments below!

Because social media is such a gas, we’d like to pass this special segment onto you for your viewing pleasure. We’d like to thank Saturday Night Live for giving us a great laugh. Enjoy!

Today is the official launch of the Pepsi Refresh Project. Good Magazine and Pepsi have partnered to give away $20 million in grants over the next year. Users can submit their ideas to do good online, vote for them and share them with others. It’s like the American Idol for Good. The Pepsi Refresh Project is accepting 1000 ideas a month so get ready for March - I think February filled up in under a minute (I have no statistics to support this claim but I am sure it was super fast). Now hurry up and go share your idea or vote for your favorite. And it may not hurt if you are downing a Pepsi product while clicking the mouse. I would drink Pepsi but I was born in Atlanta and I’ll always be a Coca Cola girl no matter how “good” Pepsi gets. How about you? Are you more likely to purchase a product if the brand is known for doing “good”?

The German government warned web users to find an different browser to Internet Explorer to protect security last week. This is something that should have been issued over 10 years ago when these types of things first start to escalate. But it isn’t till now and some recent attacks, that Germany thinks it’s a serious problem. Read all about the current security hole at BBC News.

The main problems that IE has had compared to other browsers over the years, is that it is a part of the Microsoft operating system. By having a higher integration with the underlying OS it has the potential to access much more critical processes for a computer system. The plus side of this is that it loads fast (because it’s already loaded with your computer) and it can do things on your system that other browsers can’t. The down side is, if a hacker finds a way to comprimise a users computer through it, they can do much more damage. Alternative browsers to IE don’t have the same privileges, they must run in the OS as citizen applications where every move the application makes is governed by the OS which protects other applications and your computer from serious harm.

If you are still using IE you don’t know what your missing:

Firefox - This has been a favorite for alternative web browsers since 2003. It has thousands of plugins so you can customize it to do anything you want. It can be a bit slow at times when you have a bunch of plugins installed and 20 tabs open but it’s still a great browser. Pretty much everyone at Sol uses Firefox as their numero uno web browser.

Chrome - This is Google’s take on a web browser. It is incredibly fast. You should try it just to see how fast it is, it’s kind of amazing. It has a very simple interface, just what you need, like most of Googles apps. It has neat architecture, It actually runs each tab as it’s own program so if one tab fails the others stay alive. Before recently Chrome was still trying to get up to speed on trying to display all web pages but I think they are pretty much there.

Opera - Opera has been an underdog alternative browser since practically the beginning of mainstream internet usage. I think it’s a beautiful browser and works quite nicely. I use it for occationally for blog browsing because things look so nice in it and it’s easy to use. This is the browser I would recommend to my mother.

Safari - Apples new version works on PC as well now. It’s pretty neat, I use it all the time on my Ipod Touch.

Here at Sol Design we have to use IE 6, 7, 8, & 9 everyday and will continue too because we know so many people in the world do. Though we hate it, it risks the security on our development machines and it takes the fun out of web development (keeping up with web standards has been another huge fault for IE). It wasn’t always like this, IE was my love in 1996 when it was the first to handle CSS and did a better job with Javscript than Netscape. If the world bands together to leave IE maybe it will inspire Microsoft will start over from scratch and build a new web browser that we all can appreciate again.

Stewdio.org is the website of Stewart Smith, a designer from NYC that has done some great work. I was particularly amused by his Browser Pong app….basically the classic computer game Pong done with browser windows. Super fun!

Our fun, fearless, fabulous LesNouvelles ladies got nominated for Daily Candy’s Sweetest Things 2009. Go here to vote now!

It was 1963. The Beatles permeated the airwaves with “I Want To Hold Your Hand;” To Kill a Mockingbird was the Oscar pick of the year; State Mutual Life Insurance invented the Smiley Face; women wanted to look like Jackie-O and men wanted to look like John F.; and everyone drank and smoked, regardless of the time of day, location and health.

The nostalgia of 1963 is the inspiration for AMC’s Mad Men, and like many of you, we’ve been obsessed. To pay homage to our favorite television indulgence, we decided to setup a wet bar and break out the Lucky Strikes for Kirsten’s birthday party at Sol. We evoked Don and Betty Draper with perfectly quaffed hair, double breasted suits and A-line skirts, and we threw back cocktails in the conference room. If you haven’t seen it yet, we highly recommend you check it out! And check out all of us looking oh so debonair…