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!

As Social Media reaches new heights as an important marketing component for organizations and corporations, it is important for them to remember that Social Media offers different values other than targeting brand messaging to various demographics. In a day and age when individuals tweet about the death of Michael Jackson before the actual media picks up on the story, organizations and corporations can use this fast moving medium to their advantage in the case of a crisis. A Crisis Communications plan is a quintessential aspect of any marketing department and Social Media can be used as the first line of defense to dispel any misinformation prior to the media picking up on a story and distorting the facts (something they do well nowadays.) The use of Facebook and Twitter in a crisis situation was used brilliantly by Charleston Yeager International Airport in West Virginia after an aborted take-off of a US Airways flight back in January.
You can read more about the story here. The article gives excellent insight in how vital Social Media can be to an organization such as an Airport during a crisis:
Click Here

For more information on how Social Media can impact your company’s Crisis Communication plan, check out this excellent article from PRSA:
Click Here

I’d love to hear your feedback–what examples of Crisis Communications via social media have you encountered?

A Content Management System (CMS) is a mixture of the technological and the supernatural. Essentially, the CMS (a website) creates and hosts other websites. It’s kind of confusing, but if the relationship were considered in terms of Aliens, as in the movie, the CMS would be the queen and the websites it manages, its spawn. Thankfully, the CMS doesn’t attack and kill humans with slimy goo and sharp teeth. It’s just a metaphor! Anyway, there are several factors that necessitate the existence of the CMS.

Vital forces are constantly at work outside of the design and development “ovipositor” (more alien terminology), and they do affect the outcome. They are the changing genetic codes of technology, ie, the latest intermingling of apps, plug-ins, code, and the platforms on which they all co-exist. Each generation improves upon beauty, efficiency and enhancements, and in this cacophony, the growing website needs a way to maintain its place. In fact, there are many such websites that need a reliable tether to its technological host. These websites might each have disparate needs, but they can use the same means to obtain them.

Alien metaphor aside, another reason for the CMS is that it allows a team to remotely modify the website. This is partly due to the intentional separation of content, style, and code. The contributors don’t need to have an extensive knowledge of HTML—basic WYSIWYG knowledge will usually suffice. For team members who need more control, such as skinners and coders, it’s easy to switch to code view or FTP. With a flexible and unobtrusive CMS, everyone’s needs are met.

To bring the Aliens metaphor full circle…when the CMS (or queen) jumps aboard its server, which is like Ripley’s warship, the Sulaco, it transcends space and time. It carries its websites into the abstract, imperceptible worldwide web, where anything can happen. I see a lot of sequels in its future…

We hand painted some chucks for our friend Daren Wang to help him earn some cool points this weekend as he struts around the 4th annual Decatur Book Fest that he’s organized. The book fest is from September 4th through the 6th. If you like books you really should stop by.

Puff is this years mascot: More on the Decatur Book Fest 2009

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I use Cygwin when I need to use linux tools not available in Windows. The generic windows command line terminal cmd.exe is pretty lame. I use Putty all the time as a remote terminal for our Linux and Solaris machines, it’s wonderful. Here’s how to use Putty for Cygwin as well:
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iCalendar is a file format that allows internet users to download files that automatically add events into their local calendar system. This is how I created All Day Events…
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We at the office have stopped the yelling (or much of it) and have resorting to tapping keys to communicate with others down the hall and even across the desk if need be. Using an IM client such as GTalk or AIM cuts down the e-mail for simple messaging or to ask a simple 1-2 line question. It’s a great way to communicate without leaving your seat or picking up the phone. For those of us on a mac, we already have a built in client, iChat, which can easily be harnessed to use GTalk. GTalk is a jabber based application which allows it to be used within other apps such as iChat and mobile devices. To learn how to do this, keep reading. (more…)

Web 2.0 – It’s the look you’ve been looking for.

Sleek, shiny, straightforward. Soft, rounded edges, crisp-clear text, and a reflection so cool you get chills.

We’ve seen it popping up all over the place; it’s a trend we at Sol Design welcome so whole-heartedly that we’re going to share it with you, honoring the DIY spirit in all of us.

Here’s a really simple tutorial on making a web 2.0 style logo in Photoshop. I used a Mac, with CS2.

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Difficulty: Moderate

You can’t rely on generic, mainstream sources (tv/radio/rolling stone magazine) to bring you new music that you can really connect with. Everybody’s tastes are different, mainstream is a compromise. The best way to find new music you’ll like is to build off your existing musical tastes.
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