My classroom at Wilson Hall is coming along!
New Classroom Setup
Category: Design
Arc 1.0
I’m excited to see the “1.0” launch of the browser Arc. I’ve been using Arc as my main browser (along with Safari and some Chrome sparingly) on my MacBook, and I have to say… it’s impressive.
Browsers seemingly slipped from the “wow” factor of the internet about 15 years ago after Google finally launched Chrome despite the best efforts of Firefox, Brave, Opera etc to get the mainstream about browsing again. Apps took their place as the way to access the web for most people, and as our main screen sizes shrunk, so did our attention for interesting browser features.
However, I do think we’re at an inflection point and we’ll see interest around concepts such as Arc that will move us away from a centralized app-based future of the web towards further democratization and decentralization of what the internet should mean.
Way to go, Browser Company!
A browser that doesn’t just meet your needs — it anticipates them.
Also, if you head over to the credits page, you can find me there as a long-time tester in the pre-launch phases!
Inside a Genius Mind: Leonardo’s Notebooks
Amazing web app here (bottom link to direct Google Experiment) focused on major themes in Leonardo’s notebooks and connecting them with machine learning. I’m a huge fan of notebooks, and I use the example of Leonardo keeping his thoughts in them all the time with my own students.
If you’re like me and really into Leonardo’s “notebooking” practices and history, I highly suggest you check out the videos Adam Savage has done on his Tested YouTube channel. Wonderful and inspiring videos. May we all find something that moves us in such a way!
Leonardo da Vinci: Inside a genius mind post:
From the stages of his life to dispelling myths, and examining his masterpieces up close, everyone can delve into Leonardo’s mind as we’ve brought together for the first time 1,300 pages from his collections of volumes and notebooks. The codices, brimming sketches, ideas, and observations, offer a window into the boundless imagination of one of history’s greatest polymaths. With the aid of Machine Learning and the curatorial expertise of Professor Martin Kemp, the accompanying experiment also called “Inside a Genius Mind” unravels these intriguing and sometimes mysterious materials.
Everyone is a font design expert now
One of the consequences of the wonderful democratization that the web has brought us is that now everyone is an expert at… well, everything.
Need a new website? Just use Wix or Squarespace! Sigh.
Trying to fix your dishwasher? Don’t call a plumber… there’s a dozen YouTube vids for your exact model!
Need to draft a will? There’s an app for that.
I’m not dismissing these examples. I’ve definitely done my share of DIY home repair, legal drafting, and dubious electrical work after a couple of alcoholic beverages and a few YouTube tutorials.
But some things should be sacred, right? We all joke about how easy it is to get ordained by the World Life Church so that you can perform the rites at your friends’ wedding. But fonts… come on. Fonts!
Fonts should be sacred. We don’t need polls or comments or public input. Choose a damned font and stick by your design decision. Not everything benefits from the will of the populace and those who have no previous experience or expertise in an area (see Ancient Aliens).
Sometimes, we just need to leave things up to passionate professionals.
Microsoft is now releasing these five new fonts in Microsoft 365 so everyone can try them out before a new default is chosen. Polls and feedback will be considered as part of how Microsoft picks a winner, and the company is going to spend the next few months evaluating these new fonts and seeing which ones are proving popular. Once a decision has been made, the new default font will appear in Microsoft Office apps in 2022.
via The Verge: Microsoft is changing the default Office font and wants your help to pick a new one
Roman Earthquake Cloaking
I tend to agree with the physicist from UNCC here that the Colosseum and other buildings that exhibit these “metamaterial” designs were probably self-selecting (in that they didn’t fall down during earthquakes), but we definitely don’t give the ancients enough credit with their engineering and scientific prowess…
Scientists are hard at work developing real-world “invisibility cloaks” thanks to a special class of exotic manmade “metamaterials.” Now a team of French scientists has suggested in a recent preprint on the physics arXiv that certain ancient Roman structures, like the famous Roman Colosseum, have very similar structural patterns, which may have protected them from damage from earthquakes over the millennia.
Churches, We Need to Talk About Website Accessibility (and Discrimination)
“Failure to comply with Section 508 of the Department of Justice’s ADA (American with Disabilities Act) Standards for Accessible Design could expose your company to hefty fines, the risk of expensive criminal and civil litigation as well as a reputation for being unfriendly to the disabled.” https://userway.org/
I’m going to make a rant here. Forgive me (or just don’t read if you’re not up for a Sam Rant™).
Cheap website builders really upset me. For a number of reasons.
We’re working on a couple of large church website revisions for clients this week. These are content-heavy sites with numerous pages that are all info-dense with text, video, audio, podcasts, galleries, and just about every measure of content you can imagine. They are both complicated builds with lots of moving parts. So, we are constantly doing checks and QA (quality assurance) tests to make sure everything is working. Building websites of this scale might be sold as an easy thing to do on Super Bowl ads, but they are definitely not easy or “quick” things to do if you want to do them right.
One of the pitches I make to clients like this when they want to know what Harrelson Agency does differently that they couldn’t get done if they just used Wix or Squarespace or Weebly or one of the many other “website builder” apps is the care and attention we give to details such as Search Engine Optimization, mobile user experiences, payments and online giving (those %’s really do add up when you start receiving online donations), and security. It’s not that the website builder apps don’t offer those services, but items like SEO or mobile experience and especially website security tend to be the last things that someone volunteering to build your site checks (if at all). Plus, there are just better tools that last longer if you know what you’re doing, which is a cost saver over time. That’s especially true of security in 2018 and 2019.
However, one of the newer pitch items I’ve been including out of my own interests and passion is accessibility. I’ve always been interested in the subject, but that became especially true during my time in the classroom as a teacher. I frequently became frustrated with books or apps or computers or websites that students were forced to use but designed specifically with no regard to accessibility or usage issues. Over the last few years running Harrelson Agency and working heavily on website builds and designs with companies, individuals, churches, and nonprofits I’ve noticed that accessibility definitely takes a back seat to other concerns. That’s ESPECIALLY true with resource-strapped and budget limited churches and nonprofits.
However, that should not be the case. In my mind (that’s admittedly full of “too much righteous indignation” as a mentor once chided me), churches and nonprofits should be leading the way to make their websites true open doors to the public in a way that does not discriminate against anyone, including those who need usage, visual, or auditory accommodation to participate in that invitation.
- 1 in 5 Americans experience permanent or temporary usage, auditory, or visual disability
- 7.6 million Americans are auditory impaired
- 8.1 million Americans are visually impaired
- 2.2 million Americans suffer seizures and epilepsy
- 2 million Americans are blind
- 19.9 million Americans are motor impaired and cannot use a computer mouse
Technology is most powerful when it empowers everyone.
Apple is one of the most forward thinking and acting tech companies when it comes to raising awareness of accessibility issues for users. It’s one of the reasons I truly love that tools such as iPad are available for students and all people who seek to participate in the global experience that is the world wide web.
https://www.apple.com/accessibility/
Why aren’t churches talking the similar language and instead forcing everyone to fit through a very narrow door and definition of visitor abilities? We wouldn’t do that in the physical world. It’s time to take the digital world just as seriously and stop passively discriminating because of poor website build decisions.
Take your website’s functionality seriously and allow it to empower and welcome ALL. It’s a matter of mixing philosophy with theology with technical know how. And the trick is that it won’t even cost you that much, but you’ll gain so much more and perhaps share the love of God with someone who is looking for a real open door.
Is your website mobile friendly?
It would surprise you to know how often I have new clients who have never done the simple test of checking their website on their own iPhone or Android device. However, it’s definitely something that everyone should do. If your site doesn’t look and operate well on a mobile device, you’re losing visitors and need to make some changes…
A great way to test if your site is at least mobile friendly is to use Google’s mobile-friendly test. This gives you an indication if Google thinks your site is fit for displaying on mobile devices. But don’t stop after checking this. The best advice I can give you is to visit your site on your mobile phone. Browse your own site for a while and try to click on every button, image and link to see what happens. Is everything working as expected? Can you actually purchase something on your site while using your mobile phone? Are all pages displayed correctly? You will see that most sites have some work to do this fall.
Welcome back, serifs
I’m a font nerd. I’m constantly working with (and sometimes against) clients who want a particular “look” for their website or app or presentation and trying to push them to look ahead. One of those conversations typically has to do with fonts.
One client I didn’t have to fight with was Guy Sayles. His new site is one of my favorite designs I’ve done in a long while. Part of that has to do with the font Adamina that was used for headlines. It’s whimsical and full of motion but also conveys wisdom and experience. It reminded me a great deal of Guy’s personality, so I had to use it. I think it looks just beautiful on the new From The Intersection site, and I’m glad he trusted my push to use a serif font for the design. We just launched the redesign this week.
The “design world” has been quickly re-adopting serif fonts for ads, apps, and websites over the last couple of years after they were mostly maligned in the early to mid 2010’s. However, as “mid-century modern” has come back into vogue stylistically for furniture and dress, we’re seeing the resurgence of serifs.
I installed iOS 12 betas on my iPhone and iPad this week for testing, and low-and-behold there are serifs! Apple is famous for its attention to detail and its use of Helvetica and then its own San Francisco font. Apple lead the way on San-serif fonts (such as the body text here), so it’s wonderful to see the serifs returning to apps like the renamed Apple Books (formerly iBooks), which makes sense. Apple has even created a new font titled “SF Serif” to mark the occasion.
So, keep in mind that even though you might think you know what “modern” is, there’s always a corner to turn. Find a good guide. And never ever use Comic Sans or Impact. For anything.
A few images from my Apple Books collection showing the new font:
“What’s a computer?”
There’s this meme that keeps coming back on Twitter. A young person discovers a floppy disk and calls it the save icon. Apple is using the same idea with this ad. When the mum asks her daughter what she is doing on her computer, she answers “what’s a computer?”
via Apple’s new ad shows how iPads are going to replace laptops | TechCrunch
There’s no doubt that “computing” will continue to evolve from the way we interpret that action today (based on conventions that come from machines primarily from the 80’s but also the mainframes and typewriters that preceded them).
I’ve been using a Google Pixelbook for 99% of my “computing” over the last two weeks. I love the integration that this device has with the Android app store and being able to install apps like Microsoft Word or Excel or Powerpoint and use them in full screen as if I was on a Windows laptop. I also love being able to flip this device around into “tablet mode” and play racing games or browse Netflix using what were previously mobile apps. Combined with the Pixel Pen, this device has changed the way I think about my own workflow in a rapid fashion.
The iPad Pro can do that for many people (especially students but also “adults”) as well.
I’m a big fan of the show Westworld. It has incredible visual effects and a captivating story. But the technology used by characters on the show is what really draws me in (I know I know). The handheld “computing” devices they use with foldable screens, touch sensing, AI, and integration of mobile and laptop features is so attractive to me. I hope Apple / Google / Amazon / Microsoft or whatever company that is currently being bootstrapped in a young person’s garage apartment gets us there in the next decade.
We’re almost there with transitional devices like the iPad Pro or the Pixelbook.
What Does Your Brand Do?
Longevity and repetition are two of the hardest to use tools in a marketer’s toolbox, but also the most effective.
via Marketing at millennials won’t save your tired brand | The Drum
There are definitely some points in this post that I disagree with (importance of having a “famous” brand and working towards that being a goal for your organization for one), but this sentence did stick out to me as something that I need to emphasize with our clients more often.
We do lots of “strategic consulting” with non-profits and businesses that don’t necessarily have a large budget for branding considerations. It’s something that often gets overlooked in the process of thinking through a marketing plan. That can easily be seen by the poor quality of logos and branding material that most local or regional non-profits have. But these things can be done well on a tight budget.
As the economy has shifted and nonprofits (especially) are facing slimmer traditional sources of donations there, concepts such as “what does your logo tell people about your group, business or non-profit?” become valuable barometers for improvement whether you’re trying to sell a product or solicit a donation.
You don’t need to have a quality Nike swoosh or Apple apple or Coke wordmark to be successful, but thinking through what you’re presenting and what you’re trying to “do” with your logo, fonts, colors, and brand messaging can make a world of difference when done well.
The Way the Stems Meet the Curves
Technically, this is an absolutely fantastic update. They have taken the blunt shapes of the old letters and improved on all of them to create a beautiful wordmark. At small sizes the change is almost imperceptible but at larger sizes the change is a feast. If the way the stems meet the curves on the bottom of each letter doesn’t give you heart palpitations then you might be in the wrong industry. That is really masterful. Dork-swooning aside, every letter is better — better designed and better suited for every size and screen possible. Play a little game of Spot the Difference and you’ll appreciate what I mean. The wider opening of the “Y”, the rounder sides of the “o” and “e”, the contrast in thicks and thins. So good. Also, the kerning couldn’t be better.
via Brand New: New Logo for YouTube done In-house
Details. And kerning.
Don’t be boring or cheap with your logo or wordmark.
Waiting for the gift of sound and vision
“Because now you have designers, who instead of being encouraged to come up with their own, new, crazy ideas, are being encouraged to do the things that have been proven by the data to deliver results. A lot of times, in thriving marketplaces, a lot of ideas come from the bottom up. You see new consumer behaviors, and then you go, “Oh my gosh, look at what these kids are doing.” But as you end up with more predictable, controlled consumers, you end up with a less innovative society.”
Source: Doug Rushkoff Says Companies Should Stop Growing | FiveThirtyEight
Don’t you wonder sometimes, ’bout sound and vision?
Be weird. Be different. Don’t let your own expressions be drowned out by “what has worked in the past” or be restricted by “the data.”
Round pegs, square holes and all that.
Experience Designing
“In the old days you were either cool and a bit flakey or on it and a nerd. What we need today is cool nerds. People and agencies that can fathom the deep jumbled soup of networked technologies and surf the rich broth of culture. And help their clients to do the same. Experience design is on the frontline of this reconciliation of left and right brain for organisations. The smartphone was the catalyst, yet is only one piece in the puzzle. What is certainly true is we’re no longer looking back and instead start to shape our industry to better serve our clients and customers in this new world.”
Source: The forgotten language of experience design | Marketing Magazine
True whether you’re marketing a product, a church on social media, or an idea in a classroom.
Redundancy is not helpful
“Each additional link places an extra load on users’ working memory because it causes people to have to remember whether they have seen the link before or it is a new link. Are the two links the same or different? Users often wonder if there is a difference that they missed. In usability studies, we often observe participants pause and ponder which they should click. The more courageous users click on both links only to be disappointed when they discover that the links lead to the same page. Repetitive links often set user up to fail.”
Source: The Same Link Twice on the Same Page. Do Duplicates Help or Hurt?
Very true.
Classical Inscriptions, Fonts, and Avatar
“The Renaissance was chockablock with copyists who learned and then duplicated Latin epigraphic scripts for various purposes. This imitation game had a great amount of influence on the Renaissance antiquities market at the time (forgeries could be bought all over Italy), but it is also revealed in the fonts we use today–particularly Roman fonts. The invention of fonts by various printers and typesetters in the 15th and 16th centuries was often inspired by lapidary inscriptions from the catacombs or pulled from manuscripts recording antique stones. After all, these inscriptions were increasingly displayed in the houses of the Roman elite, by popes, in churches, and in newly established museums.”
Source: Times New Roman: Classical Inscriptions, Epigraphy Hunters, and Renaissance Fonts – SARAH E. BOND
A Complete History of the Millennium Falcon
Fantastic read on many levels. Even a nod to Stainless Steel Rat for Wayne Porter…
The Millennium Falcon underwent a long and arduous number of conceptual iterations before its final iconic shape emerged; the one we now once again see blasting its way across the big screen. In fact it wasn’t even known by its famous name until well into production, having up until then gone under the much mundane moniker: Pirate Ship.
Source: A Complete History of the Millennium Falcon — Kitbashed
Cortical Origami
“It turns out that the huge explosion in the number of brain cells in the brain’s outer layer, called the cortex, forces that layer to swell and then collapse in on itself to form those characteristic creases. This cortical origami—which has also evolved in a handful of other brainy species, such as dolphins and some primates—may be nature’s way of solving the tight packing problem.”
Source: Human Brain’s Bizarre Folding Pattern Re-Created in a Vat – Scientific American
14 Degrees of Visibility
Brinton charts 14 degrees of visibility all the way from black type on a yellow background (the most legible) to blue type on red (the most offensive). This research is certainly nothing new today, but gets you thinking about how the theories have been exercised. Take, for example, the classic hazard symbols, or street signs—they each use the most visible color combinations per Brinton’s chart.
via This 1939 Chart Explains How Color Affects Legibility | Fast Company
Gender Equality Reflected in Pantone’s 2016 Color of the Year
This might make Franklin Graham’s head explode, but I think it’s a good move to associate design with “politics” and assert the relevance of seemingly mundane things such as color choices to cultural conversations:
Pantone Color of the Year 2016 – Rose Quartz and Serenity: “Joined together, Rose Quartz and Serenity demonstrate an inherent balance between a warmer embracing rose tone and the cooler tranquil blue, reflecting connection and wellness as well as a soothing sense of order and peace. The prevalent combination of Rose Quartz and Serenity also challenges traditional perceptions of color association.”
What’s Important for Your Website?
At the annual Minecraft conferences the young fans are not provided free workshops on how to play Minecraft but on “Video Creation 101″.
What will they do when they go back home?
Source: 15 Digital Marketing Trends for 2016 That Could Destroy Your Business
Last night I dreamed that I had been brought into a website redesign and new branding initiative for a large university (I know, but this is what I do for a living, so of course I’m going to have the occasional “work dream”).
The group that the university had assembled to work through the process with me was well versed in what they wanted in a web site and had no shortage of personal opinions to share and cling to (which is normally how the process starts in real life as well).
After hearing their thoughts, wishes, and concerns on everything from user interface to colors to layouts, they asked me what I had in mind. I looked at their notes and the site they wanted looked like a site that was a perfect fit for a forward looking university in 2007.
“Mobile,” I said. “80% of your traffic in the next three years will come from mobile devices with screens smaller than 5.5 inches. That’s radically different than how university (or business) websites were laid out five years ago and means that you have to rethink your opinions and wishes and start over.” (I wrote this down in my journal that I keep bedside after waking up to feed our newborn at 4 am).
I asked everyone to pull out their phones. Everyone at the table, regardless of age or “tech ability” had a smart phone of some sort (most were relatively current iPhones).
“Now, let’s design your site based on those screens. What are your favorite mobile sites? Do you have any or do you just use apps? Do you need a website? What are you trying to communicate or do with your university’s site? What’s important?”
This is an aspect of web marketing that I personally detest (and think is wrong)
Minimize cognitive load by building on existing mental models and reducing the need for users to remember things from one part of text to another.
Source: Legibility, Readability, and Comprehension: Making Users Read Your Words | Nielsen Norman Group
Stop Worrying About Your Website’s Design
I have this conversation with website build or revamp clients almost daily… It might sound odd for someone who runs a web marketing company to say that website design really doesn’t matter as much as you think it does. But it’s true. Focus on the other aspects of your business and stop worrying whether your site has too much white space.
The expectations of people visiting your site and our collective notions of web design have changed to the extent that “pretty” isn’t necessarily “better” due to the speed of your page and the experience (content) your site offers (particularly on mobile).
Sergio Nouvel has a good write up about this with more salient points:
“This switch from web design to experience design is directly caused by the shift from web pages to digital products, tools, and ecosystems. Web pages are just part of something much bigger: mobile apps, API’s, social media presence, search engine optimization, customer service channels, and physical locations all inform the experience a user has with a brand, product, or service. Pretending that you can run a business or deliver value just by taking care of the web channel is naïve at best and harmful at worst.”
Source: Why Web Design is Dead | UX Magazine
How Much Does Your Local News Website Cost You Each Month?
“We estimated that on an average American cell data plan, each megabyte downloaded over a cell network costs about a penny. Visiting the home page of Boston.com every day for a month would cost the equivalent of about $9.50 in data usage just for the ads.”
Source: The Cost of Mobile Ads on 50 News Websites – The New York Times
I’d venture to say that local TV and news sites have even more ads than boston.com and “cost” you more in data downloads each month. There’s a reason local news stations are eager to promote their content on Facebook and why most engagement and comments happen there rather than on their own sites.
If your business, group, or church site is loaded with plugins, images, and unnecessary animations (especially Flash), you’re already likely being penalized by Google in organic searches as your site is not as mobile friendly as it should be.
Keep that in mind when you open your own site on your mobile device.
Introducing the U.S. Web Design Standards
“The U.S. Web Design Standards are the U.S. government’s very own set of common UI components and visual styles for websites. It’s a resource designed to make things easier for government designers and developers, while raising the bar on what the American people can expect from their digital experiences.”
Source: 18F — Introducing the U.S. Web Design Standards
Interesting move by our government, and definitely something that needed to be done. The four goals they worked towards are fairly close to the ones I lay out with clients when we’re working on a new site design or build as well:
- Make the best thing, the easiest thing. We believe that making tools that align with the values and needs of digital workers in the federal government will drive adoption.
- Be accessible out of the box. We created tools that seamlessly meet the standards of 508 accessibility, from colors to code.
- Design for flexibility. We aim to give the American people a sense of familiarity when using government services, while allowing agencies to customize these tools to fit their unique needs.
- Reuse, reuse, reuse. We reviewed, tested, evaluated, and repurposed existing patterns, code, and designs from dozens of government and private sector style guides to make use of tried-and-true best practices.
Add “Your tastes are not everyone’s tastes (i.e. the client is not always right)” and that’s pretty much my approach.
Verizon’s New Logo
Verizon’s new logo.
Sapphire Apple Watch Screens Can Crack
Ouch…
Apple Watch sapphire screen cracked: Accidental drops can break screen | BGR: “My friend was actually more worried than I was that something might have happened, but I reassured him that everything would be fine, as this Watch model has a sapphire display that’s shockingly difficult to crack. Then I picked it up from the ground to show him that the sapphire screen has survived the drop unharmed.
Boy, was I in for a surprise.”
Google Starts Ranking Your Site Based on Mobile Friendliness
We’ve known for a few months that Google was going to start ranking websites based on their ability to be displayed on mobile devices such as phones and tablets as well as traditional laptops and desktops. Looks like April 21 is the big day to have made the switch to a mobile-friendly site:
Big news from Google today: beginning April 21, the company will increase the ranking of sites that are mobile-friendly.
via Google Will Rank Your Site Higher If It’s Mobile Friendly.
Why is this important for non-profits, churches, religious groups, and community orgs in addition to startups and small businesses (most of our clients)?
Because even though search has had to share the limelight with social networks in terms of being “found” and “discovered” on the web, it’s still incredibly important to rank as well as you can in Google as search is still dominant.
You simply can’t afford to have a website that doesn’t display properly on an iPhone, iPad, Android, Windows Phone etc after April 2015.
Don’t Use Admin As Your WordPress Username
We create, host, and manage a number of sites for churches, non-profits, community groups, and businesses. As a part of that, we also spend a good deal of time “behind the scenes” keeping these websites safe and secure. Our clients often don’t realize how much work that entails in 2014 / 2015 with the ongoing proliferation of sophistication and the sheer numbers of bots and bad folks looking to exploit poorly constructed sites or social media accounts to use for other nefarious purposes (nor should they).
Setting up a WordPress site on your own is not hard to do. You have to find a host, click a few selections for your server, then run through the install. It’s gotten tremendously easier over the years. However, if you’re setting up a self-hosted WordPress site, you have to take security seriously.
For example, the screenshot above is just a small sampling of the attempts to “brute force” access to this site from this morning. There are hundreds of these everyday for this site and I see thousands daily for some of our larger clients. You’ll notice the attempts are all trying to gain access to the site with the username “admin.” Before WordPress 3.0, the default for new site installs was to use “admin” as the username. Combine that with the terrible passwords that most people online use, and it’s not hard to see that with enough permutations, the math is there. It’s fairly easy to buy a list of the most commonly used passwords on the web if you know the dark parts of the web to look, as well.
Here are my surface level and generic recommendations if you do decide to set up a WordPress site for your church, group, or business after about a decade of working in this area…
1) Don’t use admin as your login username for WordPress or for any other account whether it will just be you logging in or a team of people.
2) Don’t use a short or “dictionary” phrase password. Use something unique to you and combine numbers, letters, etc as much as you can. That’s not fool proof and there’s research showing that doing so isn’t as effective as it was previously, but it’s still a good practice. Even if you’re “bad at passwords” as most humans claim to be, figure out system for a stronger password. It’s worth your time and it’s important no matter how small or large your site or social media account will be.
3) Use a good plugin such as Sucuri to keep track of security audits, reviews, and monitoring. Again, it’s worth your time and easy to set up email alerts for certain events.
4) Keep track of installed plugins and make sure that no one has installed a plugin that is actually a piece of malware or using your WordPress install for nefarious purposes. This is important especially if you are working with a number of people on a WordPress site and sharing a common user account rather than setting up various users (which you should do for a number of reasons).
5) Update, update, update. Keep your WordPress version, plugins, and themes as updated as possible. That usually means at least a couple of times a month.
Of course, there are many other things to consider but I get this question frequently and wanted to make my initial thoughts easy for others to find. Setting up a WordPress site is a great idea and it’s not terribly difficult. However, do it the right way and make sure you are keeping your brand, visitors, and users free from any potential threats that you can avoid with a little time investment.
Airbnb’s New Logo
Airbnb has released a revision of its site, which is very 2014 modern in its flatness and active card based structure. It’s interesting, but nothing revolutionary or forward looking inside the Silicon Valley bubble. The best aspect is that we’re finally seeing the transition of the cards interface from services to actual physical interactions / products.
The more exceptional part of Airbnb’s visual revision is how they are treating their otherwise lukewarm logo. Airbnb is a confederation of hosts and potential users. While it has to be centralized in terms of the service, listings, etc the very nature of the business is to be democratized. It’s interesting to see their logo embracing that and making the decentralized nature of the business part of its core identity:
“The most revolutionary thing about this brand evolution is we are giving it away to the community,” Mr Conley says. “We are moving from an era of mass production to more individualised production… This is an extension to that. A host with a singular listing in Notting Hill could create their own logo and now we’ve created a micro-entrepreneur with their own brand.”
via Airbnb says its new logo belongs to everyone | Tech blog.
Meant to post earlier but here’s Ryan Newman’s car for 2014 from pit road before the Southern 500