Design on the mind

I know that I am not by any means the first to raise this issue, nor will I be the last. But I do think that it is always a worthy topic for discussion. There are many areas of design where a greener solution could be chosen. The first and most obvious one for me is packaging design.

I was listening to the radio a few weeks ago and they were discussing the reason why a cucumber needs to be shrink wrapped in plastic.

The supermarket spokesperson gave these reasons:
a) We need to get the bar code on there for the cashier to scan.
b) It will stay fresh for 12 days in the fridge.

My response to this was who on earth wants to keep a cucumber for 12 days, it defeats the whole idea of eating FRESH food!! And if the supermarkets are insistent that the bar code needs to be on the vegetable then perhaps a sticker as shown below would be a better alternative?

I also felt the need to include this image of a single aubergine packed in plastic. What a ridiculous waste of resources, energy, land fill space etc. It is on a par with plastic trays displaying a couple of avocados or apples which are then wrapped again in plastic. Grrrrrrr!

Since the obvious solution of banning plastic packaging for food doesn’t look likely to happen anytime soon, why is biodegradable plastic not used more often? Well it’s down to the increased cost to produce it I guess, they wouldn’t want to eat into those gazillion pound profit margins.

Here is an example of a packaging manufacturer who use bio-plastics that are 100% biodegradable, with a low carbon footprint and are made from annually renewable plants:

London Bio Packaging Full marks to you!

I would also like to link to Noisy decent graphic’s blog on the subject who were the main influence for my blog. They have gone into much more detail, also raising the question of the involvement of the designers in the whole process of food packaging. A great read.

Graphic design for print is another area that can be looked at. The print industry is the 5th largest manufacturing industry in the UK and has the 6th worst pollution record. It is a resource intensive industry that is mostly unsustainable. Print companies and Design agencies should at least be offering their clients print services that use recycled paper or paper from sustainable forests as a green alternative.

Anyway, this is a huge topic and I don’t want to rant on about it too much but I would be most interested to hear any of your opinions on this subject.

Toni

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Every now and then all bloggers experience what is known as ‘bloggers block’. When it comes creeping in, it can be a terrifying affliction; the pressure of making that next post as original and interesting as the last, grows. As the blogger tosses and turns at night, unable to sleep he feels his once eager readers slipping from his grasp… OK, maybe it’s not that bad but every now and then we all struggle for inspiration so I thought I would (humbly) write a few top tips to help design bloggers or in fact any blogger keep the creativity flowing.

1. Obviously there is always inspiration out there in your fellow bloggers’ work. Reading other blogs regularly will often spark a good idea for your own blog. You can add a new perspective to their point or spot a tangent that they haven’t mentioned. It is good to be inspired by someone else’s work; you can credit them, quote them and link to them to show your appreciation. (Of course it isn’t good to just blatantly steal someone else’s copy).

2. Use a tool like wordtracker to do some in depth keyword research; find some little niche phrases to blog about, you may be surprised at what you find.

3. Have a think about recent web or graphic design projects you have been working on. Have you come across a technical issue that you could write about? Have you learned a new way of doing something or achieving a new effect in a design program that you use? These are going to be particularly interesting to other designers.

4. Have you just completed a design project? Perhaps a post about what you have achieved for the client might be interesting to potential clients. This is definitely one that you shouldn’t do too often though as a blog that constantly blows its own trumpet all the time is rather dull.

5. Have a jolly good rant…go on; don’t hold back, you know it will make you feel better! As long as the rant has an objective and bears some relation to your topic it can work really well. Some of the best blogs I have read have been pure rant. Again, this is not something you want to do all the time you need to have some positive stuff in there too.

6. Put your self in your reader’s shoes for a moment and think about what questions they might need answering. What information have you got that might be really useful to them? Having an objective like this can help the writing process too.

7. Take the time to read books and magazines on your industry; these are going to be filled with stimulating information on your niche topics that will give you some ideas to bounce around.

8. Try to write from a different perspective sometimes, perhaps looking at the industry in a broader sense rather than focusing on details for example. Also try looking at issues that concern the industries that are in some way connected to yours.

9. Don’t put too much pressure on yourself to write a massive long essay every time. Short blogs can be just as effective and actually easier to read, particularly as web readers have a much more limited attention span.

10. Keep a little list somewhere of ideas, issues and facts that you can keep coming back to for inspiration. Often I will see a particular thing on my list a few times before I actually attempt to write about it and usually each time I see it I have a new angle on it or a new idea of a good way to write it.

11. If the bloggers block has a real tight hold on you, it is always an option to offer a guest blog spot to another blogger. This will give you a bit of breathing space to recoup your writing energy. This brings me neatly on to my next tip:

12. Take some time out away from your computer, go for a walk or pause to chat to someone about something unrelated. This is a good way to freshen your mind. You never know you might be able to start a blog with “A funny thing happened to me on the way to the shop…”

13. A good way to post regularly is to cover a topic or issue over several blog posts or in several parts. This not only gives you a bit more time to write but also gives the readers an incentive to come back.

14. Find something that you don’t know the answer to and blog about that, asking your readers for their opinion at the end of the post. This not only humanises you but gives people the opportunity to help you. Got to be a good thing – we all need help sometimes!

So, if like me you sometimes find yourself staring hopelessly at your computer desperately waiting for something to happen; try some of the above.
Hope this is helpful…if you have any bloggers block tips to share it would be great to here from you.

Toni

Other related useful articles:
20 types of blog posts - battling bloggers block
blogger block poem
Getting past bloggers block

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Blogging has become a very popular way to communicate with your audience and to keep content fresh on a website. Wordpress would be many people’s choice of platform for a blog, as it is well designed and certainly very flexible. It has been said that blog websites can ‘all look the same’, but it is very easy to make them look different with the hundreds of wordpress themes available and a bit of personalisation. In fact a lot of people now have turned their website into their blog and combined the two. We are in the process of doing this with our site and hope to gain many benefits.

Although Wordpress was launched originally as a blogging tool, many people are now using it to build non blog websites. Because of its lean code, expandability through a multitude of available plugins and great backend administration area, it has become a versatile platform from which to build a fully content managed site. Unlike other CMS systems which are bloated and maybe too full featured (Joomla is good, but guilty of this), the simple nature of Wordpress allows designers to expand from an uncluttered base and go as far as you want with features and design.

Here is a great example of a Wordpress site: David Airey.

Do you use wordpress? What limitations have you found with using it to build non blog websites? Are there other systems you prefer to use? It would be great to hear others thoughts on this.

Ollie

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Every now and then I come across the work of a talented artist, designer or photographer, and it’s always a great inspiration. James Starr was exhibiting at Room 212 in Bristol a few weeks ago and I have to say he is one of the more impressive artists I have seen there.

James is a painter, printer and illustrator. His images are created using a mixture of original screen printed material, photography, freehand illustration and collage. He has traveled as an expedition artist for BSES Expeditions to the USA, South Africa, Iceland and Arctic Norway.

I spent quite a bit of time chatting to James and he took the trouble to pop by our house to drop some work off to me and my partner. (James, it is at the framers; can’t wait to get it back! :)). It was a great pleasure to meet a talented local artist and genuinely nice person.

Stop by James’s website sometime and have a look: James Starr

Toni

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Thought I would do a short post on this subject as it is still a topic for debate and a little confusing (possibly only for me).

What is Google PageRank? PageRank is a numerical scoring system that gives a unique ranking to every page on the internet. The ranking number is based on the number and quality of inbound links pointing at the page (according to Google).

Check your pageRank here with this SEO tool

So, is PageRank important for rankings?

Well, from what I can understand it certainly seems to be less important than it used to be. Nearly everything I have read seems to suggest that it has become more of a way to check the popularity of a page than to regulate its positioning on the results pages.

The Deckchair website homepage used to have a PR5 which would be considered OK, certainly not terrible. About 8 months ago our PageRank dropped to PR4 and this was after having done a lot of work on our linking strategy and content. Despite this drop we are doing better than ever in the SERPs (Search Engine results pages).

For example if you do a Google search for “web design Bristol” you will see that we are No. 3 on the first page (chuffed with that).  Many of the websites that appear lower than the Deckchair site for that search term have higher PRs of 6 and 7. So it would seem that content and other non-PR factors are more important for a website’s rankings.

Some say that the PR is only a measure of the ‘quantity’ of inbound links.  So websites that have concentrated on buying as many links as possible regardless of how relevant they are will find that they don’t do as well despite having a very high PR.
The flip side to this thinking is that PageRank drives Google’s monthly crawl, meaning that sites with a higher PageRank get crawled earlier, faster, and deeper than sites with low PageRank. So, for a large site with an average-to-low PageRank, this will present a problem; if your pages don’t get crawled, they won’t get indexed and people won’t be able to find them. Is this still the case?

SEOBook author Aaron Wall says; “Instead of chasing PageRank I like to find the low PageRank sites that rank well in the search results. What links do they have? Why are they ranking so well? If you get the types of links that those sites have and if you have a compelling website that other sites actually want to link to, the PageRank will naturally fall into place without you developing a wonky link profile trying to artificially boost your PageRank.”

Any thoughts anyone?

Toni

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Hi Folks, Any of you feeling disappointed with your broadband download speeds? Did the lovely salesman tell you on the phone you would be getting 8mb of band width? Well, what they mean is…”up to 8mb”. All the major broadband providers will give you a contention ratio of 1:50 which means that you are sharing your 8MB with 50 other users. Probably explains why your connection speed is rubbish at peak times.

Anyway, the Gadget Show have started a campaign to make these companies be a bit more truthful about the service that they are providing. They have set up a device on their website that will measure your broadband performance and log the results for you.

Do your broadband test here

Here is what ours looked like…….

Fantastic, isn’t it? We are a web design company for goodness sake!!

Anyway we are in the process of changing our service provider to a company who have promised a much better contention ratio of 1:2.5. So I will let you all know how it goes. In the mean time join the campaign if you aren’t happy with your broadband service.

Any thoughts anyone?

Toni 

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During the process of designing a website I find that very often the job of writing the copy for the site is completely underestimated. I suppose to the client the look and functionality of the website are foremost in their minds. Of course these are vitally important, but getting the copy right is also important and should not be overlooked.

When you actually sit down to write about your own company or services you will probably find that it is quite hard. It is not uncommon for people to struggle with it and then have to extend the deadline of their website or seek professional copywriting services at the last minute.

The main thing to remember is; keep reminding yourself of who you are writing for. Firstly you are writing for your web visitors (or human audience) who you will hopefully convert into customers. Secondly you are writing for the search engines to ensure good positions in the listings.

For your human visitors the main things to bear in mind are:

• Focus on the benefit to the reader – Be sure to tailor the copy to the reader’s interests or the benefits to their business. How can your product or service make a difference to them? Nobody wants to read endless drivel about when your company was founded, what you eat for breakfast etc etc.

• Keep the first paragraph of any body of text simple and to the point – readers can get the information that they want quickly and then make the choice to read on for more detailed information if they want to.

• Don’t confuse your objective with long words or over wordy sentences.

• Check your spelling and grammar – Not very professional to have misspelled words all over the place.

For the Search Engines, bear these points in mind:

• Keep each body of text focused on a researched key phrase – The search engine crawlers scan the text and analyze it to find out what the page is about. It is important that you thoroughly research the key phrases that your visitors use, so that your page will be listed high on the search engine results pages for that term.

• Keyword Density – Getting the balance right is important. You need to make sure that the relevant key words/phrases appear in the copy but you don’t want to over do it either. Google in particular can spot a piece of copy that is overloaded with a key phrase a mile away and you might be penalized for keyword stuffing. (Your human readers won’t like it either).

So, whatever your product or service, be sure to keep both audiences happy when writing the copy for your website. Any other top tips out there?

Toni

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