- Paul Klee

Fridge vs Avocado Green, Stainless Steel, White…

Running Car vs Paint Colour, Shape window tints….

3 bedroom home plans vs spacial environment and finishes inside and out

Having worked in the construction industry for years before taking the design career by the horns has helped a lot in web design. A single building is drawn by an architect,  many engineers and a designer. The architectural drawings describe how it’s built, the engineering describes what size pipes, wiring, supporting walls etc. And the design drawing give the finishes. They almost always all work together at some point in the planning process.

Creating a web site can be just as complicated as house construction.

The web developer is like the architect. If there is no final wire frame (plan) in mind then that becomes part of the solution. The developer must create a website that allows for the design to be altered by the user.

The web designer brands, colours and re-shapes the functioning website.

If you hire a designer to develop your site, hopefully they will contract out the hard coding parts and not attempt to do it themsleves.

If you hire a developer to design and brand your site, hope fully the same will apply as above.

Very rarely do both co-exist in one person with any degree of success. It’s a simple fact of left brain right brain thinking.

No where in this post is SEO mentioned. That’s because SEO not just part of website construction alone and has nothing to do with branding and design. If SEO is important to the website owner (and who wouldn’t), it get’s built in as part of the development. It is then taught to the owner on how to use it, what content to write and where to put it. If SEO is the most important thing on your website list, don’t ask for it last.

We’re all familiar with blog posts and one of the familiar parts is seeing a number of  links at the bottom of every post wanting you to “share-this-article”. They are called Social Bookmarks. People who are active in the blogosphere push those buttons because it nice. It’s a new social etiquette like letting others on the elevator first or holding a door for someone, clicking those links helps the blog owner increase search ratings. Bloggers and commenter’s are usually one and the same and we have our blogs we like to visit. They become friends.

This blog has never been about search rating but it is fun to watch traffic after blogging some opinionated article and experiment with different forms of SEO. I never added any social bookmarking links because they are ugly. (but who cares about my opinion). A few clicks for the sake of ruining the look of my page wasn’t worth it.

Enter the Sexy Bookmarks Wordpress Plugin found during a search for client work over at TribalYell. As soon as I found it I knew it was a winner and it would soon be on my blog too. Easy to install like any plugin in the latest versions of Wordpress. Click “add new” in your plugins menu, search for “SexyBookmarks” and click install. Go to the admin section for Sexybookmarks and choose which bookmarks to display. Enjoy.

So now you see them, Feel free to click on them. The makers of the Sexylinks plugin will thank you.

How much does it cost is a common question for a design business’s email inbox supplying websites to Realtors. Of course no one minds answering. It’s what we signed up for in this line of work. But there is no easy short answer to the how much question because everyone is different – or are they?

Almost all inquiries about how much a website cost to design and build are coming from people without any branding what-so-ever. It seems a common trait in the real estate niche but for a small few. In any other business there is a plan in place but in real estate the end result is the plan and most web designers working in this real estate niche are creating the visual branding as part of the web-design and including it in their price.

“My web guy designed my logo” is a pretty common thing to hear when a sign guy needs the printable artwork to work with or a printshop is trying to put together the business cards and all they have to work with are crappy web graphics.

So the question how much is a website isn’t the really the question.

This is a week filled with meetings. Meetings with people who are in the business of designing for real estate. Together we will work to discover the true nature of the problem and come up with a unique solution – or two.

I live in an alley. It’s a townhouse where our “backyard” is at alley level as are about 16 of our 40+ units. My design and lobby has been to rid the fences we have between us and the alley and claim the alley as our street. The rest of the building has decided it’s better to maintain large high fences to separate us from the undesirables. So we have a large high fence.

I have some hopes for future occupants of Vancouver’s new laneway houses. I see in the specifications there must be room for greening and “yard space”. The specifications also require most windows face the alley. The alley is the unit’s view. So it seems inevitable that alleys will have to become more palatable.

If your thinking of building a laneway house, here’s a quick rundown:

• In RS-1 and RS-5 single family areas
• On lots 33’ wide and wider, with an open lane, on a double fronting street, or on a corner with a lane dedication
• Generally located in the space where a garage would be permitted, i.e. in the rear 26’ of the lot (and a minimum of 16’ separation between the laneway house and the main house)
• Rental or family only / no strata-titling
• Minimum of one on-site parking space
• Unit size based on lot size to a maximum of 750 sq.ft. (approx. a 500 sq.ft. unit on a 33’ X 122’ lot)
• 1 and 1 ½ storey configurations, with guidelines to address upper storey massing, privacy, and shadowing
• Enabling homeowners to add a laneway house while retaining their existing main house; with or without a secondary suite in the main house (a laneway house could also be built with a new house)

logo

Starting a new business? Think you can design your own logo?

What happens when you’re a designer designing your own logo? I found out nothing can end up happening. I sit staring at my thumbnail sketches tearing them apart with my critical mind. And I thought this was going to be the easiest part of developing a business.

Business planning done. Content written. Breakout business development tested and released. Website design nearly complete. Logo! – or not. I thought I knew what I wanted from the start. The concept was falling together so easily.

TribalYell: A  design and marketing tribe. Our difference? The health of our employees and the community we market to come first. If those two things prosper, so will the business.

This meant the logo was to be cave painted hand prints about the company name. Or some kind of stylized cave/hand print.

Well it’s not going to be a hand print now. The hand print concept falls down when you find out how used up this idea actually is. But I love what I’ve come up with. It’s just a pencil sketch right now.

Google changes up their logo to match holidays and big events. The key to this is be consistent. It’s expected and there are no surprises when it happens. it’s seen as a ’step up’ and they were prepared to keep it up. What’s more is everyone knows the Google logo and can easily replace it in their mind when mashed up with some Christmas design. Look at Vanity Fair or Maclean’s Magazine the next time you’re in the grocery check out. The cover art, (usually a model or person) covers the Magazine’s name art. This is to get more real estate from the image and the image sells. This can be done because our minds know these brands well.

So how is this handled with personal branding? The answer is very carefully and once we start, we keep it up – forever.

One way is seasonal. It keeps the brand changes to four times a year. It’s authentic because we all change with the seasons, especially if you live in Vancouver. Don’t pull a Google mash up with your name if you’re dealing with personal branding. It’s a bad idea and you’ll end up in my Design Fail Category, (so please send it in if you do). Just be authentic and put yourself where your community is. Keep it real to your clients and you’ll end up with a successful and refreshing look and feel without killing the brand.

Happy Summer!

Arthur Erickson was one of the men I wanted to meet in my lifetime. Mainly because he was so great at what he did but also to thank him for being one of those few that helped put Vancouver on the world map. Vancouver was lucky to be able to say, “Arther Erickson lives here”.

Arthur Erickson lived here and we’re lucky to have that as part of our heritage. Let’s hope no one tears down any more of his work.

Really?

Well that’s just what happened to the Arlington Pediatric Center. Their logo, seen at left, has appeared all over the place and keeps appearing all over the place even though they don’t use it anymore. It’s important to use professional design.

Avoid making this mistake. Professional design for professional people.

Create a fresh new communications strategy that will resonate with your potential clients. Contact me now to find out more.