I’m sorry but I do have another design rant. Pepsi spent nearly a million dollars on this new logo and I just don’t think they got their money’s worth. Was it even necessary to do a new rebrand anways, let alone the cost it’s going to be for changing all their vending machines, trucks, and marketing materials. Was their visual brand not currently successful for them? You need real communication justification to address a problem for such a massive marketing effort. So let’s start with the few positives. I like the idea of a simplified design approach but not sure if it fits for this product line. The darker blue in the background gives a nice contrast against the lighter blue in the swoosh with the subtle gradients at the base and top. There that sums up the positives. Now onto what needs some work.

Font choice…ugh…yeah another thin line web 2.0 font. It’s almost so subtle you don’t even see it and reading it on a vertical axis makes it that much more difficult. A cold and sterile choice. Hilarious that between the different versions of Pepsi the symbol mark actually changes it’s shape breaking the golden rule of branding consistency. It looks like a side profile of a plumbers butt crack. The more crack you can see the more calories you’re drinking. Unintentional humor by their designer? The zero cal,carb,sug almost looks like an design element as a giant letter “O” people might not get the cal,carb,sug. A little too minimalist in that regards.

And yet more abbreviations as Mountain Dew is changed to MTN Dew. That font choice is beyond me. It’s sort of 80’s bad vibe to it but it has a sense of rushed thought process to it. It doesn’t exude the energy and impact that traditional Mountain Dew has been associated with in their previous marketing efforts and simply using red as the complimentary contrast colors gives it too much of a Christmas vibe complete with pine trees in the background.
Sierra Mist. Oh it’s Mist…so let’s do the font as a mist. I already saw that movie…it didn’t end well. That redesign is probably the weakest of all the product lines.

Listen, if your going to spend huge amounts of money to redesign your brand, then really try to push past the envelope and then come back away from the edge a few steps and see where you are. This was a poor evolution for Pepsi and more tragic detours for Sierra Mist and Mountain Dew brands. I think a board of directors had a bit too much to say in these. “Well, we want a new brand but not too new, we want it high techy so it’s sort of futuristic. Oh we like that new Obama logo can we do something along those lines. Everyone’s is doing that social media style thing. Let’s get on that wagon.” You need to have a good reason to recreate your branding especially with the price tag that it comes with, and I just don’t see any clear justification of why this was done. Stop following generic aesthetics and design trends and set your branding apart so your identity can withstand the test of time.

I was using Entourage’s My Day widget the other day and almost ended up sleeping on the couch because of it. If you study this screen capture below with a keen eye you’ll notice it said that I had a acceptance design meeting tomorrow (wednesday.) But notice how simple it would have been just to assume that event was scheduled for the current today.

I totally mis-read that my day was actually free (notice in the top left corner) because my eye was instantly drawn to the meeting occurring tomorrow due to it’s visual weight and color contrast. So I frantically called my wife and said I couldn’t make the parent/teacher conference because I had a meeting at 1:00! She was not too happy. I realized my mistake about 5 minutes later and called her back and did a lot of apologizing.

So I thought with a few simple adjustments I wouldn’t have made this mistake. See my quick fixes to design below to make it a bit more useable.

Now it clearly stands out with a color keyed area that my day is free. You can’t miss that. It’s no longer buried up in the left corner. I also separated upcoming things for subsequent days a bit more and more importantly muted their color tones. Now when I would mouse over that upcoming event then it could brighten up significantly, but in the meantime a meeting that is a day away doesn’t have to beg for my attention. There’s enough distractions in life already.

We’ve just recently launched a very large website redesign for CATA. I was thinking how this site truly showcases the differences between visual eye candy design and useful informative web site design. While CATA’s makeover is still visually appealing the quality of the design comes from a underlying thought process of what information should be displayed and where as well as what users will need to do with it. The information architecture forms this foundation and the design is merely there to support that. In fact the best designs for the web are the ones where the user doesn’t even notice the design, it just falls to the background and the purpose and content rise to the surface. They simply and intuitively know where to go and how to get there because the design guides them and doesn’t distract them from doing what they need to do. While I’ve done many heavily branded and thematic designs as a web designer where the visual treatments are weighed heavier it’s important to not allow the artistic elements to outweigh it’s usability. Your website still has a purpose and relevant information to provide to it’s users. Your web audience is an inpatient group so the quicker you guide them to the info the better. If you put that as your main focus you’ll find a clean effective appealing design will naturally follow. Everything else is just window dressing.

It occured to me the other day that sometimes clients really don’t know what the heck we’re talking about as designers and programmers. You might as well be speaking Klingon. That’s not a slam on the client’s intelligence (or on Klingons.) It’s more of a failure on our part in effective communication. If a doctor starts talking medical terms, I have no clue what he’s talking about either. But a reputable doctor will have a good bedside manner to compliment their medical knowledge. Their ability to relate the information to the patient in a clear and friendly way really helps distinguish them from other professionals in their field. I think designers and programmers can take a lesson from this. Sometimes we get so wrapped up in our little world of technology buzzwords and designer lingo we forget that our clients aren’t apart of that same crazy world. You can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a acronym in our business.  Here’s an example of a typical conversation.

“We’ll be taking your XHTML and .ASP files along with your css and image directories and uploading those up to your host domain through a FTP program. It’s behind our a secure firewall so it may take a while. Shouldn’t be a problem though.”

All the client heard was “blah blah blah.  Shouldn’t be a problem though.” 

So let’s say that in some terms they can better relate to.

“We’re about ready to launch yourname.com once we upload the files to your website. We’ll have it live on Wednesday by 5pm so your customers can get  started visiting it then.”

There, done and to the point. The client doesn’t need to hear how you did everything or your fancy technical terms. What they do need to know is how it’s affecting their business in clear concise words and what the next step is in the process. You are also not talking down to them and if they want to know the nitty gritty details, you can help guide them through those as needed. Remember they can teach you just as much about their business as you can teach them about yours. Great business relationships are a team effort so make that client apart of your team. Save the Klingon talk for the next Trek convention. 

I ran across this interesting blog post about a website that has businesses post a price they’re willing to pay for some design work then designers can try to land that project (or cash prize as I like to call it) with their submission of logo designs. Here’s the article if you want to have a quick read through.

Colorful metaphors aside, he makes some valid points even if he did get threatened with a lawsuit (please don’t sue me I’m here merely to observe.) It’s a dangerous scenario when a client posts a couple sentences description about a logo design for the whopping price of $200 and then expects designers to battle it out posting their blindly informed visual concepts for the customer to choose from. It is a dangerous trend and damaging to design community at large in my opinion. It also perpetuates stereotypes that designers are merely there to make something pretty and anyone can do that..a sort of Miss Universe beauty pageant where the contestants aren’t allowed to speak.

In our society of commodization the last stronghold tri-fecta is that of creativity, innovation, and strategy. You simply can’t outsource that or box it into a plastic package for sale in the checkout isle. Sites like the one he mentioned among others with similar business approaches only cheapen what we do into a 5th grade art contest trying to please the judge with the prize of a some cash in our pockets. There is no give and take between a client and the designer, no partnership in the creative process. Designing is a relationship between the client and creative architect where each educates the other resulting in a well thought out final design solution. The designer explains his reasoning for his visual approach to a business problem and client teaches the designer about their business. If we degenerate into a design community of lowest prices goes based on a few short sentences about our client then it’s game over. You might as well just select from some clipart as a customer since that’s the quality you’ll be getting. Think of it as an investment, spend the extra money and get something that is at that professional caliber your business deserves. You’ll be happier, your customers will be impressed and the designer will respect himself in the morning. There are lower cost design services out there that still offer quality work but making it a contest doesn’t do justice for anyone.

“Anyone can perform open heart surgery just give them the right tools”

“Usability Testing Castaway”

We’ve been working closely with MSU Usability Center to conduct testing on a high profile website client. This testing came after the fact we built the site but now I can see the benefit of testing through iterative phases. While not cheap to conduct an organization that truly wishes to make their site focused and effective should definitely consider running their site through this valuable process.

The testing entails a series of questions they ask typical users to run through in finding some information in the web site or to perform a specific task such as purchasing something. The subjects are monitored on video and they’re encouraged to verbally talk about their process as they decide where to go as well as offer up suggestions that would improve their experience. Meanwhile we as developers watch the testing in another room and can’t seem to yell loud enough through the wall “click on the link that says e-commerce!!” all the while they were just looking for a link that says “Buy this item here.” I think we as web developers and designers often forget that we’re not the typical average user. We often fall into traps of using jargon and terminologies in our sites that an avergage user wouldn’t understand. Many times this is the verbage coming from the organization but they too aren’t the typical user. They come from the perspective of how their business runs and already have their own biases in using internal terminologies that can further confuse a user. If you want to make a happy customer they need to achieve the goals of your site, enjoy the experience and come back. A effective useable website will provide them answers quickly and be presented in a logical layout that strengthens your branding but more importantly accomplishes helping your user find what they need. A happy customer means a happy website owner.

Often during the study we noticed a simple thing of how something is labeled would confound and confused users even if it made complete sense to us. Simply adjusting the verbage to something more simple and clear to the customer and not to expectations of the organization or developer increases click through rate immediately and drives them to the answer they were looking for to begin with. We should always be conscious of how the site is reading right down to how we verbalize the links or the sub headlines. User center design starts and ends with the users and the sooner we can have them involved the better the site will be.