Too True

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Interface Matters

This is a great article about how today brands are defined by their interface. Rather than summarize (because it's currently very late), I've pulled some of my favorite quotes.

"The superficialists might say, that brands create identity through consistency, which creates trust. Sounds logical, but brands are not logical, they’re emotional. If you see a brand as an interface it allows you to explore the notion of brand experience being user experience. People don’t analyze usability, they enjoy it. For the customer usability is a matter of well being, while using. And being well means not needing to think in order to act..."

"Usually strong usability, simplicity and a clear focus automatically lead to a strong identity... Craigslist and delicious with their standard link colors are not pretty, they’re strong, and as they’re interactive products, they’re strong through functionality. Facebook, maybe is an example of a very usable website that might go for a more audacious interface/brand identity..."

"That branding doesn’t equal to creating a logo, is an simple truth that brand consultants have been fighting for a long time. Yet it’s never been so clear until recently: Brand equals interface not surface..."

http://informationarchitects.jp/the-interface-of-a-cheeseburger/

I knew I was not as crazy as I thought to be obsessing about the interface of the New Athenian - I want to approach all aspects of this project as a brand building exercise and getting the navigation right felt like it should be an important part of that and now I know why.

Inspiration

I've been unhappy with the magazine section of the site for a while now, but unable to devote the time to redesigning it, and hesitant to add content until that is taken care of. However, I believe I have found inspiration.

From the beginning Adam and I have wanted to magazine to be innovative in more than just its content, and the look and feel has been a very important aspect for both of us. And, while the wallpaper was a great source of inspiration for us, and continues to be a great aesthetic, well Victorian Paisley has its limits...

I grabbed this menu from a cafe in Rochester, N.Y. this fall when I visited my friend Julie and this is what we're going to jump off from in terms of the site's table of contents and organization. The look and feel of the design is great, and I like that it is at once both clean, clear and logically organized, but also busy and visually very interesting. And, just somehow it feels like it fits with what we have thus far.

Moreover, I recently got some business cards made with the New Athenian's website included at the top, so that I'd be forced to make this idea into a reality sooner rather than later.

I won't give a time line, because I'm just not comfortable doing that. If I did that the terrorists would know just when to check back here (haha such an outdated joke). But, our time horizon is within the next couple weeks.

I will concurrently be working to build my online portfolio for advertising and such, so hopefully we'll have a big launch party for everything! Though, that's much easier said than done.

Thoughts about Publishing

Recently I’ve been doing two things (among many others), reading about the perfect storm that continues to soak newspapers in debt and prompt many to question their future/ existence, and ways that technology may either finish off (unlikely) or transform (almost certainly) print.

As both Adam and I explore the world of online publishing, it has become clear that there is a lot happening that many people, even those in the industry, just aren’t that aware of. For example, a recent blog post I came across via a friend’s Twitter feed decried an article in the NYT discussing the implications of Twitter vis a vis traditional journalism. Responding to this article, the post pointed out that it seems inconceivable that journalists should still be on square one with this, asking questions that are, at best, "16 months old." And, this is the New York Times we're talking about, is it really ok that they still don't know? The author of the post writes:

“No, it's not OK for you to be so goddamn behind the times, or to make weak cynical jokes about tech users. Or to pretend that people who use the technology have never thought about the problems that come with it. We get that.

Mainstream news media is still relevant, still powerful, still immensely useful. But we've got to communicate to them that this cutesy curmudgeonly bullshit attitude toward technology and the people who use it has got to stop.”

I agree, though I don't think I'm as upset about it as quoted above. Thus, in the spirit of moving forward I’ve got a story about something that could be one of the next big things for the future of print (that I hope NYT has heard of). A new program, (that recently entered a closed alpha), called printcasting, allows you to take other people’s blog posts, and edit, arrange and publish them into magazine form. This publication can then be viewed virtually or printed. Imagine the potential for creating regional or even community specific magazines, taking blog posts from citizen journalists around the community, adding a little context, some original reporting, editing and bam! you have a comprehensive, geographic specific publication.

I think that this is a big deal because one of the "futures" of the Internet, that I believe is already clear, is aggregation. The success of sites like HuffingtonPost.com or RealClearPolitics.com, as well as Digg.com and Reddit.com, is because they sort through the cluster f@#k that is the Internet. Whether by editorial decisions or popular vote, these sites serve a vital function in an age where there is more information than you can shake many magnitudes of sticks at (and I would guess that at least 70% of it is not even worth a shake). These magazines will let similar sites come into being, online and off, for very small, specific groups by drastically lowering the entry barrier for information aggregation.

Twitter changes the way I use the internet, and the internet shapes the way I live my life to a large degree. Therefore, duh. Get with it newspapers, I'm starting not to feel bad for you anymore. I think that Printcasting, if it works, will be one of the next big step in bridging the gap between virtual communities and real world communities. Using the Internet in yet another way to augment, rather than replace reality. Twitter already does this, and things like printcasting will help take it to the next level.

Wallpaper

Over the long weekend I watched one of my favorite movies, The Royal Tenenbaums. As with all Wes Anderson films, the almost surreal style of the set does just as much for setting the tone and feel of the movie as the characters themselves. One of my favorite parts of the movie is the design of the Tenebaum house, and one of its most noticeable features is its eclectic mix of wallpapers. Sounds strange, but if you’ve seen the movie you know what I’m talking about.

I was already thinking of this motif, but I decided to try it out and I think that it looks great. The new design features Victorian style wallpaper, like the ones below, in each of the three sections.

What does this have to do with Athens or Boston? Glad you asked. Old, it’s really old. But, classic as well. And, I can’t say for sure, but I imagine most of the old brownstones around town to be filled with this stuff, wall to wall. And finally, it’s our magazine, so we’ll do what we want.

Our Newest Designs

In our quest to design a logo, and in a larger sense to create an image and feel for the magazine we have 2 more concepts to show. This time in the form of ideas for our masthead.

For the logo we have settled on the image of a half laurel writhe, for reasons far too pretentious to go into now. And this is our try at integrating this image with our name.

Breaking the rules

After breaking the cardinal rule of never letting your blog go for more than a week without an update, we’re back. Though I’m sure we lost all 3 people reading it already.

We’ve worked on finalizing SOME content for the first issue and it will be up by December 8^th! This will also include a redesign of the current beta site that is currently up on our dot com.

We both would have liked to get the entire finished project up all at once, but with time constraints and poor scheduling it seems that, like this blog, SOMETHING just needs to happen or we’ll totally stall.

As I have tried to learn Dreamweaver (a web design software made by Adobe) I have had many successes but many, many more failures. And, as a result, we’re currently looking into just using iWeb instead (a simpler, drag and drop software made by Apple) until I can get a better handle on coding.

Why don’t you just write the content and get someone who knows what they are doing to build your site? You might ask.

Well, unfortunately there aren’t many people willing to do that for free and what’s more it would be great to learn how to do this myself. Also, Adam and I disagree over creative stuff as it is, and I can’t imagine how bad it would be with a third person in the creative process cluster f@*k that is this magazine.