CDG is looking for some new talent - specifically a new senior designer and a user experience architect/designer. Know someone or want to apply? Send your resume and links to jobs@cdginteractive.com.

Senior Designer

CDG Interactive is looking for Senior Designer to join our award-winning creative team. We’re looking for someone with a strong creative perspective, a drive to innovate, and the ability to work collaboratively with clients and co-workers. 5+ years of graphic design experience and formal design training is required. 

As senior designer, you’ll be responsible for conceiving, designing, and executing innovative visual environments for landing pages, banners, email campaigns, interactive demos, microsites, mobile website and full website builds. You’ll need the flexibility and imagination to develop a range of concepts and designs for projects, and the ability to exercise creativity within constraints (i.e., respect client brand guidelines, technical requirements, etc.) .

Also required: right-brain/left-brain balance, as you’ll work with creative, marketing and technical types to ensure your design is transformed into an effective interactive execution.

Skills:

• Black-belt mastery of Photoshop, Illustrator & related programs.
• Orange-belt understanding of Dreamweaver to create presentation postings. Understanding of Flash, After Effects, and Video production is a plus.
• A sense of humor as big as—or preferably larger than—your ego.
• An overall understanding of web production and the capabilities within digital channels.
• The curiosity to learn, discover, and grow as a digital designer.

User Experience Architect/Designer

CDG Interactive is also searching for a seasoned User Experience Architect/Designer to round out our award-winning creative team. The ideal candidate will possess confidence and ingenuity developed over 5-10 years in the interactive industry. We expect you to challenge conventional wisdom and help us develop brilliant interactive environments that delight the end user.

Initiative, enthusiasm, and experience working with large corporate clients/organizations are a must. A background in design or experience in a creative environment is a plus.

Skills:

• Think creatively to transform the caterpillar of functionality into the butterfly of amazingly usable graphic interfaces.
• Possess in-depth knowledge of user experience rules and best practices-and have the guts to break them when you need to.
• Quickly understand a range of client organizations and their business and organizational challenges. Our clients are like snowflakes. Respect their uniqueness.
• Collaborate enthusiastically and effectively with clients and the creative team. (Passion is great. Arrogance, not so much.)
• Be a believer in CDG and what we're trying to do. Help us create interactive environments that break ground, blaze trails, and achieve great things.

About CDG:

CDG is recognized as an industry leader in the creation, implementation, and marketing of interactive environments that enable our clients to grow their business. Our innovation efforts are focused on achieving our clients' goals through user-centered design. In all aspects of its work, CDG seeks to help our clients deliver high value to end-users.

Working at CDG, you’ll find we’re serious about what we do, but we don’t take ourselves too seriously. Perks and benefits include: generous vacation leave, health insurance (with flexible spending account), Metro-accessible office, casual dress code, free soda and snacks, and the best-looking co-workers in the DC-Metro area. Interested? Send your resume and a link to your online portfolio to jobs@cdginteractive.com.

To all of our clients, partners and friends, thank you for another great year.

Highlights of 2011 include the launch of new sites for CQ Roll Call, GastroKids.org and the US-Ireland Alliance, a second iAd mobile campaign for GEICO featuring the Gecko's Secret Savings Society (and winning a Platinum Award for the first one), and the continued growth of Zeus, our custom-built content management system.

From all of us at CDG Interactive, we hope your holidays are delicious and your New Year is sweet.

(And speaking of delicious, check out the entries to our third-annual cookie smackdown competition, above.)

Just as the 2012 election cycle got hotter than a fried butterstick in Iowa, CDG launched a new and improved site for CQ Roll Call.

CQ Roll Call is the premier provider of non-partisan legislative and electoral news and analysis, as well as legislative tracking and advocacy tools. The new site features a streamlined structure that gives users a comprehensive, yet concise picture of what CQ Roll Call has to offer.

But it’s not only end-users who enjoy a better experience on the site—so do the editors and producers at CQ Roll Call. The new site was implemented in Zeus, CDG’s content management system. Zeus’ powerful functionality and intuitive interface makes it easy for CQ Roll Call to add, edit, and manage the site content.

Also, Zeus allows CQ Roll Call to track the users who request free trials of their products—information that had previously gone un-captured. With its new Zeus-powered site, CQ Roll Call can track conversions precisely and communicate more effectively with its current and potential subscribers.

“The new website is a great showcase for our products and services,” says Andrea Birdsong, Director of Interactive Marketing at CQ Roll Call, “And because we can better manage our content and track our conversions, we can serve our subscribers more effectively.”

So, Beltway insiders and intrepid politicos, visit the new CQRollCall.com and see if it gets your vote of approval.

Looking to improve your website? Contact CDG Interactive.

Two new social media privacy issues came up this week, one at Facebook and one at LinkedIn. Interestingly, both just showed up without any fanfare. No big announcements, no blog posts . . . nothing. When will they learn?

We're pretty sure that if the platforms simply explained what how they were changing their privacy settings and why, the users might just shrug and go on.

Even better, if they explained the potential benefits to users and allowed them to opt-in voluntarily (rather than doing it for them), people might even welcome the changes.

But discovering that

1. There are new privacy settings that you haven't heard of;
2. You've been opted into them without your knowlegde; and
3. Plenty of people now have access to your personal information--and hey, your photo may even turn up in an advertisement

Well, let's just call that an epic fail on behalf of two of the most dominant social media networks.

Fortunately, we're here to help. Here's how to update your LinkedIn and Facebook privacy settings to deal with the new issues:

Continue reading "There They Go Again: Time to Update Your LinkedIn & Facebook Privacy Settings" »

Just when businesses were starting to figure out how to use channels like Twitter and Facebook and  LinkedIn, along comes Google with its new entry into the social media fray, called Google+ (pronounced “Google Plus”).

If you’ve heard any chatter about it recently, it’s probably been from people looking for one of the initially scarce number of invitations to the closed beta launch—or for someone with a shiny new Google+ account who was now trying to figure out what the heck to do with it.

So what does Google+ mean for businesses, anyway?

To start with, here’s what it doesn’t mean: a Google+ profile for your business. As we mentioned in Friday’s Links post, Google is asking only individuals to create Plus accounts because they have a business-centric version still in the works. This is very similar to Facebook’s model of profiles for individuals and pages for entities, like a business or organization.

However, if you’ve received an individual invitation for a Gmail account that you use in a professional capacity, you should pay attention to Google+ and use it to drive traffic to your company’s site or blog in much the same way you would use Twitter or Facebook, as Shashi Bellamkonda writes in Small Biz Technology.

For now, therefore, Google+ is more about your personal brand than your company brand, so proceed accordingly.

[Update 7.14.11]

The blog posts and article about G+ have been coming fast and furious from sources around the web; here are some additional takes:

• The New York Times: "Google+ One Ups Facebook"
• Hubspot Blog: "11 Things You Don't Know (But Should) About Google+"
• What's Next? Blog: "Google+ Mania: Most Pundits Are Missing the Point"
• Search Engine Land: "Google+ Pages Coming For Business"

Your Turn:

• Are you using Google+?
• What do you like—and dislike—about it?
• What do you think its potential is for businesses and organizations?

CDG Interactive has received another honor for the Apple iAd mobile advertising campaign created with and for client GEICO, the nation's #3 auto insurer. 

In addition to the International Advertising Competition Best in Show received earlier this year, the Gecko's Wheel of Wisdom campaign has won a Platinum Award--the Best of Category--in the 41st Creativity International Awards for the category of Mobile Device, Advertising.

Other agencies winning media CIA awards this year include such prestigious international names as The Barbarian Group, DDB, and Leo Burnett as well as such companies as MTV Networks and Disney Resorts.

Launched in October 2010 as one of the inaugural campaigns on Apple's unique iAd mobile advertising platform, the Gecko's Wheel of Wisdom is an immersive game-like experience. Users can spin the Wheel to get advice from the well-known GEICO mascot on areas ranging from Travel to Romance, Family to Style.

The iAd also includes such bonus content and features as ringtones, wallpaper and a map locator for the nearest GEICO office. And no GEICO experience would be complete without the ability to get a quote right from your phone.

With the success of this initial campaign, CDG Interactive and GEICO are now working together again to create a whole new iAd campaign.

Are you looking to start a mobile marketing campaign? Contact us to learn how we can help you.