With the right people, topics, schedule and strategy for your company blog, you’re ready to start, right?

Now you move on to the technical part of the process, actually setting up the blog, from choosing your blogging software to incorporating your blog into your overall web site.

(We’re not writing a software how-to manual, though, so we’ll cover this topic at a high level. You’ll need to consult your own friendly neighborhood IT guy or gal for the actual implementation.)

Continue reading "How to Start a Company Blog: Setting It Up" »

Notice something different about our blog? Hmmm? We’re sporting a snazzy new design, and I must say, we’re quite proud of it. Redesigning the blog has been a goal of ours for a while, but—like all good agencies, we take care of our clients first. While we were (thankfully) busy and engaged with a variety of exciting projects, our poor little blog suffered from Cobbler’s Kids Syndrome.

We’re still just as busy, but thanks to some late nights and extra hours from Amazing Art Director Jeff Walter and User Interface Developer Extraordinaire Ivan Wilson, our blog got the brand, spankin’ new design it deserved.

We hope you enjoy our new look as much as we do. And we promise to keep filling it with great content about the ins and outs of the interactive industry.

Tell us, what do you think of our new design? (Cue the flood of compliments . . . )

The tech community -- particularly the social media and marketing folks -- were all, well, atwitter at the news today that social aggregator site FriendFeed is introducing a new beta interface.

Here's Friendfeed before:

And the beta, which will run concurrently for a while before replacing the old UI:

Yes, kids, the result is a UI that looks less like a firehose of information and more like current media buzz darling Twitter:

Plenty of other tech sites and blogs are generating a whole lotta of pixels analyzing what this could mean for Friendfeed and Twitter, in terms of usage, and growth.

What interests me, however, is the usability perspective. Given that the recent design change to Facebook was also compared to Twitter, we now have three major social media sites with increasingly similar -- converging -- user interfaces.

Continue reading "Everything That Rises Must Converge" »

We have an immediate job opening for an up-and-coming interactive designer. A great portfolio is expected but a great attitude is even more important. The environment is casual and creative with a confident edge. This position is contract for now but could become full employment if it all clicks.

Please submit portfolio PDF or URL to matthew@cdginteractive.com

Hello.

My name is Ivan Wilson and I am a user interface (UI) developer for CDG. I’ll be a guest author on this blog, posting every month or so.

When I first asked about contributing to the blog (and I’m still wondering whether it was a good idea to agree), I thought it would be helpful to explain exactly what I do. After all, outside the tech industry, front-end/ui developers are a somewhat unknown breed.

UI Developers, in Plain English

UI developers aren’t full-time designers (though I had a three-month stint as one), but the best of us know enough to have a good conversation with the designers. And we can do more with Photoshop than just adjusting the image brightness/contrast.

We don’t do full-time back-end programming (though I spend the great deal of my career doing PHP programming), but the best of us know enough to make things easier for the programmer and do some programming ourselves in a pinch.

Basically, we’re like UN interpreters. We know how to speak multiple languages and if we are really good at what we do, very good things happen. Like other interactive agencies, CDG develops many dynamic, database-driven sites. My job is to build out the layer that you see and use every day on your computer or web-enabled mobile phone.

That means I take all the graphics files from the designers, wireframes from the information architects, and build templates in HTML (or XHTML), Javascript, and CSS (stylesheets). I also have to create web-ready graphics from those same files. In some cases, I might even need to break out some Flash skills or work on other interactive features.

"Well, That Doesn’t Seem Too Hard . . ."

It sounds easy.

Everything is easy before testing.

And testing requires…six browsers in two platforms…or more.

Still sound easy? (I hear a few plates dropping…)

And it has to look good and function without a hiccup.

Did I mention all this has to be done before passing it on back-end programmers?

And if I move a pixel in the wrong place, the designers have pitchforks with my name engraved on 'em.

High stakes, indeed.

Yes, it's definitely like being a UN interpreter.

Call it inspiration from others, or learning by example, but user interface designers often get sparks of new ideas from looking at UI best practices.

At CDG Interactive, for example, when creating design directions for a new web site interface, we'll assemble mood boards for pure aesthetic inspiration, and research not only competitors of our clients, but sites in what we call "parallel industries."

So we were delighted to discover a new repository of ideas and UI best of breed examples for ecommerce web sites called Ecommr. Launched just 3 months ago, the site collects both full screen shots and individual UI elements in an easily browsable library.

As its missing-vowel name suggests, it's heavy on the Web 2.0 experience, which means you navigate both by major categories (Elements, Retailers) and by individual tags (Add to Cart, Category Landing Page, Shopping Cart Contents).

(Speaking of cart contents, one of our favorite element examples is this one from T-shirt site Threadless. How can you resist a plea to fill an empty cart's belly?)

And because the site is built in Wordpress, each page functions like a blog post, which allows users to leave comments on the individually posted UI elements, as well as subscribe to the site via RSS.

In addition to Ecommr, here are some other sites for design/UI inspiration:

• Screentrawl on Flickr
• Elements of Design
• Carted Up

How about you? Where do you go for UI inspiration?

Working with the American Foundation for the Blind has made me very aware of new innovations in products and technology for the visually impaired. That's why when I saw this chess set designed for the blind, it caught my attention.

Continue reading "Chess for the Blind" »

We've been having an interesting internal debate about what techniques to use for various projects. Needless to say, each part of the CDG team has a unique perspective on things.

Continue reading "To Flash or Not to Flash?" »