Design

I’m doing a little market research for a project and would greatly appreciate your advice. My question: What would you do with a personal avatar that looked like a comic-strip version of you? How would you use it? What uses could you foresee for a comic avatar of your face and body, or just your face (digital or physical-world)?

Here are a couple examples of comic avatars. Also see the comic avatar of me at the top of this page.

Leave a comment here or send me a private message. Thanks for your help!

A common criticism of news websites — especially ones run by small and medium sized newspaper companies and TV news outlets — is that they don’t invest enough in programming or web development talent. Perhaps their sites don’t look as professional, or are not as full featured as they could be because not enough resources are devoted to online operations. They’ve not adapted adequately to the new media environment where having enough geeks around is a requirement for long-term survival.

This won’t be for everyone, but there are several related web services that can get some of your development and design tasks done for reasonable, often very low rates. Using them is a way to extend the web development and design staff you have by off-loading some of their work. Continued

This item is about saving money, not making it. … Look at the top of this page. See the graphic site logo or masthead with the flames? That cost $1.30 to produce. OK, maybe you get what you pay for, you’re thinking … but I kinda like it.

So the story is that I found the graphic with the flames on iStockPhoto.com, a wonderful and inexpensive web stock imagery resource. The site has a huge database of images — photos, illustrations, Flash graphics, video — with new imagery coming in every day. Prices for licensing are dirt cheap compared to traditional stock agencies. That’s because the work doesn’t come from high-priced pro photographers and artists, but rather any photographers or artists who want to add their work and make a few bucks. Continued

The folks in the online department at the Poynter Institute are working on a major redesign for Poynter.org (aka, Poynter Online). It’ll be the first significant overhaul of the website, a resource and training tool for journalists, in 5 or 6 years. In fact, the last big redesign pre-dated the last two eyetracking studies conducted by Poynter, so this one should incorporate some of the knowledge gleaned from that research. (Disclaimer: I was the project manager on one of those studies about 3 years ago.) Continued

My former colleagues at the Poynter Institute have produced a nice video about the upcoming (significant) redesign of Poynter.org (aka, Poynter Online). I worked with Poynter for about four years (I’ve now been away a couple years), and first arrived just as the team was putting finishing touches on the previous redesign, as I recall.

I’m looking foward to seeing what the smart folks at Poynter do with this one. The current design doesn’t take into account the results of the last two eyetracking studies by Poynter; this new one will. Should be interesting to see what they come up with.

What’s one of the biggest flaws that eyetrack research reveals about the current design? On the homepage in the right column is a list of the site’s columnists. Placement on the page is almost guaranteed to not be seen by many page visitors. Moving that to the left would give columnists better visibility and probably more clickthroughs by users. The navigation links in the left column take up valuable homepage real estate. Moving them to a horizontal nav across the top would work as well or better. It appears from this video that fixing those problems will be part of the redesign.

The guys over at Evomo must be ecstatic about this. They make stylish mountain biking apparel (including some branded t-shirts commissioned by my former company, the Enthusiast Group), and one of their fans asked if he could get a tattoo using Evomo’s “Braincase” design. The answer from Evomo head honcho Bryan Thombs: “Hell-yeeeaaaah!”

So here’s the pic. The crazy mountain biker didn’t go so far as to brand Evomo’s name on his skin, but that’s still a pretty nice bit of free customer marketing for the company. He’s a walking billboard for Evomo, since everyone’s going to ask him about it.

That is a pretty cool design. If I were younger, I might wear that t-shirt; it doesn’t really fit my 51-year-old sensibilities. Tattoo? Probably not.

I’m a fan of good infographics, especially multimedia. (I spent a few years of my traditional newspaper career working on infographics, and back when I worked at the Poynter Institute I studied multimedia graphics as part of an eyetracking research project.) It’s always nice to point to good work, and NYTimes.com has produced a great multimedia infographic about Super Bowl ads over the years:

The Super Ad Bowl: Two Decades of Players

See for yourself, but what I like is how easy this infographic is to use. A simple slider takes you back through the years, where you can click to watch the ads. (I do wish the Times had found more old ads to include, though.) The graphic doesn’t feature flashy, sexy design — actually, it’s a bit bland looking — but it is brilliantly designed. The form is good enough; the function is what makes it.

A few days ago Charles Apple pointed to what I think is a brilliant — if controversial — infographic by Todd Trumbull of the San Francisco Chronicle.

It shows graphically at what location on the Golden Gate Bridge suicide jumpers — of which there have been more than 1,200 known ones — leaped off the structure. It’s absolutely fascinating information, presented in a way that an infographic can do best. It’s interesting that more jumpers used the east side looking toward the city than the west, looking out to the Pacific. I never would have guessed that some people jumped onto land, not water.

This is basically a static print graphic, and was presented on the Chronicle’s website in the same way — no multimedia or interaction. It’s a great infographic as is, but it got me thinking if the possibilities of online presentation could improve it even further. The one element I can think of is to turn the numbers (the dots, each representing a suicide) into the human story. Each dot when moused over could bring up a pop-up with information known about that specific death — perhaps even linking to stories about the bridge suicides from the Chronicle archives.

Again, I don’t mean to take anything away from what’s a great infographic. As an alumni of the Chronicle’s graphics department (I was there during the early ’90s), it’s great to see wonderful work from the news artists there today.

NYTimes.com: Why Pregnant Women Don’t Tip Over

Words matter when it comes to headlines attracting readers. I learned that when I managed an eyetracking project for the Poynter Institute a few years ago. We noticed how headlines get viewed by the eye, typically, for only the first couple words; it takes a level of commitment for an online user to read an entire headline. Headlines with strong wording are more likely to get read — like this one.

If “Why Pregnant Women Don’t Tip Over” doesn’t make it to NYTimes.com’s Most E-mailed list, I’ll be shocked.

I really like the new design of MSNBC.com and its customizable homepage. You can move sections around it whatever order you want, and select how many headlines and story blurbs are shown in each section.

I assume that the settings are cookie-based, since I don’t see the need to log in to get your customized page. Problem with that, of course, is that if you have reason to clear out all your cookies, your customization is gone.

Alas, when I tried to update my location, it crashed my browser. Sigh.