Rejuvenating the Muppet brand started with building buzz on Twitter.  They didn’t just create a page for the brand, they created one that embodies it.  They did it from the point of view of the characters (see here my personal favorites Statler and Waldorf). Potbelly Sandwiches did the same thing, instead of just using their brand name they have it come straight from the VP of marketing.  They give it a real voice instead of just a faceless brand with a megaphone.  This plays great on Twitter and it’s really surprising that not a lot of people get it.  The second you treat Twitter like a department store P.A system is when you start losing followers.  Take a lesson from the Muppets, use it to interact, have fun and the people who are loyal to your brand will spread the word for you.  Once you have established that, then you can launch an entirely different twitter for special advertisements and offers just like Disney did (Muppet Central)

So the Muppet Twitter took off pretty steadily to the point that it attracted a good and loyal fanbase.  The fanbase was so loyal they started creating offshoot twitter accounts.  The Muppets for Oscar Host Twitter took off in a huge way and got some national TV buzz, without Disney having to lift a finger.  This just shows what can happen when you take the time to build a loyal fanbase (And not go crazy with protecting your trademarks, but that’s another issue). This can happen on a global level like Disney and the Muppets or it can happen on a regional level like with 5 Guys Burgers or Play N’ Trade.

Along with Twitter, Disney launched a great Youtube and viral video campaign. Even smaller business shouldn’t underestimate the value of a good viral video.  Sometimes the cheapest ones are the ones that catch on the most.  Even the Muppet ones couldn’t cost more than what a small business could do.  Commercials like The Johnson Automotive Badger are a fun easy way to get some great SEO with some videos.  The more people watch them, the more you show up in search engines. As with Twitter, start with getting eyes and then worry about pushing your brand.  The push will come naturally – getting people to look at your stuff is the hard part.

I did some work for a riverboat casino launching their social media.  We did a hard launch email blast and got a solid thousand out of that.  Then the first thing they wanted was a way to get people into their place.  The mistake made was putting together a hasty coupon promotion that didn’t boost our fan count and didn’t go over well.  The lesson from that and the example you should take from the Muppets is that if you push your brand on your customers too early, you could lose your momentum. But keep in mind there is also a expiration date to push your brand. If you wait too long you could lose that momentum and lose the interest of the people who want to look at you every day.  Take a lesson from the Muppets, give your audience something to talk about and build from there.  If things get going, your audience will create content and build your SEO for you. The car dealership above did the same thing as Disney, they just did it on a regional level.

Muppets Social Campaign

Analzying The Muppets Marketing Campaign

The first few weeks after you launch, your social media should be great. Once you send out that email blast it’s all compliments (well, mostly compliments) and truck-loads of new fans every day. The fact is, however, that eventually you will plateau and if you don’t do something big, your presence will diminish. I brought this idea to a client once and the “something big” they came to me with was to post a coupon for a mug. It was on the right track. Sometimes just getting them to give something can be a struggle so at the very least they were in the mindset of giving something away on social media without ever really seeing a traceable guaranteed return. The problem was that it was just too small. How many people are going to come print a coupon and make a trip somewhere for a mug?

They had the right idea it was just the execution was a little weak. That wasn’t something that was going to drive people into the place or get them talking. The problem is that, on the internet, you are competing with a slightly more media savvy audience who know when they’re being pandered to. If you are going to phone it in, they can tell and they’ll let you know. Over 15,000 things are uploaded to the internet every second and a good portion of them are free offers and some offers that aren’t as free as they seem. If you don’t do something to get people’s attention you are just going to blend in with all that.

We decided to focus on something that would bring people from the page into the store. (That seems to be the chief concern for most people starting out on social media. They want to know they can monetize it as soon as possible.) We made sure it was something people had to print out to use. We also tied it into the welcome page so that they had to be a fan of the page to get to it. They were set in stone on doing a coupon that drew people in otherwise. I would have waited till we had developed more online content and maybe done another giveaway in between.

The more content you have up the more likely people are to stick around. My fear was we would have a lot of people un-friend us once they looked around and printed the coupon. But we went ahead and set up a custom made bar code that they had to come in and scan to find their prize. We made it some good cash prizes and even through in some White Sox tickets which went over well.

Ultimately this promotion would have been more successful had we waited a while. It did bring in people from the site to the business but it really would have benefited from having a larger fan base to spread word of mouth. We got some positive comments but I like to think we would have gotten even more mileage out of it if we waited. As I said a few articles back, a great first social media promotion makes recruiting fans into a game. It should incorporate badges and be a fun viral thing that can spread on its own via a small group of fans.

9 Rules for Brands in the Post Internet Economy

Engage Customers With Social Media

At this point, there are entire fields dedicated to the study and practice of addressing every step of the design process. Jesse James Garrett has famously illustrated a useful diagram which shows his idea of what the realm of User Experience Design encompasses. He describes each level in detail in his book The Elements of User Experience. The collective sum of this diagram’s parts, and how they tie together is what one might constitute as a ‘Designed’ UX.

More specifically though, if we’re not actually designing the experience for people, then what exactly are we after as UXers? For a person to master the UX discipline they would need to realize that there is a common ingredient all of it’s supporting practices share. In large part, success on any of the levels Jesse describes, means contributing to the user’s ability to engage in the phenomenon known as Flow. Mihály Csíkszentmihályi made this concept and term famous in his book entitled Flow. According to him:

…Flow is completely focused motivation. It is a single-minded immersion and represents perhaps the ultimate in harnessing the emotions in the service of performing and learning. In flow the emotions are not just contained and channeled, but positive, energized, and aligned with the task at hand. To be caught in the ennui of depression or the agitation of anxiety is to be barred from flow. The hallmark of flow is a feeling of spontaneous joy, even rapture, while performing a task…

At first it can be tough concept to grasp. But once it makes sense, your objectives as a designer can become much more clear. Designers can’t create Flow for users, but we can facilitate it. We can (and should) also minimize the chance of Flow being interrupted. In short, if a user easily achieves Flow while engaged in your system, you’ve probably succeeded as a UX Designer.

Let’s examine the following diagram from Csíkszentmihályi. It illustrates that to achieve Flow, a person must reach a balance between their skill level and the challenges being presented to them. The optimal range lies in relatively high challenges paired with relatively high skills to meet the challenges.

This can be incredibly subjective and vary greatly per user. It demonstrates how Design will never be an exact science. As you might imagine, it is easiest to cross over in to Flow from the adjacent feelings of either ‘Arousal’ or ‘Control.’ Likewise it is more difficult to achieve Flow the further away you are on the spectrum.

Suppose, for example, you were using a web site and things were going smoothly. You are in a state of Flow but suddenly you encounter a section that is very difficult to use and does not work like you were expecting. It makes no sense so your mood changes to a state of ‘Worry’ or ‘Anxiety.’ This scenario is one we can probably all relate to. Think back to how that experience likely changed your perception of the site you were using. Also, try to think about how it took extra effort to get back to the state of Flow each time you left it. It can be a hard state to achieve and an even harder state to design for. But nevertheless, it is a worthy goal because that is where  many of the best experiences lie.

Much has been written on the subject of Flow. I highly recommend reading the book and thinking about how the principle can apply to design if your job title relates to UX. I also recommend understanding the things that obstruct Flow. For more on that aspect, read the Marketing Experiments blog post which talks about the concept of a user encountering ‘Friction’ & ‘Anxiety’ and how it affects conversions.

We need tools like search engines to help organize and make sense of all the data we’re producing. In order for us to make sense of all this data it means making the right stuff ‘findable’ at any given time. This is where Search Engine Optimization (SEO) comes in. The search engines are doing their best to index your site’s relevant content, but there are things you can (and should) do to make sure they are successful. Search engines get better all the time, but they’re still just robots and can not reason the same as you and I. They scan your content and your markup and collect what they ‘think’ is valuable. Until some significant computing breakthrough’s occur, It’s your job to provide them with hard data that matches your concept of what the site actual is meant to embody. This will, in turn, make you more easily findable to human searchers.

SEO can be tricky. It is not comprised of a singular practice, but rather a collection of several practices that can vary from project to project. These practices carry different weight in effecting the search rankings and due to ever-changing search engine algorithms different practices can become more or less important over time.

Confused yet? What’s worse is the search engine companies don’t really even come out and tell everyone what the secret sauce is. Periodically they leak out bits of information on their algorithms, but they are closely guarded secrets for the most part.

So, what should you be doing to implement SEO into your site? Here’s a basic run down of essential techniques for Content, Markup, & Server-side SEO:

• Write copy that is naturally keyword rich (not stuffed). This means being honest. Don’t try to trick the search engines.
• Make content visible to the search engines. Currently, technologies such as Flash, Javascript, and Ajax can make content harder to index.
• Create an XML sitemap so the search engines can easily crawl and index your site. You can learn how to create one here.
• Name your files and folders in a descriptive manner. Use keywords whenever possible.
• Keep keyword density around 7-9%. Anymore than that is not going to have a natural tone and you could get penalized by the search engined for going too much over that. Several free online tools exist.
• Abundance of inbound/outbound links affect your page ranking. Search engines like sites that promote linking.
• Follow all best practices and web standards when marking up your pages. This will help ensure that the search engines don’t have trouble indexing your site and give your content hierarchy. Search engines take this into account when they run their algorithms. Head tags (<h1>, <h2>, <h3>…) are a good example of this.
• Make the most of your <title> tag. It weighs heavily in determining ranking. Keep it under 12 words (70 characters) and remember to keep the language natural. Don’t just stuff keywords in.
• Keep URLs clean and meaningful with keywords in them if possible
• META description tag – Like the Page title tag, it also weight heavily on the search results rankings. Utilize this tag for every page in your site if possible. Try to keep it to around 150 characters. It can be longer, but most search engine result pages will truncate your copy if it is.
• Anchor tags – The text labels for links are perceived as one of the most critical places to position relevant keywords.
• Alt tags. These help make content such as images visible to the robots. Using them is a standard accessibility practice as well.

Of course there are many more techniques you may want to consider depending on your goals and the site you are trying to optimize. As mentioned above, search algorithms change and sites like Google frequently experiment with ways to improve and keep up with the landscape of the web. Various content types such as images,video, and real-time data are starting to play a larger roll in how search results pages are populated and new ways of indexing this data are always emerging. At a certain point you may want to consider seeking the services of a professional if your site is complex or has some cutting edge features. At the very least, try and be pro-active in learning about the basics of SEO and keeping an ear to the ground concerning changes within the field.

Further reading:

Ambient Findability: by Peter Morville

Building Findable Websites: by Aaron Walter

Perhaps Starbucks enlisted me at too early an age with Grande Caramel Macchiatos and its many variations. How could I even compare leaf-flavored hot water to a caramel chocolaty caffeinated shake that my mom somehow allowed me to drink before school?

In the last year, though, I’ve voyaged out to discover what the big deal was, why my dad, who remembers nobody’s name remembers Earl Grey’s when he’s sick, why my roommate always makes a cup of chamomile before bed, why the English dedicate a whole time in their day to the brew.

Enter: Sarah Rose. Author of the new release For All The Tea in China.

It’s kind of strange how things work out. One day a weird girl is weirdly wondering about why people don’t find tea that weird, the next, she’s interviewing the author of a book about the history of tea!

Rose’s For All the Tea in China is a nonfiction book that reads like a fictional page-turner. As you travel with Robert Fortune on his journey through China to steal the recipe for the beloved beverage, you realize that putting some dried leafy stuff in hot water is a perfected, ancient art. There was a time when tea made the world go round. It influenced foreign policy, and it catapulted men into adventures into the unknown. You could say that tea is drink that launched a thousand ships…or one man, Robert Fortune, with the tenacity of a thousand ships to bring tea under British power.

I got to interview Sarah Rose, a native of Chicago, about For All the Tea in China. Here’s what she had to say:

1. How many cups of tea did you drink while writing “For All The Tea in China?” Or, oh no. Are you a coffee drinker?

For about 2 years in the middle of the book, I couldn’t touch the stuff. I would look at a cup of tea and shudder. I got over it. Now I love tea again. (and no, I’m not a coffee drinker)

2. I follow you now on Twitter. You Tweet a good amount of clever and fun 140 or less characters. As a writer and published author, why did you join Twitter? Does Twitter and other forms of new media “do” anything for the modern writer?

I joined for mercenary reasons, I thought Twitter might be a good avenue to promote FOR ALL THE TEA IN CHINA. There is a pretty active tea community on Twitter. But once I got on, I was hooked. Twitter is a running diary of randomness, a way of keeping up with the world, with tea, and with friends.

3. You recently Tweeted: “Am excited possible new gig will include mag content for iPad – cool new world for #writers” What is your “new gig,” and what do you see the iPad and similar technology has in store for writers.

Since it’s still in the realm of the possible – not the confirmed – I can’t say more yet. But it’s just so easy to buy things on the iPad, I think there’s real hope for the written word there. Not as much because of the multimedia capacity – though that’s awesome – but because it’s the easiest way in the world to spend very little money quickly. And I’d really like to see magazines and books survive so I’ll hope for magic.

4. As a Chicago-based blog, and being a Chicago native myself, I have to ask: Does being a Chicagoan influence your writing or your inspiration?

Being a Chicagoan influences everything I do. First of all, it is the greatest city on the planet. I feel overwhelmingly lucky to have grown up in a place that boasts a deep pool of talent with very little bullshit. It’s a good place to become good at things, no one is watching you fail. No one cares. Then you move to the East Coast and everyone thinks you’re so talented and normal.

5. For All the Tea in China narrates mostly the adventures of Robert Fortune and his escapades to bring Chinese tea to the English masses. Do you see Fortune as a hero or a thief? You explored China, too. While writing your book did you ever feel a kinship to Fortune? Like you were both searching for something in China?

Fortune and I were in a struggle with each other. I would sit down at my computer thinking, ok, Bob, you and me, we’re in this together, can we please make a page work today? His Victorian arrogance frustrated me, but I also couldn’t help but admire his pluck, his swashbuckling improvisation. He spent three years in China, a stranger in a strange land, in the name of science and commerce. My first experiences in China were much less glamorous – I was a backpacker right out of college and Hong Kong is where I went broke, so I got a job and stayed. Returning for the book, I had a mission: to find what was left of pre-nationalist, pre-communist China, to see if there was anything old left in the most rapidly modernizing place on earth.

Was he a thief? In modern eyes, most certainly yes. At the time there was no sense that botanical products could obtain any kind of intellectual property protection whatsoever. There was no intellectual property. But he knew what he was doing was illegal, that the laws of China expressly forbid his presence there.

6. You say writing For All the Tea in China took five “grueling” years. Why so grueling? And for the sake of our tech buffs out there, what word processing did you use?

Grueling isn’t the half of it. Five abusive years. Five miserable years. Five years of degradation, abject poverty, frustration, humiliation. Publishing is a ridiculous business. No one with self esteem should ever write a book.

For the tech buffs, I used word 2002, I think. Someday I’ll need a fancier version, but see poverty above.

7. I heard through the grapevine, aka Twitter, that you recorded your voice for the For All the Tea in China audio book. What was that experience like? Have you listened to the final product? Have you used any other new methods to market your book?

I did record the audio! We just won some fancy awards for it – from Library Journal and AudioFile (Phile?). It was probably the very last time I’ll ever read For All the Tea in China, so it was kind of touching. And it was isolating, I was alone in a booth every day for a week. Just me and the product of all this labor. But I’m so happy I got the chance to do it – I actually had to audition to read my own book.

I would do anything to sell this book. A writer needs readers. If I thought it would help to bake cookies for every single person who sent me a bookstore receipt proving they bought the thing, I would. It has always been my hope that tea shops would pick it up, what the industry calls “non-traditional retail sales”. Michael Harney, of Harney and Sons, sells it. But it’s too disappointing to walk into tea shops in every city asking for it and only finding “Three Cups of Tea”

8. I understand your research came from mostly Fortune’s journals. What other methods did you use for your incredible research? What role did the Internet play in your research?

I made several trips to the British Library in London, where the remainders of the East India Company documents are kept. It’s a wonderful place and I had a mad crush on the brain of their China expert. The Company documents provided a good check on Fortune’s personal memoirs, I could confirm where he was when and what he was doing. I also spent a lot of time flying home to the Regenstein Library – my mother still lived in Chicago then. It’s the greatest open stack library on the planet, a tremendous resource, the entire world should bow down before the Regenstein and kiss what used to be Stagg field. (beware the radiation)

The internet was more helpful in the last years than it was in the beginning. When I began this project, I stood in the basement of Regenstein xeroxing all of Fortune’s books because they were only for sale for $145 by some rare academic press that made its money gouging libraries. Now everything is available on Google Books – I can download Fortune to my eReader. Oh, brave new world.

9. I left your book with a much deeper respect for botany and tea. The time and science that goes into each. What would you say was the most important thing you took with you after writing this book?

I, too, fell for the botanists in a big way. I’ve come to think of them in the same way I think of the guys at Xerox Parc in the 70s, the geeks who paved the way to a technological revolution. Nothing was ever the same again.

And personally, I have developed a healthy wariness of book writing. When I proposed this book, I was young and green, hopeful and optimistic. Now I am old and wizened and feel every mile, every disappointment . So really the most important thing I’ve learned is how truly special books are as a form. For two or three nights, or over the course of an airplane ride, some stranger engages with a project from my pen. I command their attention. They imagine my thoughts and follow my story. And people actually like it! I get letters. There is no magazine story that powerful – well, none that I’m likely to write, anyway. I’m still not certain writing books is worth all the pain – but the reward is profound.

10. What do you see for yourself in the future?

Someday I’ll write another book. I’m still feeling pretty bruised. Every time I talk about a new project, it ends up sounding like I’m describing weight lifting.

So for the moment I’ve had a great year travel writing for various magazines. It’s even more financially ruinous than writing books, but the immediate perks are better.

I need to earn a living. So I’ve been thinking about getting a real job. You know, one of those plentiful, rewarding, glamorous writing jobs.

For All the Tea in China can be found in a bookstore near you, or online.

(http://www.amazon.com/All-Tea-China-England-Favorite/dp/1400165377)

Or download a copy to your Kindl.

Follow Sarah Rose on Twitter: @TheSarahRose

Q: How did you get started with the podcast?

A: It started in May 2009. I was working in documentary film and video production and getting into green blogging. I started to question where my food came from and I attacked those questions by starting OrganicNation.tv. Using video and social media tools came naturally to me as a way to share what I learned with the public.

Q: So is that the best medium for the message?

A: Definitely. The videos and the blog work well together because we provide links and resources for our viewers to explore subjects in more depth.

Q: Current TV also started with online videos and a blogging community and you’ve done some things with them. How did that come about?

A: I started submitting to them a few years ago. They’re great because they showed that there is a place for our kind of online videos to be viewed by a large number of people and have built a community around that.

Q: Switching gears a bit to social media, what do you do on a daily basis to build your fan base?

A: I make sure I am always updating with the latest content whether it’s something I’ve created or something from someone else. I try to be generous with the community and support others’ work. Hopefully they return the favor.

Q: What is your number one rule of building a social media fan base?

A: Listen first. Look at your competitors and get the landscape of the community. Find influential users on a social media platform (like Twitter) and pay attention to how they use the tool to communicate. That’s actually more than one. (laughs) One thing people don’t realize is that you can’t assume people are going to know about your new page, social media profile or video. You have to get the word out via your website, newsletter and other ways. For example, sometimes I’ll post a link to a company’s Facebook page on their Twitter feed just to make sure everyone knows the brand is on that platform as well.

Q: What new social media tools are you using?

A: I really love Vimeo. Hootsuite is another good one. Squarespace.com is good too. We built OrganicNation.tv on that one.

Q: Social Media can be a very unpredictable medium, sometimes things come together and sometimes they don’t. When you need to change something that’s not working, what do you do?

A: Giveaways and contests are a great way to spark conversation. I found that people follow you just for the chance you might give them something. Sometimes I post something controversial just to get people talking.

Q: What has surprised you most about your followers?

A: I didn’t realize this many people where interested in farming. We get people in city who really want to know where their food comes from and I’ve also been surprised by how many social-media savvy farmers there are online! I’m glad we have a very well rounded and well read audience.

Q: Do you change things based on your follower’s comments?

A: Definitely. We did an entire series of blog posts called “Dirty Dozen” (www.organicnation.tv/blog/category/dirty-dozen) based on what people wanted to know about the benefits of certain organic foods and products over their conventional counterparts. We encourage our viewers to post articles and share information.

Q: What do you do to encourage fan generated content?

A: I ask my readers lots of questions and I try to respond to all of them. I know I hate it when I ask a brand questions on a platform like Twitter and no one responds. It shows that they really don’t care about their fans. And sometimes it’s harder than others. I worked on a social media campaign for a women’s fashion line and it was easy to get teenage girls to talk about their dresses. But something like a joint pain supplement was harder to get people to talk about.

Q: So how did you manage that?

A: In the case of doing social media strategy for the joint pain supplement, I just made sure to keep the message positive and fun, at least as fun as possible (laughs) but as long as you keep the page active and answer questions the people will come.

Q: Do you feel it’s hard to keep people’s attention online and cut through the static of everything else vying for people’s attention?

A: Of course. I want to continue making videos and you do have to get views to do that. We want to make sure we are entertaining but we maintain our integrity. We’re happy with an average of 1000-2000 views per video. It’s really all about finding your niche market.

Q: Is it hard to keep up with a constantly changing market like social media?

A: Not really. I think people are too fixated on the tools – it’s all about the community you’ve built. I’m invested in the content, not just the tools. In the end, platforms like Twitter and Facebook are a way to connect with people and communicate a message. OrganicNation.tv has achieved lots of success with Twitter, but if something else came along that worked better I would spend more time there.

Q: What kind of gadgets do you work with?

A: I love my Android G1. I take it on the road with me when we go filming and post pictures and updates. I have to take breaks from it so I don’t get overworked but it’s great.

Q: You mentioned going on the road and filming recently, anything else you have coming up that you want to talk about?

A: The road trip is awesome. This May, we’re taking OrganicNation.tv on a Southwest tour through Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. We’ll be test driving a Ford Fusion Hybrid during the trip and we’re thrilled to be sponsored by Motel 6. It’s going to be fun. And of course at NobleTree Media, we’re working with a lot of great brands to grow their message online.

Q: What is your 3-year plan for OrganicNation.tv? Where do you hope to see it growing and evolving?

A: Right now we’re focused on continuing to cover the latest issues and innovations around sustainable food in each region of the U.S. So far we’re filmed on the East and West coasts, the Midwest and soon the Southwest. We still want to cover the Great Plains, the Southeast and Hawaii. We also want to develop a interactive mapping tool so that people can geo-tag photos and videos of the sustainable food movement around the country. Our goal is to create a visual landscape of the exciting things that are happening and give people both a local and national context for it.

http://www.organicnation.tv/

http://www.twitter.com/DorotheeRoyal

http://www.twitter.com/OrganicNation

http://www.treehugger.com/galleries/2010/04/best-of-green-food-and-health.php?page=26

I’m not a dog person (you can blame my parents for never getting me one), so I instinctively took a step back for every one I took forward as the retriever leapt toward me with thick drool flinging from its mouth.

“Hot Glass?”  the Hell’s Angel asked me.

“Uh…yeah!” I answered.

The Angel opened the door, the retriever jumped through and I followed the gruesome twosome into the warehouse.

Through a dim concrete hallway and past a chalkboard with scribblings of classes offered, the space opened up like the Cave of Wonders in Aladdin (Not familiar with this?  Think claustrophobic sand avalanche turns glorious high-ceilinged work space.  An English-speaking Arabian tiger may or may not be involved.  God, I love Disney.)

This place is an adult’s playground; everything that your parents told you not to do as a kid is happening right here:

Rock music playing too loud. Check

Massive fire in open oven.  Check

Men playing with fire.  Check.

That’s just how glass blowing goes at Chicago Hot Glass.   It’s the Harley Davidson of fine art.  It requires the obvious artistic eye and technical skill.  But it also demands the cajones to brave the burns.

And like the diamond in the rough warehouse we were in (another Aladdin reference.  Now I’m just that girl who’s obsessed with Aladdin), the process of making a refined, smooth, beautiful piece of glasswork is a crude and callous one.  As much as the finished projects may look as if they were begotten in an artist’s loft so white it glows celestial, Chicago Hot Glass is far from heavenly with multiple fires burning and men spinning glass on something reminiscent of a devil’s pitchfork.

After the Hell’s Angel disappeared into his glass-making haven, I met up with John Barbagallo, a similarly bearded man minus the dog. There was no doubt in my mind he didn’t also ride a motorcycle.  He assured me immediately that Chicago Hot Glass was the best place to be—Chicago’s only public glass studio on the brink of expanding for more studio space for lamp and bead making.

I admired his enthusiasm to make the hard sell.

“So how long have you worked here?” I asked John.

He shrugged, looked around the place as if it were Christmas morning and this is what family and home truly meant, “I don’t work here.”

My pen stopped moving, and I looked up.

“Yeah, I took an eight week class and never left.”

Now that’s love.

John then led me past the artist, Joseph Ivacic leading a private lesson and guiding his pupil as he blew through the long pipe to expand the molten-hot glass.

He took to me to a wall with metal shelving barricading an entire back corner and lined with unfinished glass pieces of every color and every shape.  John showed me his work which he explained he’d been working on for a very long time now.

“It looks finished to me!” I praised.

But he assured me that there was much much much more refining to do.  My eye caught an orange vase with a post-it reading “Not For Sale…Yet”.

“There’s a lucky few who manage to pursue a career in this.”

That’s when John passed me on to Pearl Dick, a resident artist at the Habitat Gallery who also teaches classes at Chicago Hot Glass. Pearl is cool looking and could probably also rides a motorcycle.

She shows me her collection of heads she’s been working on since 1997.

She tells me it’s still not done, and as she explains the process of creation, I get the feeling it will never be done. You start with an idea. You try to execute it.  And when something inevitably goes wrong—you get one shot to work with the glass at the perfect temperature—you either become inspired by its flaw, or bust.  Pearl noted that it’s the “happy accidents that propel you forward.”

My inner monologue: kinda like children.

Glass blowing is mind blowing.  I don’t have enough breath to blow up birthday party balloons let alone an orb of molten glass.  But there are people around Chicago who find solace here, who enjoy the risk in the craft, the burns, the inevitable mistakes and the refining, refining and refining.

There is something about taking an ingredient so basic and natural as sand and creating decadent art.  Out of the studio, the best glass pieces find home in lavish apartments, museums and galleries.  As for Chicago Hot Glass’s students, they bring their work home, a trophy from the underworld of art, no doubt, carried home on motorcycles.

Chicago Hot Glass is located at 1250 North Central Park Avenue

Chicago, IL 60651 | (773) 394-3252

Find out more about CHG and classes www.chicagohotglass.com

I believe a big part of being an active member of any community, such as the “people who build websites community”, is to give back and provide people with the opportunity to learn and grow.  On top of giving information and showing how things can be done and built, every now and then you come across work that is a notch above the rest.

Recently, I was browsing a popular design/dev website and came across this playground, built and maintained by Zurb, out of San Fransisco.  The playground has many innovative ways to use HTML5 and CSS3 and  combined with some javascript they have come up with some very awesome stuff!  Please check out these examples and take note!

User experience expert – John Yesko, gave the latest presentation and the topic was “Rich User Experience Documentation – Beyond Static Wireframes.”

John got me thinking about documenting websites in slightly different ways than I am used to. While his presentation was extensive, I wanted to focus on just two of his points here.

Point #1 – In the beginning of a project you can not always start predicting what’s going to be on the site right away. This is especially true for sites with rich interactions including screens with many various states. It may be of critical importance to start by defining not only what kind of site it is going to be, but also emphasizing what kind of experience the user will have. I say ‘emphasizing’ because with multiple screen states the users will all have a different experience to some degree. Even with several types of experiences possible, we as designers should still plan to make the overall experience good and set up an appropriate framework. This is where concept mapping can become useful.  According to Dan Brown, Author of Communicating Design, Concept maps/models are: “A diagram that shows the relationship between different abstract concepts. You can apply the concept modeling technique to explain different aspects of a website.” Here is an example John showed the group during his presentation.

Both diagrams are from the early stages of the same website but show differing possibilities of what the user experience could be like based on placing more emphasis on various categories within the site. These types of visual aids can be sketched out quickly to help nail down the kind of site you will be building and the experience you intend to deliver regardless of which screen state they may be viewing.

Point #2 -  Once the concept maps have been done and you have some idea of what the site will be like, you’ll need to begin to detail out the specific screens as wireframes. And how will you present those with the rich interactions you’re planning on providing the user? How do you explain visually what pages will look if they have many possible screen states, animations, widgets, etc…?’ John went on to provide a number of great examples and boiled his message down fairly concisely.

He stated the importance of documenting all possible screen states both visually and with written annotations. But to also be as economical as you can by not just repeating various screens over and over with minor changes to each. One technique John mentioned was using call-outs.  This is where you show one completed page and in the periphery you show portions of the screen in their alternate states. Of course there could be too many states to show in this way, and each screen may require its own technique but the key is to make sure you account for all possibilities so that the visual designers and coders understand the intent of the designers and architects who planned out.

John also covered other topics including  the work flow of  various design team members and how he has seen a change recently. He also talked about how the overall web design process is changing and why documentation is important. The examples shown above are just a few ways one can adapt the the new digital design landscape that is emerging. The entire presentation is available at his website http://www.yesko.com/.

…to the 3rd floor!

Though we’ve only been in our new space here at Lake Street for one year, it’s time to grow and move into a larger studio that accommodates even better our creatives’ and programmers’ needs. Natural light. Ample space. Relaxing amenities. This is the place! Thank to everyone whose talent and dedication makes this exciting new chapter in our agency a reality. Thanks also to all of our valued clients – without you…well, you know. Come and visit us when we open the doors on August 1.