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in Code, Design, Findings, News on March 29th, 2010
Being involved in the web industry, one event always comes to mind when talking about big conferences, South by Southwest. One of my New Year’s resolutions was to attend this event to see what it had to offer and to experience what all the commotion was about. I have to admit, SXSW was my first real conference, so I don’t really have anything to compare it to, but from what I have heard and what I experienced, it’s hard to compare it to anything in the first place.
Before heading to the conference I did not really know what to expect.…
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in Code, Design, Findings, Inspiration, Uncategorized on January 28th, 2010
Every so often I come across a company or community of developers (and designers) who put out great, inspiring, innovative work…for free.
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…
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in Business, Marketing, Search Engine Marketing on January 19th, 2010
When I was working as a freelance copywriter for a particular ad agency a few years back, we worked with an office supply company in California. This company had a great looking website that I would guess cost them a solid $20,000. The only problem was that no one was going to it. No one was going to it because no one could find it. No one could find it because the name of the company was…Office Supplies. That name, along with being a good subject for an old time comedy routine, is a really bad name for a company…
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in Code, Design, Inspiration, Reviews on December 29th, 2009
In the grand scheme of my profession, that being a Web Developer, I would still consider myself to be a rookie. I have been developing web sites and getting paid for it, for around 3 years; however, I would probably say that I have been doing it “professionally” for around a year and a half. Even with my “rookie” status as a web developer, I do consider my talents to be very respectable, especially for the relatively short period of time I have been doing it. One thing I have noticed since I began my career is the difference between,…
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Posted by
charles
in Awards on December 9th, 2009
Here’s a reprint of their press release:
CHICAGO, IL — Billups Design, Inc., is a multi-disciplinary core of outstanding talents in the areas of digital brand consulting, information architecture, interface design, user experience, multimedia, front-end development and application development. Billups Design also offers valuable services in content creation, branding, messaging, SEO/SEM and post-launch metrics., today announced that it has been awarded Outstanding Achievement in Website Development by the Interactive Media Awards™ for its work on the Art Iron web site. The honor recognizes that the project met and surpassed the basic standards of excellence that comprise the web’s most professional work.…
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in Design, Findings, Inspiration on December 8th, 2009
I can’t really put a finger on when it happened, but at some point in the not so distant past, web design broke through a pretty major glass ceiling. Up until this point web design was bound and constricted to what web ( and physical ) technology would allow it to do. Web technologies started with table based layouts, web friendly fonts and tiny display resolutions. It then progressed to CSS, web standards and the integration of application and interaction design. Now, with HTML5, CSS3 and new javascript methodologies, we are able to build creative and inspiring websites that are…
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Posted by
in Business, Findings, Inspiration, Tutorials on December 2nd, 2009
One of the most challenging aspects of working in an advertising or interactive agency is managing sensitive agency-client relations. Taking clients down the path to creating a successful marketing message or making a recommendation that they may not agree with can be fun and exciting or it can be an emotional, difficult and even scary process. It seems like it should be easy. Clients hire us for our expertise in creativity, strategic direction and user experience. You are paying for our service, so why not use us to our full potential?
There is definitely something to be said for letting an…
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Posted by
charles
in Business, Findings on November 8th, 2009
I was fortunate enough to speak at the University of Chicago this past week on the subject of Entrepreneurship. A fellow panelist and alumnus of the University, an attorney, told me he had been working on some interesting questions / research regarding a relatively new phenomenon in my industry: social media.
He related that he and his partners had been building a consulting strategy for their Fortune 500 clients who had embarked upon publishing on places like Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and MySpace. “Oh yeah,” he said. “We recognize already that there are legal risks to publishing on social media sites. What…
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Posted by
Ryan Nasipak
in Design, Inspiration, Reviews on October 29th, 2009
I had the opportunity to attend An Event Apart: Chicago 2009 this past week+ (thanks Ted & Charles!) and was fortunate enough to catch Luke Wroblewski’s presentation on web form design.
I was pleasantly surprised that one of the most boring topics on paper was actually one of the most interesting of the conference. I don’t know if that’s a testament to Luke’s work or an indictment on the rest of the speakers (who were, in my estimation, pretty mediocre…save Dan Rubin) but I’d rather not dwell on the negatives of the event (for now).
As a designer, the form page has always…
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Posted by
in Business, Findings, Inspiration, Marketing on October 21st, 2009
The online world is all about content. What brings people, whether consumers or business clients, to a website? The obvious answer is: new ideas and information that solve their challenges and needs. Print, TV, radio and online ads can drive traffic to a website all day long, but what good is it if they get to the site and are bored or unsatisfied with the breadth of information and leave.
Or for that matter, what if they come once and like what they see and read, and then come back a week or a month later only to see the same…
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