How to Create Good Infographics Quickly & Cheaply Everyone is building infographics, why not me? I actually asked myself this question the other day, and my initial answer was, "Because I have absolutely no graphic design ability at all." Well, honestly that answer kind of pissed me off. Who Cares About Your Infographic? Now, no infographic post is complete without the requisite section where we talk about the "Who Cares?" Is your Idea going to be too long? Create your ideas and content with these questions in mind. The Search for an Infographic Solution My search began for a web-based program that can help me. Free or nearly freeNo annual commitmentsWeb basedEasy to use, drag and drop, and no Photoshop required I found a few that fit the criteria, and tried them out. Google Docs After doing some queries, I found that you can build a simple infographic with Google Docs. Easel.ly Easel.ly is a pretty neat program that allows you to create an infographic from a blank slate or with their templates. Infogr.am Piktochart.com Paid Solutions Summary
5 Infographics on Web Accessibility for Designers When you are designing a site you have a hundred little details to keep in mind. But it isn’t all about concept design and launch. It is also about making sure whatever you create has the maximum web accessibility possible for your users. Which is a whole other set of guidelines you have to follow, apart from the design process itself. Don’t get caught making common pitfalls. Web Accessibility for Designers View Larger WebAim is a Utah State University based organization dedicated to creating an accessible online world for people with disabilities. Accessibility Challenges In Email Design View Larger Addressing a challenge often skirted over by design blogs, this typographic uses a retro infromation pamphlet look to talk about the different kinds of disability you will encounter (Visual, Physical and Cognitive/Neurological), and provide helpful statistics on each. What Is Web Accessibility? Anatomy Of Effective Web Design Color Contrast View Larger
How to Make a Landing Page That C.O.N.V.E.R.T.S. - Conversion Tips and Examples So you’ve got your marketing all set. You have paid search ads going, your pages are well optimized and generating good natural search, your Facebook ads are working, and you’re getting lots of traffic. (I know, this probably is a fantasy situation, but let’s go with it.) People are visiting your site, but for some reason, you’re not seeing your other numbers move at all. Not yet. You don’t want people to just visit your page. C = Clear Call to ActionO = OfferN = Narrow FocusV = VIA: Very Important AttributesE = Effective HeadlineR = Resolution-Savvy LayoutT = Tidy VisualsS = Social Proof In a famous scene from Glengarry Glen Ross, the man sent to train the hapless salesmen sums up his sales mantra – ABC: Always Be Closing. The call to action (CTA) is what you want visitors to do: Shop Now. Whatever it is you’ve decided will move people further along your conversion funnel. Considerations for strategy This is a very powerful (and easy) area to test. Considerations for design Doing it right
Curio I occasionally have a look at the keywords people have entered in Google that lead them to this site, and so I notice that someone searched for a comparison between Curio and Circus Ponies Notebook. Not knowing Curio, I had a short look at the program. The Pros Visual Metaphor with a lot of helpful features Curio is a little bit like Tinderbox — you manage your ideas visually in a free form format. And Curio really nailed working visually — the objects look beautiful, the styles are nice and it is fun to work with. This combination is really nice, especially if you have a graphic tablet, because the drawing pens are really great and fast to use. Excellent integration with other programs As far as I can see it, the integration with other programs is really well done. Project Management Features One of the additional meta-features of working visually are project management features. Dossiers Another meta-feature is a dossier you can create for each project. Many more nice details and features
OpenDeviceLab.com - Locate, Contribute to and Sponsor an Open Device Lab (ODL) Curio - Mind Mapping, Brainstorming, and Project Management Software for Mac OS X The Real World You have work projects and home projects, school classes to manage and book reports to research, vacations to plan and novels to write, web sites to design and lab results to organize. You currently use a collection of notebooks, your office whiteboard, scraps of sticky notes, oodles of browser bookmarks, and multiple documents scattered around your hard disk. You’re juggling it all, but organizing this information should be easier. A Better World! In Curio, create a project to represent your real-world project, then fill it with everything related to that project including notes, images, documents, web links, and much, much more. Anything placed into Curio can be associated with tags, flags, checkboxes, priorities, ratings, and start/due dates and durations, for fast and easy searching and task management. The best part is you are in complete control over your idea spaces. Thousands of customers around the world use Curio in a surprisingly diverse range of occupations.
Trello uses an icon font and so can you! Inspired by Github’s Octicons and a desire to clean up our kludgy icon code, I set out to convert trello.com to use an icon font. Previously, we used an image sprite method. We used a single 750×145 pixel image that contained 6 versions of each icon (two sizes and three states). We offset each icon with CSS background-image and background-position. We also loaded a sprite at double the resolution and served it to higher DPI devices via media queries. The sprite image looked like this: Spriting is a popular and battle-tested method. They are scalable and resolution-independent. I was convinced, so I set out to do the conversion. The Tools Glyphs. Importing Glyphs into Glyphs You can copy and paste Illustrator paths directly into Glyphs. More on importing from Illustrator on the Glyphs blog. Naming Glyphs As an example, Apple uses the PUA to show the the Apple logo character (F8FF). More on glyph names on the Glyphs blog. Hinting Hints In the end, our font looked like this: Did it work? and…
Entraining Part 3: Language « ThinkX Intellectual Capital In the early days of TV, there was a popular afternoon program called Queen for a Day. It took ordinary American housewives, often in unfortunate circumstances, and made them feel special — with attention, gifts, and tiaras. Very touching. Of course, once they went home, these women faced the same realities they had the day before. Nothing really changed. It’s the same with one-day training programs. When it comes to skill development and behavior change, most of us know one-day trainings don’t work. In earlier posts, I discussed the move from training into entraining — a deliberate process of skill development, attitude change, and cultural evolution. Think of the way popular culture is carried forward by simple, but pervasive changes in popular language — 24/7 for open all the time, text for a short message, partner for a love relationship, tivo for time shifting a TV program, google for searching the web, or just the web itself. Next blog, the fourth entraining requirement: Practice.
How to Create a Great Timeline Cover Photo for Your Brand Sep 12 2012 Facebook’s latest enhancements for both individuals and brands have changed the way to interact on the network. Besides lots of remarkable features like Timeline for brands, they also introduced Cover Photo, which is the first image a user sees after reaching the page. Cover Photo is the place where, for many, creativity begins. It is kind of a visual status update, which determines the voice and theme of the brand’s page. For brands, the cover photo provides an immediate and great opportunity to convey a message in a creative way. There is lots of creative potential for brands in the new Timeline format. Steps to Create a Great Timeline Cover Photo 1. Before you start making your cover photo, visit Facebook and see a few other brands’ cover photos that catch your eye. 2. Never save your time or money while considering the cover photo. In 99 of 100 cases, it’s the first impression that expands your community. 3. 4. 5. 6. The profile photo must work on its own. 7. Smirnoff Nike
Entraining Part 2: Quick Wins « ThinkX Intellectual Capital Last week, I wrote about the great corporate training myth — the misguided belief that you can get people to change their behaviors as a result of a one-day (if that!) “training” session: What we do need are practical approaches that entrain new skills and new behaviors in people so they actually stick — and make a difference. Entraining is a process of skill development, attitude change, and cultural evolution.In my field — creativity and innovation —entraining productive new skills and behaviors requires five things. I’m going to talk about each of them over the next several posts. This entry is about the second requisite for entraining: quick wins. By quick wins, I mean opportunities for people to test their developing skills in low-risk, rapid-reward situations where they can see how their new learnings can benefit them, where they can fail without pain, and where success delivers the clear message, “Yes, I can do this!” A new change initiative is mandated. What will you do?
CSS-Shack Blog « ThinkX Intellectual Capital There’s a mandate in the corporate world that’s been called the Innovation Imperative. In just about any major organization, people hear it several times a day: Innovate or Die. It’s assumed that people will know what being innovative actually means. And how to do it. So employees are routinely herded into innovation sessions, where they’re expected to generate new thinking about products or services, corporate structures, or production processes. More often than not, they walk out of those sessions having accomplished very little. Imagine someone saying to you, “Ok, go run the marathon.” And yet, that’s exactly the approach most organizations take when they ask people to put their brains into high gear and think differently. Whether you want to produce high quality running or high quality thinking, you have to learn how. If you’re a marathoner, your routine will include running sprints and endurance, uphill and flat. That’s what our program Leading Innovation Teams is all about.
10 of the Best Wordpress Plugins You Can't Live Without I don’t know what I would do if I didn’t have these necessary plugins for wordpress. If you want your development life to be fast and easy then you need these. 1. WordPress SEO by Yoast This is an amazing plugin for all your meta, title and SEO needs! Download the WordPress SEO by Yoast plugin here. 2. I definitely cannot live without this plugin. Download Styles with Shortcodes Here 3. The folks at RightHere do it again! Download White Label Branding Here 4. Okay, I know this isn’t really a plugin BUT it is definitely something that you need to use, or at least try out. Click the image above or to the right for this amazing framework. 5. How can you have a top 10 list without mentioning the NextGen Gallery. Download the NextGen Gallery Plugin Here 6. Use this in conjunction with the Nextgen gallery and you’ll have some amazing tools at your disposal. Here’s the Pretty Photo PluginHere’s the Fancy Box Plugin 7. Looking for some cross-linking? Download SEO Smart Links Here 8. 9. 10.