George Oates from Flickr talks about what they learnt building and working with their community. Very relevant for us right now…
Journal
Search engines over web domains
More and more people just use Google to get to websites rather than bother typing in a hard to remember web address. Read more on Search Engine Journal.
FoxLand goes all a Twitter
While we have had mixed feelings about Twitter in the past, we’re working with a client on a super simple news feed system (wanting to avoid a blog or full news system) and we realised that Twitter would be ideal. With that in mind FoxLand has finally climbed on board, as have Christian, Calum and Andrew.
Outsourcing your organisation
Jeffrey Zeldman talks about the demise of the personal website:
In the past 5 years or so we have witnessed a change in how people manage their personal websites. 10 years ago people tried hard to show-off with self-consciously cool websites, or odd little pages with hard to read text about their cat on garish backgrounds. Then came blogging were people wrote about their cats every day, but it was still on ‘their site’. Now we’re seeing people feel much less importance in the ownership of their space. MySpace was possibly the start of this trend, but now with Facebook, Twitter, Friendfeed, Flickr, YouTube, etc., keeping your own personal space online just seems like too much hassle now.
What Zeldman does not discuss is that this is happening increasingly with companies and organisations too. Whether they have a Facebook page, a corporate Twitter account, video on YouTube, an eBay account for ecommerce, Amazon S3 for storage or tools like Basecamp, Salesforce and Google Documents for their intranets, the de-centralisation of organisations is happening, and we regularly recommend this for clients.
Acme Climate Action - still coming soon
A holding page has gone up for Acme Climate Action. Much more coming soon.
The making of Monocle
A fantastic article about how the website for the magazine Monocle came about, the thinking behind it, the design and the style. Written by Dan Hill who has worked for the last year on the site, it goes into great detail about the challenges staying true to the style and brand of the magazine while also working in the medium of the web. There are many good insights made, many that remind me of our projects. For example, while discussing whether user-generated content should be in the Monocle site: “my view was that we didn’t need comments on the site as people increasingly have their own spaces to talk, discuss, comment - whether that’s blogs and discussion fora, or the social software of Facebook et al.” — an insight many organisations could learn from and feel comfortable about. Monocle, the magazine and website, are also recommended.
After the Fire…
Finally, well over a month after the fire, we’ve made it back into the office. During our exile we’ve been based all over the capital, from the faraway wilds of Bounds Green and Brixton to the cosmopolitan chic of Ladbroke Grove and Brick Lane. But we’re now finally pleased to be all reunited and back in Hampstead. The office looks better than ever – it has been crisply repainted, has a spanking new floor and does not smell of acrid plastic soot. Our local coffee and sandwich providers are thrilled that their economy will be revived by our return. Many thanks to all of our friends, colleagues and clients who have been concerned for our health and well being. We are delighted to say that normal service has now been resumed.
Search vs. web addresses
In testing we know that many users search for websites rather than ever enter a web address, even when they search using a term such as “fox-land.co.uk”. As Cabel Sasser notes, in Japan things have gone one step forward, and web addresses are now not even used in advertising.
The return of the mixtape
Suddenly, mixtapes are the new ‘new thing’. In an age of endless digital music on tap, both Mixwit and Muxtape are attempting to bring back that magic of making mixtape compilations for your friends. Both methods are pretty nice looking, but ultimately I’m a sucker for the retro look of Mixwit’s dirty tatty tapes. Note: for people under the age of 30 or so, find out what cassette tapes and mixtapes actually are.
Advertising on the web
The web is a buying medium, not a selling medium. Matthew Creamer in AdAge on online advertising.
Introducing ACME Climate Action
We’re working with Provokateur on a project called ACME Climate Action. More information coming soon…
The Obama brand
Newsweek on the Barack Obama “brand” – including a reference to how Hillary Clinton is actively copying it, typeface and all.
Star Wars vs. Saul Bass
Imagine if Saul Bass had designed the Star Wars intro. Via Jason Kottke.
The great fire of FoxLand
On Monday morning at 3.20am I was woken by the Fire Brigade – there had been a fire in our Hampstead office. While none of our work has been destroyed there is a lot of debris and soot everywhere. Therefore, there has been a couple of days of slight disruption and we have moved into temporary office space in Bounds Green. Happily yesterday’s earthquake did not destroy the new place. Just so you know, we are now fully back to work and the disturbance has been minimal.
Top 10 Application-Design Mistakes
“Usually, applications fail because they (a) solve the wrong problem, (b) have the wrong features for the right problem, or (c) make the right features too complicated for users to understand”. Read Jakob Neilsen’s Top 10 Application-Design Mistakes.