Q1. Actinic is now a well-established product in the e-commerce market. How has the product evolved since you started the company way back in 1996?

Actinic has evolved vastly over the years, and we’ve literally spent millions of pounds on development. In ecommerce, it’s all about maturity nowadays. It’s not good enough to have software that simply creates a cart. It has to support complex product relationships, sophisticated marketing campaigns, high volume order processing and deep integration with anti-fraud systems. Actinic has developed in all of these areas and much more too.

At the same time, many merchants want their ecommerce system to run entirely in the cloud, which is why we have recently introduced Actinic Online in partnership with French company Oxatis. We’re very excited about this development and we hope that anyone that sees Actinic as a bit old fashioned will take a fresh look.

Q2. Selling online has become an integral part of the web experience.  Where do you see the e-commerce experience heading in the near future?

It’s interesting that Facebook use has recently peaked in the UK and US. It shows that however great a technology is, it will eventually saturate its own market.

But when we look at ecommerce, it’s not there yet. Growth is still around 15%per annum against traditional retail sales which are flat or falling. At the same time, it is inevitable that ecommerce growth will flatten off, and eventually track the growth in the overall economy.

Having said that, I think we’ve barely seen anything yet. I believe that we will see a great many more services migrating onto the web. More and more, people will order and track things online and staff will work behind the scenes delivering the service. For instance, a friend of mine has been involved in a company delivering a probate service to administer the estates of deceased people. Technology has played a vital part in its rapid growth. Maybe we will see more of this  in the legal field. The areas that are most interesting to me are those that haven’t even been thought of yet.

Q3. Mobile has become a key player in the online experience. How do you think e-commerce will adapt to work with the various mobile platforms, ie Android, Android, Blackberry etc?

I think there are multiple sides to this question. There’s traditional ecommerce, where a prospect looks at one or more web sites, researches the product and pricing and decides to buy. While faster and better mobiles mean that some traditional ecommerce sales are migrating onto them, it’s a relatively small proportion. That’s simply because the screen size and keyboard restrictions of mobiles makes choosing products and placing orders more hassle. Of course, that’s much less true of iPads which are a  growing force. However, they largely behave like laptops from the point of view of a traditional ecommerce vendor.

One thing that doesn’t make sense to me is the development of Apps for shopping at specific sites. The beauty of the web is that anyone can access anything from anywhere. Placing the barrier of having to download an App to get a better shopping experience can only possibly work for the very largest brands, if even there. It is possible, however, that Apps for specific functions could become widespread. For instance, an App that shows clothes exactly as they will appear on your body, and automatically orders the right size could start gaining traction. But I would expect them to be used across many sites.

Then there are already some ecommerce activities where mobiles are clearly immensely useful already. One example is monitoring and bidding on an eBay item you already know that you want.

Lastly, there are whole new categories of commerce that are going to develop, triggered by the communication, mobility and location awareness of smartphones. This is the most interesting area and I expect we will see a lot of action in the next couple of years.

Q4. What are your thoughts on mobile credit card services such as Square and Jumio Netswipe. Do you think they will integrate with the more traditional e-commerce experience or remain more of a standalone service?

The war on fraud is already slowly being won, and card-not-present fraud is already down as a percentage of overall sales. So the current system of paying for ecommerce isn’t broken, and under these circumstances it’s quite hard to get consumers to change their behaviour.

The advantage of using mobile devices for payment over traditional PDQ card readers is simply mobility and low cost. I don’t see people using their own mobiles to scan their cards, but I do see plumbers, electricians and others starting to accept cards this way. The US suppliers generally can’t play in the UK because they aren’t chip and pin enabled, so watch out for UK players like Creditcall.

Q5. The high street has long been the traditional playground for shoppers. Do you think that online shopping will eventually overtake the high street?  Or, will the high street adopt new strategies to compete, or work with, the online shopping experience?

I think that it’s now become obvious that online and offline will work together. We can see this most clearly in the rapid rise of “reserve online, pick up in store” type services. The high street probably has to go down a bit more, and online go up, but equilibrium will eventually be reached.

Shoppers want to use any channel they want, and they expect the retailer to meet these wants in an integrated way across all channels. At the risk of sounding smug, I have to say that Actinic saw this years ago when we added an EPOS system to our line up, so that smaller retailers could purchase systems to support all of their channels – shop, web and phone – from a single supplier.

www.actinic.co.uk

1) Firstly, for those who don’t know ThoughtWorks, what does the company represent and what kind of consultancy services do you offer?

A) ThoughtWorks is a global software consultancy focused on best of breed software delivery. From its founding in Chicago in 1993, ThoughtWorks has grown to 1700 people spread across 22 offices in 8 countries: Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Germany, India, UK, and the United States. Our purpose is to revolutionise software creation and delivery while advocating for positive social change in the world.

Our consultancy services include IT transformation, Agile enablement, Experience Design, Continuous Delivery and Testing Strategy as well as full lifecycle software delivery. As pioneers of distributed Agile, we are able to leverage our global delivery capability from both our local and distributed delivery centres.

Our product division ThoughtWorks Studios produces leading edge Adaptive ALM solutions. As thought leaders in the industry, we have used our experience and history of innovation to form the foundations of the product suite of Mingle (agile project management), Twist (agile testing), and Go (agile release management).

2) How does ThoughtWorks’ expertise and history in software design perhaps translate to the kind of services being offered via modern websites and rich internet services – do the same rules apply?

A) The complexity of modern web sites and rich Internet services; whether the ability to support multiple channels e.g. mobile, tablet, etc. or integration with back end or third party systems demand the rigorous engineering disciplines that Agile provides. As original signatories to the Agile Manifesto, ThoughtWorks has continued to develop and champion Agile project management methods as well as engineering practices such as Continuous Integration and Test Driven Development. In today’s fast moving business environment, the ability to remain responsive to business change requires the ability to develop and maintain, ‘always ready to release’ software that can be easily deployed into production. ThoughtWorks are championing Continuous Delivery, a set of processes, practices and tools that rely on extensive automation to facilitate the rapid, safe and reliable deployment of software into the live environment.

3) What really makes for an effective user experience and are modern designers and developers placing enough priority on the people that matter most, the end user?

A) An effective user experience is one that enables the user to get things done. It’s centred on the user goals, accommodating who they are: their expectations, their expertise and their environment.  The user doesn’t have to think ‘how do I get this to work’, it just works. Designers need to get out of the design studio more and get their designs into the hands of users from the outset. Rather than being precious about work in progress, businesses should start testing their ideas, sketches and concepts as soon as possible.

Developers need to go beyond focusing on functionality and work with designers to deliver compelling products. Getting ideas to market early, often, taking advantage of the agility and continuity that modern software development practices provide is key. We need to break down the silos and specialisations that prevent teams from delivering an effective and engaging user experience.

4) With the rise in mobile apps and certainly tablet computing where gestural-based UI has changed the way we engage with content, how have ThoughtWorks responded to client demand for this new paradigm?

A) ThoughtWorks has invested heavily in building out our capability in the mobile and tablet arena and have developed a wide variety of applications in this space. We have created tools such as Frank, an IOS testing framework to allow us to bring the same level of automated testing to these types of applications as developers have enjoyed with conventional applications. Additionally, ThoughtWorks has been building out the Experience Design practice recruiting User Experience experts across the globe. Having people skilled in user centred design embedded into development teams and working to the same rhythms of iterative development is crucial in making the best use of next generation user interfaces.

5) As cloud-based computing moves more and more into the mainstream, what impact will this have on the way we visualise and deliver digital experiences to the end user?

A) The rapid provisioning of environments in the cloud allows for companies to consider testing ideas in the marketplace rather than relying on market research and focus groups. Infrastructure and Platform as a Service allows the early and cost-effective release of a minimum viable proposition. The use of cloud resources means businesses are able to react to real world use allowing them to scale up and down as appropriate. The ‘on demand’ nature of the cloud means that the rollout of new business ideas is unconstrained by traditional hardware procurement processes. On a broader note, the release of services such as Apple’s iCloud and Amazon’s Cloud Drive will increase user’s desire to access and consume all their digital assets irrespective of location. This will require context aware applications that take account of location as well as device capabilities.

www.thoughtworks.com

5 Questions on SEO with… Nick Leech, Managing Partner at Euston Digital

1) For anyone who doesn’t know, what is ‘organic’ SEO and how does it differ from the normal perception of Search Engine Optimisation?

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the business of optimising a website so that it ranks highly in ‘organic’ listings (the left hand side) of the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) for appropriate search terms.
Search engines have software robots that ‘read’ the content of every web page, and discover which other pages link to that page, and then use algorithms to determine the importance of the page and thus its position in the SERPs for each search query.
There is a perception that SEO ‘tricks’ the search engines into ranking a website highly. In reality good SEO just makes it easy for the robots to read the page, makes the subject of each page clear and distinct, and boosts the authority or importance of the page by creating inbound links to it.

2) In the current web age, is good SEO in mainstream terms in danger of becoming fixated with improving Google page rank?

The ‘page’ in ‘Page Rank’ has its origins in the surname of one of the Google founders Larry Page. ‘Page Rank’ is a score between 0 and 9 for every page on the web, which you can view using the Google Toolbar. It’s an approximate value that Google has ascribed, the higher the better. But the confusing thing is that there are many low page-rank pages in position 1 in the SERPs, and many high page-rank pages that hardly appear at all. Rather than focusing on Page Rank, SEO should focus on improving a website’s visibility in the SERPs for searches that are likely to bring relevant visitors, those who are interested in the content of the website and are more likely to buy products.

3) What key practical tips would you suggest for those looking to implement more effective SEO?

First, use the Google Keyword Tool https://adwords.google.co.uk/select/KeywordToolExternal to research a handful of the terms you want to be found for. No website can appear highly for a broad range of terms, so it’s important to focus on the search queries made by users most likely to be interested in your website content.
It’s often a good idea to use ‘long tail’ terms. The longer the search term the more likely it is to deliver the right visitors for you. If you’re selling coffee beans, you wouldn’t want to optimise your website for the search term ‘coffee’. It would be better to focus on ‘buy organic coffee beans’ for example.
Second, ensure each page of your website is tightly themed. Using the example above, if you want to sell ‘Colombian coffee beans’ and ‘Kenyan coffee beans’ then you should use a separate page for each.
Every element –titles, descriptions, H1, alt tags and body copy – on each page should focus on the theme of that page.
Third, create links to each page that include the anchor text of the search terms you wish to rank highly for. For example, if you want to rank for ‘Colombian coffee beans’ then link to that page with the text ‘Colombian coffee beans. These links should be both internal (from other pages on your website) and external (from other websites).
External link building involves submitting your website to directories, writing press releases, distributing articles to directories that include links to your site, requesting links from other websites that are relevant, and generating social media links to your website from Twitter and Facebook.
Fourth, use Google Webmaster Tools to make sure Google has no problem crawling your website, and fix any of the issues highlighted.
Fifth, regularly update your website, adding fresh content. Make your website an active and vibrant place. A blog is often the way to do this.

4) How important have social media services such as Twitter and Facebook become to SEO in recent times?

The algorithms that determine your website’s position against a particular search term are constantly evolving. Although initially ignored, around a year ago Google announced that it was now using ‘signals’ from social media such as tweeted links, facebook links, and ‘likes’ in the calculation of the SERPs.
The extent of the influence of links from Social Media is not clearly defined, but testing by SEOs show that their importance is increasing all the time.

5) Where do you see the art of SEO going in the future and how might it evolve?

SEO is becoming more social, more local, and more personal. Not only do Social Media signals help determine the order of listings, if someone in your social circle likes or recommends a website you are more likely to see it appear in the your own searches.
The Google +1 button – something that will shortly appear next to every site in the SERPs, and which allows web users to say that they liked the website – is the latest evolution of this.
To move with the times, SEO has to help website owners generate these social endorsements. This might be by helping them write more engaging content, and by helping them connect and have a conversation with their visitors.
Searches made in a particular location are likely to yield different results from the same searches in another location.
So if you run a local business it’s of ever increasing importance to tailor your website to that local area and gain links from local websites.
And the more searches we make, the more search engines learn about our preferences – the websites we click on and visit – and the more personalised the set of results they will serve us up.
So what SEO must learn is why people choose to click on and visit particular websites. Again this comes down to creating compelling, engaging content.
It could be said that Search Engines are transitioning from reading websites as a computer, to reading websites as a person. So SEO has to make the switch too from optimising for a computer, to optimising for a real person.

So who is Paul Jamie Kidd? Paul Jamie Kidd – slightly geeky but a real jobs-worth when it comes to anything creative! He is incredibly enthusiastic in all aspects of his job. He is his own number one fan but also his number one critic and strives to be the best he can possibly be. He is happy in his work and proud of his achievements so far. He is constantly looking forward to the next project which comes his way. He just loves designing things!!! Check out his website at www.kidd81.com

1) Describe yourself in five words?
Fun-packed, geeky, humorous, happy, perfectionist

2) Which design tool makes the biggest contribution to your creative output and why?

The Adobe Creative Suite has allowed creatives’ to work seamlessly across a variety of platforms whether it’s using Illustrator to create base elements for my websites such as logos and graphics, InDesign to put together a brochure or press advert or Photoshop to create web design masterpieces, Adobe CS is a staple tool for any creative.

In the build process I am fully conversant with CSS and for anyone who builds websites the universal use and recognition of Cascading Style Sheets has made front end development the best it’s ever been. CSS allows fellow developers who are familiar with the code to pick up where you have left off.  To make a wholesale amend to a page you only have to change one style such as the padding of a header or a colour of a rollover state, as opposed to having to go through each page individually. CSS has been around for some time now but I would say it’s such a beneficial tool for developers alike.

3) Tell us what you consider to be the most useful technique in the design/development process?

Designing and building a website from scratch I find a thorough brief vital in the development process. Even before you begin any design work it’s important to know exactly what your client wants in terms of content and objectives. A written brief and sitemap will allow both myself and the client to ‘sing from the same hymn sheet’ and when you produce your first set of visuals it will close to what they are expecting as you have agreed in principle what the site should contain. Once the site has been designed and built there will be only minimal amends as all the hard work has already been done. =D

4) Web creatives’ love designer fonts. What’s your favourite and why?

I am big stickler for using a wide range of fonts in my work. When I first started in design, I was a big fan of Pixel fonts such as ‘FFF Atlantis’ and would find myself trying to implement them at every opportunity. However having established myself I find myself going back to the more versatile fonts such as ‘Franklin’ and ‘Helvetica’ as they have a wide range of styles in their family. I also went through a stage of experimenting with slab serif fonts such as ‘Rockwell’ and ‘Clarendon’.

One font, I always seem to find using and would consider it as one of my favourites is DIN… DIN is another font which has many variations in its family and feel it can be used effectively in both print and web mediums.  One thing I do try my best to avoid is using fonts off freeware sites; mainly because I like using fonts which are rarely used, such as ‘Pintor’, this was a bought font that I used for my website.

5) Give us three top tips for aspiring designers?

My most important tip I would give any aspiring designer is to believe in and have 100% confidence in everything you produce. Try and establish your very own style and run with it, never be too precious in your work.  It’s a time critical industry.

Use the web as your first point of call for inspiration and resource. There are hundreds of CSS galleries and aggregators and are there to be used and abused… appreciate the latest trends whether it’s in design or in the build process… make use of tutorials and open source scripts. That is what they are there for.

Learn to take criticism constructively. Designers hate having their work criticised or receive a ‘luke warm reception’ at work you have enthused over. Good designers channel criticism constructively, and use it to make you a better at what they do… however it does take a while to perfect! ;o) Design things with justification in mind.. do things for a reason as opposed to beacause they look pretty. Always bear in mind that design is subjective so not everyone will like what you produce.

JIM IS A partner at Story Worldwide and a course director for The Chartered Institute of Marketing. In 1998, with chief creative officer Lars Hemming Jorgensen, Jim established Large, a highly successful internet consultancy identified by the Financial Times in 2001 as a company to watch. Over the course of the next six years Jim delivered benchmark websites for the world’s top brands including the site for Bang & Olufsen referred to as “the most beautiful website in the world” by the Financial Times and a series of breathtaking sites for Agent Provocateur deemed the “sexiest website in the world” by Vogue. In 2007, Large merged with Story Worldwide to create the world’s first postadvertising agency.

WD: Do you think we now know the DNA of branding?
JB: A brand personifies an organisation. Businesses that are built around a personality (Virgin, Apple or any of the political parties spring to mind) have a lot easier job managing their brands than a faceless corporation.

WD: Can we now define what branding is and how businesses can construct their own using the internet as the delivery mechanism?

JB: Constructing a brand is easy, communicating it is the tricky bit. Brand stories, metaphors, pictures and parallels help us to do that in using the same storytelling techniques that mankind has used successfully to make things stick since the dawn of time. As an interactive platform, the internet is the first medium to behave like face-to-face communication, in that questions can be asked halfway through and the story can evolve as it’s told through audience participation. There is therefore no substitute for human craft, someone who understands the brand, the audience, the medium and the art of conversation is required – in effect an online editor.

WD: How do you think branding has evolved?

JB: Acquisition is no longer the goal, the goal is engagement. At Story, we say it’s no longer about two per cent conversion but about 98 per cent engagement, if people feel better about themselves as a result of having contact with your brand, the next time they are in a position to buy, your brand will have a head start.

WD: When you deconstruct your brand, what do you think makes it a powerful marketing tool?

JB: Brands exist to differentiate you from the herd. For example, Story’s USP is that content and specifically editorial is at the heart of everything we do. We won’t only produce a website for our clients, we’ll supply an editor, a copywriter and a creative to maintain it and determine the direction of online marketing. However, brands become truly powerful when they also possess a little bit of intangible magic that you can’t put your finger on. Something that can only come about as a result of an energetic ‘make great things happen’ company culture.

WD: What do you think the future of online branding looks like? What are your business’s plans for developing its brand in 2009 and beyond?

JB: The future of online branding is about turning your brand into media, media that someone will genuinely gain value from consuming, be it information, entertainment or as ‘pass-it-on’ currency.

GREG REWIS is the group manager, Creative Solutions Evangelism at Adobe Systems. With over 20 years of computer industry experience, Greg spends in excess of 200 days a year on the road talking with customers, giving product demonstrations at trade shows and seminars, and speaking at industry conferences…

WD: To start, what is the main philosophy behind CS4 and Web Premium in terms of product integration and designer workflow?

GR: The main philosophy behind CS4 Web Premium has to be the focus on providing web designers every tool necessary to build modern, standards-compliant websites and rich, interactive web experiences.

WD: When speaking to designers when you’re out on the road, what are the key benefits they attribute with using CS4? What do they care most for within the upgrade?

GR: I think that depends upon their speciality. While there are certainly those designers that “do it all”, I tend to see audiences that are divided into HTML specialists or interactive Flash specialists. For each of these, there are huge benefits with CS4. On the HTML side of things, the new Live View and Live Code features of Dreamweaver generally leave web designers speechless, because they are so used to having to go to the browsers, aided by several plug-ins in order to get that functionality. To be able to truly see and also interact with the page as it appears in the browser without leaving your authoring environment is spectacular. On the Flash front, the simplified animation model is a definite crowd-pleaser, making it so much easier and faster to do animations. At the same time, however, the more experienced users love the control they get with the new Motion Editor. But by far, the two features that stand out the most are the 3D and Inverse Kinetics features.

WD: What requests do you get for new features that may be incorporated into the next release?

GR: That’s the problem with building software – just when you think you’ve built the perfect application, someone finds a shortcoming, or a technology evolves and you’re back to the drawing board. On the web front we are obviously watching the continued growth and popularity of the various AJAX frameworks, as well as the explosion of dynamic content systems such as blogs. For Flash, it’s all about continuing to make things easier for new users, while exposing even more creative possibilities to our advanced users.

WD: Where does Dreamweaver specifically sit within the modern web design toolset and has its role changed as other solutions have evolved?

GR: Dreamweaver continues to be the dominant visual web-authoring tool, and I think it has managed to “keep up with the times” quite nicely. As someone who has been around HTML editors for a very long time, I’ve had the luxury of watching the industry grow up. And as I always point out in my presentations, I’ve seen every version of Dreamweaver, and this release is by far the biggest in terms of real productivity gains for web professionals. In fact, I have the most fun when I get to show it off to the hardcore web standards’ crowd. These are the folks that don’t believe there’s anything “in there for them”. Once they see the Live Preview and Live Code features, however, they start smiling. They generally admit that “Dreamweaver has definitely come a long way”.

WD: For the future, where should Adobe be moving with CS tools to follow mobile trends or counter webbased publishing solutions?

GR: As any software company must, we are constantly watching trends within the industry. And as the mobile world matures, we are obviously very cognizant of the need for our tools to play a role in content creation for this platform. You’re seeing evidence of this not only in our own tools, which every release includes additional mobile-related features, but also in our commitment to the Open Screen Project to ensure that every internetconnected device can view rich, interactive content and experiences created by our customers. Simultaneously, you see us expanding our own web-based solutions. Acrobat.com is a prime example of this – and one I use daily. And as a web professional myself, I’m really excited by our BrowserLab service that we have recently released on Adobe Labs. There will always be a need for desktop software, but we realise there is also a lot to be said for these cloud-based services and applications

From a base in Oslo, Norway, graphic design agency Bleed (www.bleed.no) has built an impressive international clientele. Creative director and partner Kjetil Wold explains the ins and outs.

Q. When you are working with clients like Pepsi, do you have to compromise your ideas to fit their global vision?
A. Clients like Pepsi allow us to challenge them within the set vision of the brand. I think that great ideas are often brought to life when you manage to challenge the brief and work with creativity within the borders. We don’t do a lot of compromising; if we believe in a solution we stick to it and work more on discussing why we believe in it, rather than just pushing out new ideas all the time. Pepsi has shown us a lot of respect for our creative competence and that’s how we can develop unique solutions that strengthen the brand and solutions.

Q. Who do you generally deal with and can it be a long process to get approval?
A. We generally deal with the marketing manager and category manager, first on local markets then internationally. Once the overall concept is approved, we are more or less free to develop our ideas. It can take some time in the beginning of the approval process, but once it’s blessed it moves ahead fast, and it often has to in order to meet the deadlines.

Q. Does the client provide all the elements, logos and copy that you have to incorporate?
A. The client provides Bleed with the necessities, but often Bleed develops most of the graphics needed for the campaigns.

Q. Do you generally provide all the advertising strands, product branding, point of sale, websites and so on, to a client like Pepsi?
A. It depends on the job, but often Bleed sets the concept, develops the style and sets up the websites for Pepsi. The different elements are through a developed toolkit folder sent and incorporated by other agencies on retail, events and advertising.

Q. And finally, with a client so high profile, how does it feel seeing the finished product?
A. Seeing the end result is always the highlight of any project. Being satisfied with it and knowing that people are being affected by your decisions is a great bonus.

We hear from creator and project founder Carlos Ulloa to listen to his thoughts on what Papervision 3D means to the Flash community as a whole

WD: Where does your passion for delivering 3D in Flash come from and what kind of feedback do you get from the Papervision community for doing what you do?
CU: I come from a videogame background and, though I’ve been working with Flash for the past ten years and loved it the moment I started to play with it, I missed the possibilities 3D offers. That’s how Papervision3D started, as a personal project. After working on it for a year on my own, I released it Open Source to see the engine grow. And the community happily obliged, so today it is quite a robust piece of technology, used professionally by many developers and agencies around the world.

WD: What advice would you have for designers or developers who are discovering Papervision for the first time and want to master it quickly?
CU: The blogs and forum are an excellent source of tutorials and inspiration. You can also subscribe to the mailing list. For those in a real hurry, there are several training courses around the world, offered by Papervision3D team members.

WD: What do you think 3D capabilities bring to web-based content?
CU: Web-based content can benefit from 3D the same as all other kinds of content: from simple things like accurate 3D models that can be examined from all angles, friendlier picture galleries or 3D dynamic transitions and effects, to more complex things like those traditional gamers are used to.

WD: What examples of Papervision-based Flash work do you admire on the web and what constitutes good use of the technology?
CU: Everything that appears on the PV3D main blog (blog.papervision3d.org) is interesting from one point of view or another, and I try to post there all the work I find inspirational. But when it comes to admiring, I tend to lean towards projects that make heavy use of cuttingedge technology, but keep their focus on the user interaction. It’s not easy to achieve the balance between the two.

WD: Can you give us any indication of possible additions or revisions to future Papervision iterations and why should devotees be excited?
CU: The PV3D team is working on a new architecture written from the ground up to leverage the new capabilities of Flash Player 10. We are focusing on making Papervision3D more flexible and extensible, without compromising its simplicity and ease of use.

We hear the story behind an extraordinary class project that allows the world’s most promising digital designers to get noticed. Student and project manager Sanna Wickman talks to us exclusively about Hyper Island’s 53 Colors…

SW = Sanna Wickman, student of DM10sto and project manager for 53 colors.

www.hyperisland.se
http://53colors.com/

WD: What is/was the purpose behind the 53 Colors project and why might it be beneficial to Hyper Island students?

SW: The purpose behind the project is the module Marketing & Promotion, which aims to make us students learn about Marketing, promotion and public relation. 53 colors is the name we have chosen for our class: Digital Media 2010 Stockholm. The project consists of different parts: a website, a release party and different PR and guerilla activities to promote our class, the site and the launch party. The benefits lies in two different areas, actually. The short term benefits is that the project gives all of the students a chance to be exposed and promoted in the industry, so that we more easily can get internships and get to know the industry and the people within it. The long term benefit is that we through the process learn about marketing and promotion, by actually doing it! We learn the tools of branding, strategy, and public relations, which will be useful throughout our coming careers.

WD: How did 53 students manage to come together so effectively to produce such an effective website?

SW: Well, it sure wasn’t easy, and the project was full of challenges. Both technical issues like choosing a platform for and building the site and agree upon a concept for the campaign itself, but also to get every individual in the class to work towards the same goal. Most of the people in the class are very motivated and ambitious, but that also means that there are 53 strong minds that needs to get together and agree upon something. The website is actually just one part of the whole campaign, which consisted of many different parts. The key success factors was that everyone got to contribute with something that they felt was important or fun. We tried to make everyone involved, both designers, project managers, planners and developers. To get a proper overview of the project and guarantee that the campaign felt solid as well as no one in the class was left behind, we had a project board group consisting of project managers from each group; the concept, sponsorship, design, website, event, PR and strategy group, as well as a project manager and two production managers for the whole class. The board group met once a day, to brief each other on what was going on within the different activities, ask for help and share success stories. Once that everyone was on the same track and started to put their soul in what they did, everything just happened. It was amazing to be a part of that process!

WD: How long did it take to build?

SW: The project started in the middle of January and the site was launched the third of April, so it took us about two and a half month to do this. The amount of time we put on this project has shifted over time though, we worked with 53 colors 8 hours a day (sometimes more) for four weeks. The rest of the time everyone has been doing other school projects parallel with 53 Colors.

WD: What kind of pressures or challenges do students face when it comes to being noticed and given a chance by this industry?

SW: The biggest challenge in getting noticed by the industry that we faced in the beginning of the project was to do something that had never been done before, and do it good. It’s basically as simple and difficult as that; to get attention by the digital media industry it just isn’t enough to shout as loud as you can, you have to have something important to say and say it in a creative way. The internet is full of different messages and people who demand your attention, so you really need to be unique in every way to succeed. The challenge for us as students was also to find that exact tone of voice that is suited for our target audience; the industry, and to be present not only on our own site but also where the industry already is: in social media and forums that they visit every day.

WD: Are there any lessons from 53 Colors that other students worldwide can learn from and what quick tips might you pass on to them from this experience?

SW: Personally, my biggest lessons from this project is that if the ground upon which you plan to build your house is solid, you will be able to create amazing architecture. It’s the same in any project. Don’t rush into a project without talking and thinking it through! That might work when you’re working on your own or in smaller groups, but if 53 people is supposed to be a part of the same project, you need structure. Lots of it. So my advice is; talk about it! How are you going to co-operate? What are you going to do and who will do it? Plan as accurately you can and make everyone involved in that process (the developer is probably the one who knows best how long it will take to get that flash-script working, not the designer). Make sure that everyone feels important and motivated, that way they will do their best. Realise that everyone makes a difference. If someone gets left behind you loose a great deal of creativity and important insights along the road. Before we started this project, I (the project manager) had individual sessions with every person in the class, talking about their goals, skills and challenges. I think that was an important factor in getting everyone engaged with 53 Colors.

Obsessed with those tiny little business cards that all the trendy web people swap at conferences? Lisa Rodwell of Moo Cards tells us about the company’s unique product, and gives advice on how to break into the market…

http://uk.moo.com/en/

WD: Why do you think the Moo card products have caught the imagination of the creative industry?

LR: We’ve seen a lot of interest from the creative community mainly because Moo cards give them a unique canvas to really stand out and showcase their work. They’re not limited to choosing one image, come in memorable shapes and sizes, and because we sell business cards in small quantities, they’re free to change their cards as often as they’d like.

WD: What do the cards offer web professionals that regular business cards don’t?

LR: MOO Business and MiniCards make a great networking and branding tool because you can have a different image on the back of each one, while also personalising it with text of your choice. A web designer can use the cards to feature all the sites or projects they’ve designed. Having your business cards at hand makes it easy to promote your past work without feeling like you are going in for a hard sell.

WD: What inventive stuff do people do with their Moo card collections?

LR: One great use of the cards we’ve seen is customers creating client gifts to celebrate the end of a project. They’ll create a set of MiniCards featuring images from the web project with the website URL on the back. They present it to the client as a handy way to promote the site in the real world.
With Moo’s textomatic you can make a pack with up to 50 different text-based statements. We’ve had designers use this feature to show client testimonials on their cards or their own brand statements.

WD: In terms of the designs, which kinds of card graphics seem to be most popular?

LR: The most popular card graphics are people’s own images that reflect themselves, their work or their brand. I would say the most common thing is for people to use Moo cards as a pocket portfolio that they can easily work in formal or informal situations. That means packs of illustrations, typography, photography and even close-ups of products. We’re constantly impressed with the creative ways that people come up with to use cards.
For those people who don’t have their own artwork or designs, Moo has a collection of designs that they can choose from instead.

WD: More generally, what advice would you have to those trying to get noticed in the creative trade and how might the range of Moo products assist in that?

LR: My advice is for people to remember that every opportunity is a chance to stand out from competitors. With so many people in the hunt for an opportunity standing out from the crowd and developing your own personal brand is increasingly important. Moo cards are unique and help people or businesses to become memorable, and they are very easy to hand out in a formal or informal network.
A few specific ideas include doing a direct mail with Post Cards, sending a personalised Note Card as a thank you after a meeting or pitch, or using the Stickers to brand your business stationery, kind of like the monthly invoice.
While much of our networking these days happens online, the connections you make in the real world still carry the most weight. Don’t waste an opportunity by not being able to provide contact details so people can easily follow up and remember you, grab those opportunities!