Flightless is a boutique design company based in New Zealand, run by creative director John O’Reilly and technical director Greg Harding. The company boasts a diverse portfolio of highly creative, award-winning work, ranging from web-based projects, museum and exhibition installations, identity development and self-published iPhone and iPad titles. Hatched in 2005, Flightless started out as a multi-disciplined design studio, working with high-profile clients in New Zealand and offshore (Icebreaker, Nintendo Australia, Tourism Australia, National Museum of New Zealand and Sidhe Game Developers). More recently, the company has focused its direction on high-end interactive work for museum installations and games and applications for mobile. In the 2010 Designer’s Institute of New Zealand ‘Best Awards’, Flightless came away with five medals across multiple categories: one gold (Maori Feast Museum Installation), one silver (Top Dog iPhone Game) and three bronze (Sidhe Branding, www.palliser.co.nz, www.hamiltonwaikato.com). Flightless’s iPhone titles continue to do well, and its recently released iPad title ‘AnimalBlocks’ was the number one kids and educational app in the UK and New Zealand App Stores in March this year, among others.
Looking back at the Flightless journey, creative director John O’Reilly talks about how the agency has developed since he started it back in 2004. “I started Flightless in late 2004, after arriving back in New Zealand from living and working in London for four years. I’d been successful with my career move to London and, after being hired to start up and direct design companies a few times, I felt it was about the right time to do it for myself. I’d worked with my highly talented and good friend Greg Harding for the years prior to leaving New Zealand, and after many failed attempts to get him over to the UK, at last we were in the same city again. We were both very keen to keep the company boutique in size and multi-disciplined in its approach, although we have always had a particular focus within the realms of interactive/multimedia, as it lets us play with the full scope of our areas of interest and skill sets.

“In mid-2005 my sister Lorin, who is a talented designer and had been working in Brighton, UK for a few years, also headed back to NZ. At that point, she became the third member of Flightless.
“Over the next few years we steadily grew our client base and employed additional designers and contractors to service a growing list of high-profile web-based work and identity development projects. More recently, we’ve refined our direction and have been focusing on high-end interactive work for museums and mobile iPhone/iPad.” The agency boasts a distinctive moniker, and behind every name there is always a story. John reveals the reasoning behind the name, and also gives his brief thoughts on the importance of it being matched to a ‘.com’: “The name ‘Flightless’ in many subtle ways encapsulates who we are, how we are and where we come from. The predominant native animal life in New Zealand are birds – a lot of them flightless. Before any Europeans landed here, there were no land mammals other than a bat (but it spent much of its time on the ground, anyway). With no predators, they decided wings weren’t required. It’s fairly unique, so ‘Flightless’ felt like a New Zealand trait to us. We also like the connotations of being well-grounded – we’re creative but practical thinkers. Additionally, we are fairly modest and like to think our work does a lot of the speaking for us. I should also mention that I’m a bit of a bird geek, too! A good URL can be important depending on the nature of your business. We think the importance of having a .com is always reducing, and we’re happy with Flightless being a New Zealand domain.”

Clients are the driving force that keep an agency active, and in work. Creative director John explains how networking and referrals are key components in bringing in new clients. He also reveals how the agency is not afraid to take on any size project. “New business is a tricky thing to get right. For us, not all new business is good business. We’ve been fairly select in the projects we take on or go after, because they tend to define the future work you do. Much of our business comes through networking, referrals and our portfolio. However, for larger projects and museum-based installation work in particular, there is generally a rigorous tendering process that companies have to go through. Initially this sector was hard to break into, and losing a tender resulted in a lot of anguish and lost hard work. But once we got our first large museum interactive project and nailed it, the doors became more open.
“We don’t generally pitch for work unless we desperately like the job and have some good intelligence around the success rate of winning the pitch. We have rarely engaged specific clients, but this is something that may change.
“Previously, we’ve not restricted ourselves in terms of the size of a project. We’ve got a lot of cumulative experience and have been fortunate to have a very multi-skilled team and a good relationship with regular contractors that make larger jobs possible. We are a design-led company, so projects that are too heavily weighted towards a technical solution, rather than a creative one, tend not to be suitable for us. Although, in saying that, we have partnered with technical companies to work on projects that require a substantial technical solution outside of our own resources.”

Once a client has signed on the dotted line, the
real work begins. John unveils who is likely to make it onto a typical project team: “As mentioned, we’ve had a fairly multi-skilled team in the past, so division of labour was an issue, as we have been able to occupy a number of different roles on any given project. Generally, most of our work falls within having a creative lead, a technical lead, a project manager (sometimes the lead designer) and design and technical bodies under that. We aren’t the fastest production line around because we are big on ‘crafting’ our work. More numbers (people)
can sometimes speed up the timeframe, but it doesn’t necessarily mean a better result creatively or financially, for us or the client. Larger sites dictate a team of at least three, but no more than five. Large museum interactives normally have a team of around three to four, but we use other small specialised companies for things like sound engineering and physical fabrication/building. Our mobile work for iPhone and iPad often comprises only two – designer
and developer.

“As well as working on the projects, I have the creative overview of what’s coming and going and Greg has an overview of the technical situation. We also have Kim Lumsden, our part-time account manager/business analyst.”
Every project is built with a selection of industry tools. Technical director Greg divulges what tools are used for the different parts of a project. “We use a wide range of tools depending on the project and who’s working on it, rather than following some exact process for similar pieces of work,” he explains. “We often mix our skills and preferences with opportunities to learn and experiment, balancing them with the client and their delivery environment, maintenance and sometimes contractual requirements. “Adobe’s Creative Suite is used for most design work, but a glance at anyone’s desk will show plenty of pens and paper, through to obscure utilities running in virtual machines. When working together or integrating projects, it’s common for one of us to be using a visual tool or IDE, while another works from a text editor and command line. Modern software and systems, along with free and open-source projects, allow a lot of flexibility to develop and deliver projects, so we use whatever we need or think works. There’s often no way for us to work on a project without using a mixture of closed and open-source software, projects or communities for front and back-end work, whether it’s for design and creation of an identity, sound effects for a museum interactive, or an iPhone game talking to a highscore framework.”

Creating gorgeous, award-winning web presences is all part and parcel of the Flightless lifecycle, but how important is the agency’s own online experience? Creative director John gives an insight into the resources dedicated to its own site: “Traditionally, our website has played a very important role as a portfolio of our work and example of our expertise. It’s also been a chance to visually establish our character as a company. Working in the web, we always felt it was good to have a website that demonstrated our abilities in that medium. However, this is changing as our company direction moves further away from website design as a service.
“Our new website (soon to be released) isn’t going to be a demonstration of our web expertise. It’s a more conversational communication tool for talking about our work, sharing ideas and being in contact with our product customers and wider community. It will still have a portfolio of selected work, but the emphasis is on easy day-to-day communication with our blog and Twitter feed rather than a work repository. Yes, it is a lot of work to maintain and update, but it is an important part of our business not only for service work, but for our own product support and dialogue.”

Technical director Greg offers a different perspective on the same question: “Interactive design companies are often last to give themselves enough time and resource to design and build their desired online presence – we know, we’ve put some of our ideas off for months, if not years at times. It is hard work and a bit of anguish to find time to design, write, agree on, build and maintain your own site, especially when you’re offering the same service to others.
“After our change in focus we’re immediately more relaxed with our upcoming site, seeing as it doesn’t have to act as a portfolio piece in itself for our ability to craft a website. So, instead of designing a showpiece interactive from the ground up again, we’re a bit more free to deliver a modest and functional site that will show who we are and what we do, and help and encourage us to communicate better and more often than we have before.”

Flightless recently said goodbye to its offices and changed its business strategy. John discusses the reasons and thoughts behind the decision. “In the last 12 months, we’ve significantly changed our business strategy,” the creative director explains. “We’re now focusing on mobile (iPhone/iPad initially) and high-end exhibition/museum interactive work. We’ve split our work base between some service work for clients and creating our own products, like games and apps for sale on the App Store. The reasoning behind this is fairly selfish. We have a natural desire to work on creatively stimulating, multimedia-based projects – projects that require a combination of creative concept solution, design, animation, programming, sound and artwork. The museum work we do generally enables this, and there’s a synergy between the approach and tools we’re using to design and develop interactive exhibitions and what we’re doing for mobile. The website market here in NZ had been trending towards larger, content-heavy and business operational-type web work. Although we had been doing exceptional websites in this market, we generally felt they were leading us away from our passion of highly interactive, creative work. Individually we’ve been working professionally in this space for a long time, and the mobile platform led by Apple’s iPhone/iPad and the App Store marketplace represents a chance for us to sell our work direct to the consumer for the first time. “With this change in direction and some other life changes (such as losing a director to motherhood), we reduced our staff and now work closely with other external contractors. The new direction also means there is little need to be based in a major city, as most of our work is either internationally focused or tied specifically to a museum location. For that reason, we have moved the business north to a more tropical climate and close to some great surf beaches. We don’t mind travelling to where the work is at all. This year I’ll be building a new house with a separate, purpose-built studio that will become Flightless HQ.”

The change in direction has seen Flightless focus part of its strategy on the mobile market. Technical director Greg gives his thoughts on the unstoppable march of the small screen: “There’s no doubt that modern mobile platforms are important and there are plenty of things to think about for people and brands when trying to make best use of them. We were around at the start of the web when the industry and companies fell over themselves in the rush to get online – there are strong parallels with what we’re seeing now with the mobile experience. There are new aspects to things like the browser wars, vastly different hardware, software and performance from a range of vendors and increasingly high expectations from users, of course. There can be big differences in time and effort between building content for a range of mobile browsers and delivering a native application that makes full use of the available frameworks and hardware. Add to that online marketplaces to sell apps, various advertising channels and the overall philosophies of the big vendors, and there’s a lot to consider. We’ve given a positive but measured response to anyone we’ve talked to, trying to focus on their reasons for wanting something (anything) mobile other than just existing. One thing has never changed for us, though – no matter what platform you’re on, it always boils down to the creative concept.
“We are now strongly focused on mobile ourselves, having released several titles of our own and worked on a few others with partners. We’ve delivered native apps for the iPhone and iPad requiring different design and technical skills than our traditional web and interactive projects, but happily the platforms and technologies we’ve used are directly applicable to our museum and installation work as well. This is an important point, for our future at least – being able to share design, assets and code across multiple platforms including mobile, and making the most of their strengths to deliver our creative concepts well.”

Flash is a technology that has differing degrees of success on the web. Greg reveals how he sees the future for the dynamic powerhouse and how alternative technologies such as jQuery and HTML5 offer a more inclusive end product. “Flash or not has been a loaded question for a while doing web work. Rather than joining heated debates we’re strictly on the side of fitness for purpose, which means we’ve been using less Flash on the web for general components and rarely without alternative content. We have used Flash a lot for our standalone interactive works for more than ten years, so it’s never been an option we’ve ignored, particularly when a project requires delivery both for an installation and a website. Flash/Flex has a good environment for designers and developers that is documented and supported, and the platform handles a lot of content and interactivity. (We’ll admit, however, to more than a few moments of head-scratching weirdness over the years, that only Flash can cause.) “For use on the web, the same can’t yet be said for the alternative offerings from open-source communities hoping to rid the world of closed-source plug-ins, but these will only get better as 2D/3D graphics, video, sound and networking get more native support and tools are built around them. Recent trends in web standards and browsers are helping a lot with choice, but we think it will be a while yet before Flash is easily replaced with another tool chain. Obviously, there are other plug-in-based offerings like Unity, Processing and Silverlight, so it’s not necessarily just Flash vs HTML5. Like many others, we’ve been experimenting and
using these other plug-ins and JavaScript libraries for a long time. With a focus on mobile our own site needed an overhaul, as it was mostly Flash with a simple alternative HTML framework. It used to be fine for what we needed it to do, but with no Flash in iOS we’re building a site to service everything the same way, rather than maintain special versions.”

Building a web presence is just the beginning of the life expectancy of a website. The next step is to make the web-loving masses aware. Greg discloses the tools and techniques used to get a site seen. “We’ve built a lot of big and small sites, and there’s never the same answer to generating traffic that suits any one of them or their owners. With sites that needed it, we’ve taken care to use whatever the current best practices were at the time, to help with things like SEO and accessibility. For a lot of our sites it hasn’t been a primary concern to have them ranked highly in search results, more a ‘nice-to-have’. “Often, our clients have other drivers to their site or an established product or audience and need to do something better with their design or communication, or just want to support their existing offline business profile. It’s always a bonus when a museum has a high-profile opening for an exhibit with international media coverage, documentaries and stuffed toys, or an organisation prints pictures of puppies each week in the paper that demand a web visit – but not every site has that. Other sites have required better content, search engine friendliness, online and magazine advertising and respected external sites linking in to get traffic coming in. “We have engaged SEO specialists for clients on a few projects in the past, and if we had implemented all of their suggestions we would have had to double our budgets and ask everyone to browse in Lynx. (Well, maybe not quite…!) Optimising for SEO is important but has diminishing returns in our experience, and you have to judge just how far to go for each project.”

A social media presence is an obligatory part of the online experience. Flightless director John gives his thoughts on how it works for the agency and business alike. “Social media can be a very important part of any online project, depending on the nature of the communication,” he comments. “Specifically for us, it’s an instantaneous connection with our peers, people buying our products or wanting to know more about us and us about them. As mentioned above, our website and online communications have taken a change towards a more communicative platform rather than a standalone showpiece. “For clients looking to sell/promote/raise brand awareness, it can be very alluring to tap into a particular pool of potential consumers. It has become yet another buzzword in web design and development that some people believe they need, despite not knowing exactly what it is they’re getting into. We advise our clients to strongly consider the level of commitment required to participate in social media, and if indeed what they are offering suits the medium. There is a danger in getting it wrong and being destroyed overnight. What excites us is the gamification of campaigns and digital products; that’s where we can add real value. “

With a new business strategy in place, John goes on to reveal his plans for Flightless in the near future and beyond. “We’ve modified the way we were doing business, so the immediate future of Flightless is about finding the right balance between our own product work and our client work,” he explains. “We have a growing list of Flightless game titles, applications and a book or two waiting for their time slot to be realised. We have some clients here that we love working for, but we’d also like to further expand our client base offshore. With the way we work now, there’s little reason not to use a creative company from New Zealand if you’re a client in the UK or US. The time zone difference is often advantageous for the client and the exchange rate generally works in the client’s favour. A face-to-face meeting is just a video conference call or a flight away. “Our research and development time is a very important ongoing part of what we do and is part of the reason we’re approaching things the way we are. We’re also looking to expand our network of quality contributing contractors and companies. “Most of all, Greg and I are passionate about Flightless being the company face to the stuff we love doing, being on the creative edge of technology, design and communication. We’re just very fortunate that what we love doing happens to have value placed on it, and that we can make a living doing it.” With a small team and big ideas, it would seem that the sky’s the limit for this ambitious agency.

www.flightless.co.nz

PROJECT: ANGRY BIRDS

COMPANY: Rovio Mobile

WEB: www.rovio.com

BACKGROUND
There are some apps for the iPhone and iPad that many would say should almost be bundled with the device out of the box. Since launching at the tail end of 2009, Angry Birds has become a staple download for iTunes and a portable gaming classic that virtually everyone owns. Developer Rovio Mobile is a Finnish firm with a pedigree for producing over 50 games titles since forming in 2003, and was quick to pounce on the emerging smartphone market at just the right time. With the App Store providing an ideal platform for rapidly marketing a new gaming brand, Rovio decided it would be the perfect outlet for unleashing a wholly original idea. The result was a bright, bold, addictive puzzler that would become a modern mobile phenomenon…

L to R: Tuomo Lehtinen – VP production, Miika Virtanen – VP Technology, Jaakko Iisalo – Senior Game Designer

01. CONCEPT
Jaakko Iisalo: In early 2009, I was pitching a number of concepts to the team at the Rovio studio. Each concept was quite different from the next, but I’ve always drafted very strong and distinctive characters for any concepts that I’ve created. I had titled one of my concepts “Birds”; it was a cross between many of my favourite games at the time, with a completely original theme. It had some rhythm-based gameplay elements similar to Patapon, for example. In any case, the concept didn’t really fly – in retrospective, it was perhaps a bit convoluted – but everybody loved the grumpy-looking bird characters I had created. We decided to set out more parameters of what was needed from the concept to be successful, but we decided to stick with the birds and make them angrier.
We wanted to make a casual game that would be accessible to everybody. We wanted touch-screen controls, because those were a strong point of the platform. We wanted physics-based gameplay, because we loved it, and we were seeing more and more people spend time with physics-based games like World Of Goo. And we wanted a flexible scoring system, which would cater for complete novices as well as for hardcore gamers who want to collect every achievement available.

02. DESIGN
Jaakko Iisalo: As a game designer, I have always had a strong vision of the characters. Same with Angry Birds, it began with the birds and their characteristics right in the concept phase. The characters were then refined by our senior game artist, Tuomas Erikoinen. That was pretty much the division of work in the visual aspects – I came up with the game elements, materials and characters, and Tuomas created the visual look.
The pigs are a good example of my design, I have always created characters with round, basic shapes with minimal separate moving parts, and the pigs are sort of the end result of that evolution. I tried to create them as cartoony and as unlike actual pigs as possible, which gave them their bright green colour and round, bubbly ears. A cartoony, cel-shaded look was our basic visual guideline throughout the project, and we tried to use as little language as possible in the game, menus and tutorials to make it more accessible.
The background graphics and building blocks for each theme of the game were also created by Tuomas, and I focused on specifying gameplay details and graphical effects that were added to the game to give it a unique feel. Levels were designed by myself, and game artists Tuomas Erikoinen and Joonas Mäkilä.

03. BUILD

Tuomo Lehtinen: I was the lead programmer for the project and I was tasked with creating the game engine and the level editor. Miika Virtanen, now our VP of technology, created the graphical engine and developed our multiplatform technology. After initial development, the team has grown significantly, and we have a number of programmers working on new features and updates of the game on different platforms. The biggest challenge in developing Angry Birds has been making the game run smoothly on older, slower devices. While the game is casual, cartoony and looks very simple on the surface, the physics calculations are rather demanding on the mobile hardware.
The game is based on the Box2D physics engine with extensions, and combined with the crisp graphical textures, we actually spent a lot of time optimising the code for devices with less processing power. When we have taken the game to other platforms since initial release, we have definitely learned a lot about the limitations, scalability and variation in the current smartphone platforms.

THE LAUNCH
Matthew Wilson (Marketing Manager): We decided to publish the game through Chillingo, as it was one of the most successful independent publishers. This choice was basically our financial marketing effort for the game, the rest was diligent footwork with answering every inquiry and email we received, tweeting and communicating on Facebook. The game didn’t really pick up sales at first. We made it to number one in Finland by word of mouth, and then replicated the success in Sweden. Apple – who had all but ignored our pleas to feature the game in the App Store – started to take notice. In February 2009, Angry Birds was featured in the UK App Store, and went to number one shorty thereafter.
To get noticed we tried to do things a bit differently from everyone else. For starters, we looked at the most successful games in the App Store, and noticed that not one of them had a proper trailer. This gave us the idea of producing a cinematic trailer for Angry Birds, and to this day the trailer has over 12 million views on YouTube. To sum it all up, many things clicked into place in the process of creating Angry Birds. With 50 million downloads to date, we can safely say we did something right.

who: Mutado | what: A Milan-based creative studio that likes to keep things simple  | where: C.so Sempione 10, 20154, Italy | web: www.mutado.com

Mutado was formed in 2004 by Lorenzo Manfredi and Mauro Gatti: a developer and a graphic designer whose paths crossed more than a decade ago. During the last seven years, this partnership has grown into a solid independent digital agency, headquartered in Milan. The company’s name unveils Mutado’s guiding philosophy of constant mutation, adaption and transformation.
What started off as a two-man studio has grown over the years to become a leading agency working on web, motion, print and, most recently, mobile, employing over 20 people with different backgrounds and ideas. Mutado works directly with clients such as Disney, MTV, 55DSL, Yahoo!, Miss Sixty, Adobe, Sky and Vodafone, partnering also with distinguished agencies like Saatchi & Saatch, TBWA, United1861 and Y&R.

The agency has over six years of experience in the creative/design field, and founders Lorenzo Manfredi and Mauro Gatti explained the driving force and vision that has pushed it on to success. Technical director Lorenzo talked about the high standards they implement, while creative director Mauro talked about how the agency uses creativity as a weapon. “Mutado’s drive has always been excellence. We’ve done it all: banners, websites, animation, illustration, billboards, videos, applications, custom toys, events… but our drive has never changed – it’s to be excellent doing what we do. We’ve imposed very high standards on our work and we won’t accept a project if we suspect the end result will be anything less than perfect. We definitely listen to the market and find ways to satisfy our clients’ needs and we believe it’s important to keep up with trends in our business, because if you don’t, you’ll drown. Everything gets really old really fast, so it’s essential to innovate, to transform, to reinvent yourself. This doesn’t mean Mutado doesn’t have an identity, on the contrary. The challenge is to show that common trace in everything we do, and even though we’d describe it as excellence, if you look at our portfolio you’ll probably call it creativity. Our creative team works horizontally on different media; you’ll have the same people working on a custom toy today, a website tomorrow and an app next week. It’s a top-notch, eclectic team with incredible skill.

“Even though Mutado is half-creativity, half-tech, we use creativity as a weapon. If you show your portfolio to a prospective client and go into the tech details, attention span will max out in 30 seconds; if you show off the cool graphics, you’ll get them hooked. That’s our trick – we get them hooked on the creative side and then introduce the tech backbone. We take pride in creating fully customised iPhone apps, for instance; they’re the perfect marriage between creativity and technology. However, in order to actually make a beautifully designed button, you’ll need the perfect development skills, that extra something that will make that button stand out and fit in just right at the same time. The creative team knows this puts a lot of pressure on the developers, but we’re only allowed to let our imagination flow because we know they’ll find a way to do it. This is very motivating, on both sides. So, if I had to choose a highlight, I wouldn’t go so much with a project, I’d probably go with the coming to life of our mobile unit. It’s where our fresh creativity merges with our beautiful tech details. We haven’t been making hundreds of apps because we’re betting on the quality, not the quantity. There isn’t a single one we’re not proud of.”
Creative director Mauro went on to reveal how the agency decided on its name and expressed the importance of having a matching URL. “After years and years of awful experiences slaving away in agency after agency, Lorenzo and I decided to change – well – mutate into something new. That’s why we decided to call the new agency Mutado – it’s basically the Spanish translation of ‘mutated’, and it had a great ring to it. We chose this name not only because of our mutation from freelancers to an actual agency, but also because it represents our philosophy, our attitude towards work. Being able to permanently change and adapt to new technologies, reacting promptly to challenges presented by clients – that’s mutation, that’s the foundation for our work. So yeah, it was important that the URL matched and we were happy it represented us 100%.”
Mutado’s high standards help attract new clients, but for continued success the agency needs to do more. Account and sales director Roberta Cerri explained the process: “New clients, more often than not, contact us directly. I’d say that in about 70% of cases new clients get in touch with Mutado thanks to the business buzz; the companies we work with tend to speak highly of us and an incredible number of people reach us thanks to this positive word of mouth. The other 30% contact Mutado thanks to our communication efforts – we work hard to update our website, Vimeo profile and Facebook fanpage as often as possible, also keeping our followers and clients posted with a monthly newsletter. Social networks are an excellent means to attract new contacts that share our vision and like our work. We also issue press releases to promote new projects. Once we get contacted by a potential client, we usually get back to them within 24 hours of the first call/email. Generally the next step is to arrange a meeting to present the agency and, usually, to be briefed on the project.”

With a new client on the agency roster, its time to jump to the next stage. Roberta offered an insight to how Mutado interacts with a new client. “When an order has been placed, we arrange two kick-off meetings: the first one with the client, to collect all the operative details needed to work on the project, and a second internal one to brief the team and assign tasks to the team members. The size of the team usually depends on the complexity of the project, but, on average, each project will have three to six people working on it. A project manager organises and supervises the workflow and manages the relationship with the client. We typically take on entire projects, meaning we work both on the creative proposal and the actual development, so the team will tend to be composed of an art director and a lead developer as well as graphic designers, videomakers (when it’s a motion project) and a team of developers. The project manager is essential to organise and supervise the Gantt schedule and to guarantee customer satisfaction. However, when some very operative and specific feedback is being exchanged, the project manager will encourage operative team members to speak directly with the client. Although certainly unconventional, direct client-expert dialogue allows us to increase the quality of the final work and boost team motivation. It’s a tricky equilibrium, but it’s also one of our strengths. On each project we try to be, above all, proactive strategic partners for our clients. This means we invest time in sharing our analysis of the project and presenting new ideas. We believe this is why our customer loyalty is higher than average and there’s so much buzz around our name.”
Working with a global platform can present issues with languages. Communications director Raquel Ferreirinha explained how Mutado has a host of English speakers to assist with any barriers. “As Mauro explained and as our name suggests, Mutado is constantly changing, permanently striving for improvement and always growing. It’s a natural process and it’s been going on since day one. This growth has also led to an increasingly international positioning, particularly since we work in a mainly English centric environment and the online universe isn’t limited by geographical boundaries. If there’s such a thing as an international language, it’s English, and we’re well aware of that. Although many of our clients are Italian, you’ll notice that all our communication efforts are entirely in English; we believe this is cardinal precisely because of our increasingly international presence. Although we’re headquartered in Milan, we speak in Italian to each other and most of the staff is Italian, we see this as purely circumstantial and wouldn’t consider language as a barrier if the right opportunity came up to open Mutado somewhere else. We can’t deny English language skills are something we look out for in CVs: the more English speakers we have in Mutado, the more independent we are. As Roberta mentioned, we believe in establishing direct client expert dialogue so, often enough, the team will be speaking directly to the client and this has meant we’re all invested in improving our language skills. I’d say we manage just fine, and when something specific or particularly elaborate is needed, we make sure we always have a native English speaker in our staff.”

An element of design less affected by language is software. Technical director Lorenzo revealed how Mutado was born Adobe-centric but has diversified over the years. “Mutado was definitely born Adobe-centric, making intensive use of tools such as Photoshop and After Effects for the creative production and Flash/Flex for the technical integration. Perhaps something changed in the last years, especially when we moved our whole hardware setup from Windows to OS X just a few years ago. The creative gang is still high on their Creative Suite addiction, but in the technical department we witnessed a strong convergence to OS X-native tools like X-Code and open-source IDE such as Eclipse. We also have a massive versioning and deployment system (both for the tech and the creative departments) based on open-source solutions like SVN and GIT. As for office automation and presentations, we moved from Microsoft solutions to iWorks that offer a low-cost, beautiful and powerful suite. The only exception is 3D Studio Max – something which we’re still using and which runs on Windows alone.”
Mobile is an arena that has had a big impact on web design, and Mutado has a strong association with iPhone and iPad. “We immediately recognised Apple and the iOS as the leaders of the new era of mobile, so we decided to open a unit entirely dedicated to this ‘touch’ revolution,” Lorenzo explains. “Today, iOS devices are the main target of our mobile unit, but our R&D team is keeping an eye on Android with a lot of interest. We’ve actually got something up our sleeves for Android that we’ll be releasing later this year, but iOS will remain our main focus for the next years, as long as Apple will continue to offer the best blend between powerful hardware and a great operating system. HTML5 and jQuery also offer very promising platforms for the development of fast, multiplatform and low-cost mobile solutions for our clients, and this isn’t going unnoticed.”
Flash is another technology that has been with Mutado for a long time, and Lorenzo gave his thoughts on the direction of the platform and if the future will be Flash-free. “This is a very tricky matter. Mutado has been animating and programming with Flash for over ten years. This is something rare in Italy, and we were quite the pioneers back when we started. We used Flash from the very beginning to create websites, microsites, web applications and complex desktop apps, we really knew and trusted the platform. In the last years, the technological collision between Apple and Adobe reminded us of the epic smashup between Apple and Microsoft, unfortunately presenting us with that fatal question: which side do you choose? In my opinion, Adobe Flash fails in two of the most important fields where the Flash platform should be leader: content-driven projects, like portals and editorial platforms, and mobile solutions where native iOS, Android or just HTML/JavaScript offer more reliable and efficient alternatives. Excluding those major fields, Flash can still lead the road for experiential websites, online gaming and low-cost desktop applications, together with AIR Runtime. I think that this is a natural evolution following users’ needs; today, thinking about the possibilities of jQuery or HTML5, the benefits of Flash lose much of their shine. I wouldn’t say Flash is ‘out’, but its marketplace is really restricted and clients are often asking for Flash-free solutions in order to be iOS compliant.”
Once Mutado has finished creating its beautifully-crafted designs and sites, there is still more work to do. Communications director Raquel talked about how they make sure sites get seen. “SEO is definitely a big slice of the cake, it is also one of the reasons we will be moving back to HTML with our new website: there’s nothing better if you want Google to keep a very close eye on you. We don’t handle SEO internally, we’ve always been happy to partner up with companies that have made SEO their line of business. But SEO isn’t the only thing; people, that’s what counts. Mutado gets in touch with people mainly through social networks (Facebook, Twitter and Vimeo particularly) and monthly newsletters. We’re definitely not tweetaholics, but getting real-time feedback on the stuff you make is priceless. In 2010 we started PR-ing in a more structured way, setting up an internal press office, and this has brought us to a whole new level. We also work with our clients on these aspects, acting as strategic partners when it comes to using social media in innovative ways, from maximising social network visibility to creating specific product-oriented Facebook apps. Our plan for 2011 is to get better at this and, on a different note, we have some ‘real-life’ surprises coming up too. This year we want to start opening our doors, showing people that there are people behind the screens and that we’re quite a heterogeneous group.”

Popular social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook help create interest in a site, while also providing a platform for everyday communications. Raquel reveals how Mutado takes advantage of social media. “Well, picking up from what I’ve just mentioned, we’re increasingly communicating through social media. They’re undeniably amazing stages from which we can speak to people but, to be honest, it’s just put a magnifying lens on something we’ve always done. Communicating is our line of work – whether it’s through a website, a billboard, a video or an app, we’re always shaping and transmitting messages in creative ways. Zuckerberg & co. have just added a means to our list. The new thing about social media is that we’re actually meta-communicating, we’re communicating about communication, we’re talking about our projects. The other thing is we know who we’re speaking to and the best part of it is, people can reply! People can post their honest opinions about the stuff we do and although, to date, we’ve been lucky enough to have only had warm praise, the idea that we can actually get harsh critique and less-than-perfect opinions is something that pushes us to keep on doing our best. So, the way it works is, whenever a new project is officially out we start communicating on all fronts: website, press office, social networks, the bunch. We also update social networks between projects, naturally, whenever we’re attending special events, giving lectures at conferences or universities, when we catch our name in the news…that sort of thing. Social networks are also ideal to post minor projects, those that aren’t featured in our portfolio. We don’t usually use them to post our lunch menus or our views on current affairs, but you can bet that whatever we do post is worth your while.”
People are the driving force behind any successful business and Mutado is no different. Founders Lorenzo and Mauro explain what they look for in prospective employees: “Mutado expects a lot from its employees, and I’d generally say there are three main qualities we look for: talent, drive and the eagerness to experiment. We receive many CVs and portfolios and pick the ones that intrigue us, the ones that show evidence of talent. We select our employees after several interviews that often include actual tests and the talented candidates that pass this step will have the chance to show what they’re worth in Mutado. These people will be successful if they have the drive, the willpower, if they love their jobs and they always give their best.”
“Another important quality we look for, apart from creative or technical abilities of course, is the desire to be part of something and to grow in a team. Mutado is a company where everyone is given a lot of responsibility and the success of a project depends on everybody’s efforts. That’s precisely why anyone who’s approaching this industry must be able to develop a method, a mental process that allows them to respect deadlines, to give 100% and to support the entire team. A brilliant idea, a creative solution or amazing tech abilities aren’t enough to make an agency grow, it really is all about a collective endeavour that sees each and every employee committing to leave a mark.”
A good agency is always looking ahead and getting ready to work on new projects – so what’s the future for Mutado? Lorenzo comments: “The future is mobile, unarguably. Smartphones, tablets, you name it, if you can put it in your pocket, there’s business there. We’re currently working on quite a few mobile apps, actually, from marketing to development. We still do the other stuff too, naturally, but if there ever was a time to go into mobile, it’s now. We didn’t believe much in mobile during the first craze back in 2000/2001, the world wasn’t ready. But now, if you’re in our line of business and you ignore the mobile world, you’ll be left behind real quick and with a massive hole in your wallet.”
Mauro, meanwhile, emphasises the importance of people power, saying: “Mutado’s future is as good as the people working in the company. Fresh blood brings new ideas, new projects, more mutation. Mutado’s future is, as its past and present, in the people that make this continuous transformation and in our team’s amazing flexibility that allows us to excel in the most avant-garde and challenging projects. The future is also in our clients, that give us enough freedom to develop innovative projects and exceed our limits. In the near future, we’ll be doing all of this in the mobile sector; later on, who knows…”

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.

Once in a lifetime

who: Firstborn
what: Leading digital agency located in NYC
where: 630 Ninth Avenue, Suite 910, New York, NY 10036
web: www.fborn.com

Firstborn is an independently owned digital agency headquartered in NewYork City. The company’s made up of strategists, designers, producers andtechnologists who share a passion for creating great ideas and translating them into engaging, intelligent and innovative user experiences. Founded in 1997 in Hell’s Kitchen, NYC, Firstborn now employs over 60 people going into its fourteenth year of business. It has direct clients such as SoBe, Wrigley, JetBlue and Aflac and it also partners with well-respected advertising agencies including Team Detroit, Ogilvy and Goodby. Looking back at the origins of the agency executiveVP Kevin Arthur reveals its guiding philosophy, and takes a quick peek at the future: “The lyric, ‘same as it ever was’ from the Talking Heads song Once In A Lifetime might be an apt description of Firstborn. We’ve been in business for 14 years now and while we have a long history and have seen our industry explode from our beginnings in 1997, the principles that have guided us from day one have never changed. We have always been dedicated to coming up with great ideas, working hard and producing the best work possible.

“Firstborn’s founder/CEO Michael Ferdman has taken the approach of a steady and measured growth over the years as we’ve gone from a handful of people
when we opened to our current staff of 60+ people. We have never ramped up in size just for the sake of becoming a bigger company but instead find the
most talented people from all over the world to add to our team-centric culture. The breadth of services we can provide continues to expand. Strategy has always
been a part of every project but now, especially with our agency-of-record clients, that offering has been augmented such that we are now creating entire brand platforms that we then build upon. “We are also now creating our own content as exemplified by the growth of our in-house video department. Video has played a key role in much of our work over the course of the last few years and in the case of SoBe we were able to leverage content created for the web into a broadcast television spot we created.

“Our client base has also evolved over the years. In the early part of the decade Firstborn specialised in work for the fashion and beauty industry. Now, our work extends across many verticals including beverages, insurance, automotive, technology and others. Up until last year, all our work has been project based but we can now count in our client roster a digital-agency-of-record relationship with SoBe Beverages for Pepsi as well as with Wrigley. Several years ago we began partnering with traditional agencies and those collaborations eventually became the bulk of our work. Now the wheel has turned such
that our business consists of mostly direct work.

“It’s very challenging to pick out one particular highlight for Firstborn. Each new project results in a new idea and new ways of using technology which always makes Firstborn an exciting place to work. In the same way, it’s difficult to predict where we’ll be in one or two years from now. Whatever we’re doing it’s sure to be as innovative and engaging as every one of the projects that come out of our door to date.” The past and present are two paradigms that Firstborn can control. The agency recently changed its domain name, and Dan LaCivita explains the thinking behind the change:  “We have wanted to buy firstborn.com for years and years but refuse to pay the ridiculous sum of money the people who own it are requesting. So we finally decided to compromise on fborn.com. It is easier to type in as a URL as well as an email address. And the whole ‘multimedia’ in the URL was dating us a little bit!”

GUERILLA IS A full service creative marketing agency… which means it offers a full range of integrated creative services, from digital media and traditional design for print to branding projects, marketing strategies and PR. This integrated proposition has led to the
Newcastle-based agency successfully competing to win an incredibly wide range of projects for a diverse client-base (including Nike, Durham University, National Trust and Numark). Another benefit has been the level of experience the tight-knit core Guerilla team have gathered in their eight-year existence, experience they now offer to their clients. With recent projects ranging from full marketing strategy and rebranding programmes to innovative digital communications, TV advertising campaigns and interior retail environments, one thing is for sure, life at Guerilla is never boring!

JA: James Allen – managing director
GF: Geoff Foots – creative director
RP: Rob Palmer – head of digital
PG: Paul Galloway – studio manager
AL: Alex Lockey – senior designer

WD: How, when and why did Guerilla get started and what was the inspiration behind the name?

JA: Guerilla was set up eight years ago, when eight staff from a previous agency decided that a new challenge was needed. The aim was to launch a highly nimble and creative agency that would have the skills and experience to excel in delivering projects of any size or complexity. Soon the need to provide effective communications solutions for any given media meant that we needed a forwardthinking digital solution as part of our integrated offer. We believe that the idea should be applied to the media and that all media channels should be open to our clients, long gone are the days where clients should be channelled along a commissionbased media solution. The name Guerilla was chosen as its essence represents a tight-knit and dedicated group of individuals that employs highly effective solutions to overcome powerful adversaries. So, when we say join the resistance, what are we resisting against? Simple; bland, over-stylised communications with little or no core thought behind it.

WD: What was the original vision for Guerilla and how has the agency evolved since the early days?

GF: When Guerilla opened its doors in 2002, traditional agencies would produce either advertising or design work, our vision was to create a small, agile, full-service creative agency that combined strategic thinking with creativity to produce work that looked great and was effective for our clients. We’ve never respected boundaries or recognised any ‘line’ between advertising and design, which is why we continue to work on such a diverse range of projects – a good idea is a good idea, regardless of media channels. We’ve had to grow up in public very quickly, in the early days we would operate by the seat of our pants to a large degree. We were all packed into one open plan office, there were very few processes in place – we had no formal proofing procedures, no HR or recruitment policy, we’d regularly work 36 hours straight to complete a project on deadline, (come to think of it, that bit hasn’t changed). We’ve recently bought our own premises, so there’s a lot more space and a real air of permanence. We’re also more structured now and have developed tried and tested procedures and we’re a lot more professional, but we’ll never be corporate.

WD: Guerilla is based in Newcastle and a number of the agency’s projects are for locally based businesses. To what extent do you think that your location determines the projects you get?

GF: The short answer is it doesn’t. When we set up Guerilla, none of our clients where based in the north east. Then we won The Drum’s North-East Agency of the Year in 2005 so we thought we’d better start working for some clients based in the region, but seriously, it was never a conscious decision. Our biggest client is Rowlands and Numark Pharmacy, a national retailer based in the north west, we also work with clients in Europe and the States – we spend a lot of time on planes. We have never seen our location as a hindrance – ultimately, if your work is good, people will want to work with you regardless of location. WD: The Guerilla website is a beautifully crafted piece of design that immediately draws in a visitor. How much importance do you attach to the quality and functionality of your site? RP: We managed for quite a while with an underperforming website created way back in 2007, our traffic was poor and our self-generated enquiries were also low, we were relying solely on alternative means of promotion to gather business and promote our services. But since the launch of our new site we have seen traffic increase by 300 per cent and it has certainly rumbled up as a talking point with our current and new clients. We strive to make our digital solutions not only look good but also perform from a functional level and be highly accessible, so we felt if we were offering this service to our clients, the only decent thing to do would be to echo this level of work on our own website. More to the point, our website acts as a huge cog in the promotion of our agency, if it fails or is not doing its job, then a whole range of other promotional material will fail, as a great deal of our directed traffic is pointing to our website. It needs to be our USP, our voice and our values all bundled up into one. We put a great deal of time and thought into the desired workflow within the site, how it looks and feels and how we want our users to feel when entering, browsing and leaving, and the aim summed up in one word was ‘memorable’.

WD: How much impact does a successful campaign/project have going forward when looking to win new clients?

GF: It’s all that counts, our promises as a creative agency mean nothing if the work we produce isn’t successful for our clients, it’s how we’ve built our reputation. Word of mouth is the most effective form of advertising, you can take part in creative pitches until you’re blue in the face and fill in as many tender documents as you like, there is nothing more effective in securing new business than ringing endorsements from the people who you’ve worked for.

WD: Guerilla has a cross-section of services including digital, web design, brand creation and public relations. How many people work at the agency and what are their roles?

GF: Having the right people is key to the success of our business. We currently employ 17 people, all of who are specialists, incredibly self-motivated and excellent at what they do. Teamwork is very important, it allows people to play to their strengths while building up a broad skill set. The team will always be stronger than an individual, and providing an integrated service is simply a case of putting the right combination of people together and working as a team – with 17 people there are a lot of combinations, it keeps everything fresh.

WD: Every digital/creative agency relies on a suite of software to complete any project. Is Guerilla an Adobe-centric agency or is open source the preferred choice? And what were the reasons for choosing specific software?

PG: Guerilla uses Adobe Creative Suite as the base for expressing our creative ideas across all aspects of design. However, we believe in using the right tools for the right job. Our clients challenge us with such a diversity of work that we need to be flexible and can’t be limited in our thinking by the software we use. The idea is king and whether it is Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, Dreamweaver, InDesign, Quark Xpress or a combination of all of them, the quality of the visual presentation of that idea is all that really matters.

WD: HTML5 is being heavily promoted by Apple as the alternative to Flash. When designing for the web how do you deal with the problem of unsupported technologies, eg CSS3 and Flash in certain browsers?

RP: We feel at the moment with the push of HTML5 and CSS3, and with the movement of mobile applications, there is a lot of pressure to keep up with the game and be a part of this way of working, but we feel as the industry stands at the moment, there needs to be balance. When beginning a digital project we do a target audience analysis, we then weigh up the best solution for each job on a per project basis, we don’t simply work in a single manner and offer a closed solution, which can prove disastrous. For example on our website, we know we have the skills to build it in HTML5 with CSS3 and Typekit font replacements throughout, but in order to hit our preferred target audiences – which is vast and ranges from the public sector through to bespoke start-ups – we found our balance, we used CSS3 sparingly on non-structure critical items, and crossbrowser checked everything to make sure our users’ experience is just as good across the board. So as much as these tools and techniques are available and we have the skills to apply them, we always revert back to the balance. We are very much ‘pro’ HTML5 and CSS3, but in commercial projects our view is very much that they need to be used under consideration.

WD: The iPad is a device that looks set to kick-start the consumer touch screen revolution. What are the agency’s thoughts on the device and is it a product that has a practical use at Guerilla?

RP: We find the iPad a total revolution. It has changed the way we manage presentation within the company, enabling us to present our thoughts and ideas to clients. It is a great tool for meetings to gather notes and dictation and from a practical perspective we have found it very useful. It all depends on how you use it to whether you find it useful! We have applications on ours for printing wirelessly, running Pages and Keynote for presentations, remotely updating websites through the Markup app, and we also feature it heavily in our new business offerings for clients who would like to see how their solution would look on an iPad, even if they do not own one themselves. Being kitted out with iMacs, Mac Pros and Apple software it was much easier to integrate the iPad into our way of working, but we can see huge potential in it and see the benefit from developing our own applications for future projects.

WD: A social media presence is seen as an essential form of communication for a digital/ creative agency? How important do you think such a presence is and what benefits does it bring to the agency?

AL: Social media sites have become a part of most people’s everyday lives. It was recently announced that globally, Facebook has 500 million users. If Facebook was a country, it would be the third largest in the world (apparently) with 26 million of those users in Britain alone (that’s more than a third of the population). Communication is our business, it would be crazy for us not to get involved in such an important channel of communication on behalf of both ourselves and our clients. The use of Facebook applications can be a great way to build brand awareness and develop consumer engagement with your products or services. They can act as a useful tool for seeing what users are saying about your services and your brand. As long as an agency is prepared to put time into these sites, keeping posts and discussion relevant and engaging to their audience, then the social media phenomenon will take word of mouth to a whole new level. Nothing attracts a crowd like a crowd… both Facebook and Twitter are attracting quite a crowd. The importance to have a strong presence demonstrates that your business is in tune with a rapidly evolving world and is able to react and evolve with it. How can an agency talk to their client base about the strength of social media without having a presence themselves? The benefits to an agency will become clearer as more and more businesses push the boundaries with what is achievable with social media. Personally, I don’t think it can do an agency any harm as long as they respect the nature of the media and the risk it could have if abused.

WD: What elements do you think have the most success in driving traffic to a site?

RP: A good digital offering can have so many strings to its bow now the way to promote a site depends entirely on the target audience. Social media marketing is definitely high on the list, although there are some situations where it can be a waste of resources. With the Guerilla website, we have tried to play to the strength of the brand and portfolio, the result being a content-rich interface that leaves the end user with the feeling of a quality, forwardthinking product. The launch campaign earlier this year was backed up by a quality print and direct mail campaign and eShots to existing and prospective clients, which along with a positive interest from the design community helped the launch to be a great success. The supporting digital elements including the blog, Twitter and Facebook act as teasers showcasing the team, the brand and the portfolio, all with the view of driving users to the website. At the end of the day it’s all about delivering relevant content to your user base.

WD: What make’s an agency successful and exciting is the people who work there. As an employer what do look for in a prospective employee? Plus, what advice would you give to anyone looking to break into the industry?

GF: That’s absolutely true, it’s also the hardest part to get right! Processes and skills can be taught, but there are certain qualities we’re looking for that can’t be. It’s difficult to use words like talent, commitment, passion and self-motivation without it sounding cliched, but of course, we’re looking for all those things. It’s also important to us that any employee would be a good fit from a personality point of view, we always end up asking ourselves “is he/she Guerilla?” – we look for team-players so ‘me-too’ egos are a pain, you’ve got to be able to collaborate creatively with others and have respect for the client and your colleagues. The only advice I could give to anyone looking to break into the industry would be to be tenacious, be articulate – talk passionately and knowledgably about your subject and remember, getting the job is just the beginning. The proof of the pudding, as they say, is in the eating – and that’s your opportunity to demonstrate to your new employer that your passion and commitment is more than just a cliché!

www.guerilla.co.uk

Juxt Interactive is a name that makes an immediate impression. And as curiosity kicked in, Web Designer couldn’t resist the temptation to find out where the moniker came from and the talent behind the name, so we catch up with the company’s creative director to discover the truth behind one of the hottest agencies out there.

Web Designer talks to Todd Purgason, creative director at Juxt Interactive

WD: Juxt Interactive is a digital agency with an unusual name. How did it all get started and how did the name come about?

TP: When we started Juxt in 1998 it was an early time in the web and you tended to see websites that were not very cohesive for the user. There was a big line between the visual design elements and the technology elements that was typically very visible. Coming from our background in architecture and in multimedia we were striving
to create experiences that were more holistic in Take note people, this is where it’s happening As a deadline approaches, it starts to get intense in the San Fran offices Web Designer the seamlessness of the user’s  experience. We referred to it as creating a balanced juxtaposition of design and technology. The name Juxt was derived from the word juxtaposition. In reality it is not all that original, as I think in the architect’s guide
book it is like a law that you have to use the word juxtaposition at least twice a week.

WD: How has the agency developed since its inception twelve years ago and what are you most proud of to date?

TP: We started as more of a design company and over the years evolved into interactive advertising. Over the past two years we have been evolving again to be much more of a digital experience agency. I think what we are most proud of is the people we have worked with. We have really challenged ourselves year after year with projects that push us beyond ourselves. Each year we watch our teams passionately pour their heart and souls
into the work and create great stuff for our clients and for us.

WD: As the first point of contact for prospective clients and employees, an agency’s website needs to be distinctive and engaging. How often do you renew content/design and who is responsible for this task?

TP: This has always been a bit of a joke here. In the early days there was a lot of ego poured into design company websites, ours included. But as we got busy doing bigger, more interesting work it seemed more like a distraction and now we feel the work really speaks for itself. We generally don’t get work from our site, rather through relationships, so we use it really to highlight the work in a fun way. That said we are in the middle of a big rebrand
and we will be rethinking and building the site to express our new brand position. We invited the whole office to get involved with this process; it was a very good experience for all of us.

WD: The agency has worked with some notable brands, Ie Adobe, Coca-Cola, Target, American Airlines, and produced some stunning campaigns. How did the you get involved with such projects?

TP: Violence… kidding. We have always been a passion-driven company and as a result we typically deliver good work and make our clients happy doing it. This has given us a good portfolio to use to garner work directly from brands. In addition, unlike many boutique interactive shops we typically don’t work through other agencies. We work directly with clients developing the strategy, the concepts and the execution and we deliver well. The good clients keep coming back for more. Over time this has allowed us to evolve and grow what and how we do things, making us a better partner for our clients. Additionally we have always been focused on doing it right and this requires the right people and time to do it. So we don’t sell ourselves into things we cannot deliver on. Some of our clients have been burned by big and small agencies that pitch well and deliver poorly. With us they know they are going to get quality all the way through.

WD: Big brands by their very nature are already well-established. What restrictions, if any, does the agency encounter when working with large companies?

TP: Yes, brands do have guidelines and we are very strategic in how we work with meeting their very specific objectives. This is frankly the challenge in interactive advertising; coming up with compelling concepts that are strategic and in the end positively affect the client’s business. It is easy to come up with novel interactive ideas. The challenge is coming up with the right idea for the right audience. I’m a pretty creative yet pragmatic guy so as the ECD I need to see why an idea will work for our clients no matter how interesting it seems to us as creatives. But we often get to something that is very compelling and is effective. Additionally, brands will often think of the web as a spin-off of print and as such enforce rigid graphic standards. We prefer to approach it as more akin to live action commercials in which the graphic look and feel does not drive the execution, instead the story does. It is always somewhere in-between and that makes it fun. Believe me, there are days when I miss just being a graphic designer; make it beautiful and call it a day. That life is simple but also rewarding for creatives. Making it beautiful and communicating and invoking a response…. well, it is challenging but it is also more intellectually stimulating to be completely honest.

WD: Juxt Interactive has offices in Newport Beach, CA and San Francisco, CA. How do the two offices interact or do they operate independently?

TP: We wrestle each other as often as possible. No, we work together on projects and try to share a similar culture. We are actually creating three minute documentaries of all the staff members now which will help us all keep in touch with each other as human beings as opposed to voices on the phone or AIM addresses. On projects we often have mixed office teams working together on projects, most of us are very comfortable working virtually with each other. Thankfully the flight to SF is very short so we fly up and back or down and back quite often. At this point we have the advantage of still being relatively small so the transition to this has not been
extremely traumatic. Over time we will be growing and the challenge will be keeping the cultures similar but not exact and keeping us collaborating over competing.

WD: When working on a new project what does the development lifecycle involve. How many people are typically assigned to a project and what are their roles?

TP: That is a little complicated as we have different types of projects. But basically the phases are discovery, planning, design, development, testing and QA, deployment and maintenance. Our advertising projects have phases in the beginning that include campaign planning, strategy, creative strategy and tactical concepting.
We have: account director/managers, project managers, creative directors, technical directors, user experience director/designers, art directors, copywriters, designers, Flash motion designers, Flash developers, engineers, front-end developers, back-end developers and quality assurance testers. Not every project has all of these, it depends on the type and size of the project. Over the past year and a half we have been getting involved with much bigger, bolder projects that have allowed us to bring more innovative approaches from the digital marketing world to the experience marketing world. And in these cases our teams have gone from the traditional three to six people and expanded to 10-20 people. And we have been doing much more live action work involving heavy production, which involves new skills and management.

WD: When designing and developing, what tools are used? Is Juxt Interactive Adobe-centric or does the agency prefer the open source option?

TP: Creatively we use lots of Adobe products, Final Cut and Maya. In development we do whatever the client needs, a fair amount of Java though, not much .net, some open source. We have lots of talents here that go way beyond typical. We have film makers, photographers, artists, digital artists and creative technologists. So our tools go beyond software. We span from paintbrushes to processing. We have been working with our parent company George P Johnson, we have been exploring physical interactive experience in which it is a marriage of hardware and software to create the solution. So yes, we use a lot of the common tools but we are also programming in Objective-C or open frameworks on one side of the office and then on the other I have a guy making 3D movies.

WD: Are there any circumstances where Juxt Interactive would turn down a prospective client or project?

TP: Yes, we don’t like pink brands it makes us uncomfortable to work with pink or baby blue. But seriously, we turn a lot of work down but it is not a product of us being super selective. We rule some projects out that are not a good fit or are not creative. But it is more that the budgets or timelines are unrealistic, or our staff our booked up. But we have grown a lot this year so we are taking on more larger projects, so we now have projects that are five to ten times the size that we used to do, so we obviously can take fewer projects. But don’t take that the wrong way, we’re like any company in that we have to be aggressive and compete for projects. Pitching for a $2-5 million project is much more involved than for a $200-500K project. And we live in both those spaces. That said, I think the bulk of the projects floating around are projects that have $500K worth of expectations with a $100-$200K time frame and budget. Many companies survive off of that level of work, we are fortunate enough to have grown out of that.

WD: Tools such as Facebook, Twitter, Flickr etc are essential for keeping creatives connected. Does Juxt Interactive actively encourage use of these tools to promote its product?

TP: Yes we use them, I would not say that we are all hopped up about using them and maximising them but we do actively use them. Being a guy that for years was too busy to even IM and frankly I don’t find much of my life worth telling others about, I was slow to warm up to Twitter. But over the past couple years I have seen its value and we use it to announce new work and/or interesting content we find. I think the people at the company that can provide value tweeting are frankly most often way too busy to take the time. I see other companies and individuals taking a very aggressive approach with this and for some I can see that follower base being an asset. But, I also wonder from my own habits if there is more value in scarcity and exclusivity here than in abundance. I follow some people that are tweeting ten times a day and I often just skip everything they post because it has become digital wallpaper in my app. At this point I only have my opinion, no research on this so maybe this is just the ramblings of an interactive dinosaur. I had a thought while answering this question about creating an interesting social commentary piece around this. Create a platform that allows people to tweet after death; they save tweets in a database to be published later.

WD: Keeping ahead of competitors is essential for continued success. What technologies have caught the agency’s eye recently?

TP: Well, we were acquired by one of the largest experience marketing agencies in the world so we have been looking into physical interactive technology, exploring virtualisation and mobile augmented reality. Processing and openFrameworks has lots of interesting potential for experience marketing. We, as many people in the industry, are watching the Flash on mobile and tablet scenario play out. The new version of Flash can publish native iPhone and iPad apps that also can be incorporated into Android and any PC so in some cases it can allow us to publish the same content efficiently across multiple platforms. It has limitations but mobile approaches in marketing are often shot down due to the lack of crossplatform support, and this is making strides. Then there is the whole HTML5 debate that I really do not want to get into. We also have a 3D fiend in the office that has access to gear to create 3D images and video. So we have been tinkering with this a bit. 3D is the new black right now, but it is a novelty in digital so we are exploring more than executing.

WD: Juxt Interactive is currently expanding. What qualities do you look for in a prospective employee, and what advice would you give to anyone trying to get into the business?

TP: We look for people with talent and passion for creativity and interactive work. We get lots of résumés and it is surprising that some are deep and wide with work showing professional and personal work. Then others are shockingly shallow with only a handful of projects. We lean toward folks that have many projects and experiments as you have to be driven to do well at Juxt or any comparable company.

www.juxtinteractive.com

Ken Martin – Chief creative officer at Blitz talks to Web Designer about life as successful agency, augmented reality, the iPad and why creative should ‘get their hands dirty’.

WD: To kick-off can you tell the Web Designer readers how the agency got started and what was the thinking behind the name and why did you finally settle on Blitz?

KM: It all started in Silicon Valley, during the early years of the dotcom boom. Ivan (Todorov, CEO/CTO) and I went to college together – majoring in 3D Animation and Storytelling – and we wanted to build a company that would use technology to tell brand stories. Like many start-ups, we started in a garage and quickly moved into warehouse office space. But in 2001, we moved to Los Angeles, entered the entertainment industry and began showing people that technology could be used in their benefit to help spread their brand, amplify their stories and create an involved audience. This was when we decided the world was ready for Blitz. In terms of coming up with the name, we both knew we wanted a single word that really stood out in your mind. ‘Blitz’ in German, means ‘lightning’, and in English, it means ‘an all around attack’. In the marketing world, it represents a very bold, energetic approach which is what we do with all of our clients. At Blitz, we connect creative channels with products and attack solutions in the sense that we work quickly to satisfy our clients.

WD: Back when Blitz first started out, what was the original vision for the agency and how has it developed since its inception?

KM: We started out building an interactive agency that also had very strong storytelling capabilities. For a while we even created animated webisodes.
Today, Blitz has expanded beyond digital. We’ve become a new type of integrated agency that harnesses our interactive and digital DNA as a conduit to connect all touch points and reach people at different levels.

WD: An agency’s website can often be the first point of contact for prospective clients and employees. How much time and effort is devoted to the Blitz website?

KM: We believe an agency’s website should be a showcase for its abilities. The Blitz site took four years in the making, which includes the recent redesign that occupied that past year. As a team, we put a great deal of thought and effort – and about $25,000 per month – into the Blitz site so it can continue to display our best work, highlight our impressive talent, and give visitors a sense of the Blitz culture and lifestyle.

WD: Augmented reality is the big buzzword for 2010 and Blitz recently worked with John Mayer on his AR video for Heartbreak Warfare. How did the project come about?

KM: Long renowned for pushing the boundaries of music and entertainment, John Mayer wanted a way to connect with fans that extended beyond just listening to a new track or watching a music video. For his new album, Battle Studies, Mayer wanted to take advantage of the latest technology while blurring the boundaries between music and new media in order to attract new listeners and appeal to existing ones that don’t ordinarily buy his music. Therefore, his management reached out to Blitz directly in search of a groundbreaking, interactive concept. We decided to produce an augmented reality (AR) music video for Heartbreak Warfare and teamed up with Adobe to deliver it via Adobe Flash Player and FLARToolKit. By utilising AR technology, Mayer is able to connect with fans in a way that transcends traditional marketing techniques and methods of experiencing music. Additionally, by leveraging Flash as the video player, we were able to extend its reach to over 98 per cent of personal computers worldwide.

WD: Augmented reality has yet to hit mainstream web design. Does Blitz have a specific set of AR designers or is it part of a current skill set that your designers have?

KM: Our design and development team is crosstrained on new and emerging platforms, and our user experience practice operates in multiple channels. In order to continue our innovative approaches to client requests, we constantly research AR and look at new ways of incorporating its use in consumers’ lifestyles. We also build prototypes for research and development projects, to experiment with novel uses and really push the limits of AR capabilities.

WD: When working on an AR project such as Heartbreak Warfare, what does the process involve and what timescale was the agency given?

KM: The overall process for Heartbreak Warfare was similar to most other forms of interactive media design and development; except for a few technology areas which required special attention. Most importantly, optimisation had to be at the forefront of our minds when it came to the design and development of an AR piece, which typically takes about eight weeks to complete. Since the scene is continuously changing and moving, both from the video animation as well as the user control of the glyph, we couldn’t make it too complex. Also, because Flash has to handle many large assets all at once, we had to be careful with how we constructed the video.

WD: It could be said that AR is still something of a novelty rather than a practical technology. How does the agency view the current state of augmented reality?

KM: AR is currently in a transition period. Even after a year, we still see innovative implementations of AR and believe its state is becoming more accepted and its adoption more mainstream. AR began as a “wow” sort of novelty. But as it evolves, we can look at how it can add true value to our lives and become more utilitarian.

WD: The potential of augmented reality has yet to be fully realised. Where does the agency think the future of AR lies?

KM: We believe that AR will become so mainstream that it will be embedded in hardware, which will allow us to improve its visual and interactive performance. With the implementation of more markerless or glyph-less applications, AR has the ability to live everywhere that digital displays currently exist: car traffic and navigation systems, mobile phones, and outdoor displays, to name Web Designer | 33 a few. Basically, AR could easily become the glue between digital and physical. Essentially, anywhere we can find how to marry virtual with reality is where this technology can be used.

WD: The ‘magical and revolutionary’ iPad is a device that has been hard to avoid. What are Blitz’s thoughts on the device and does it have a future in web design?

KM: Yes, the iPad does have a future in web design. We are very excited about the iPad because it will allow a whole new suite of applications that will engage consumers. From a print standpoint, the iPad offers an exciting way to take traditional print and forge it with an interactive format that has potential to truly personalise reading and any entertainment experience. In the future, as Apple continues to not support Flash, HTML5 will be accelerated as a requirement for us to master. Blitz is already looking at website design that will be compatible with iPad dimensions and operations.

WD: Getting maximum exposure is crucial to ensuring the longevity of an agency. What are the principal tools used by Blitz to get seen?

KM: Come end of day, it’s all about the work. Our job is to get clients noticed and make a connection with their audience. If we do our job correctly, we inherently get noticed and receive positive wordof- mouth; that leads people to the Blitz site and generates further interest in our work. Other actions we take to increase exposure are submitting projects to award shows, actively speaking and contributing within the industry, and maximising PR efforts, such as this one (thanks to our awesome agency Fusion PR).

WD: Trends and styles are part and parcel of web design. What has caught the agency’s eye recently and how much attention do you pay to trends?

KM: There’s definitely a trend to find the sweet spot between brand-rich experience and community, social, web 2.0-type applications. Brands are looking for agencies that can weave the two together so to create a story involving consumer participation. The Blitz team is very aware of trends and is constantly looking for innovative ways to engage consumers so they can experience brands in a new light. We have built our reputation on trust and confidence in our ability to advance a brand among its audience. Moreover, because many trends are short-lived, we are very selective in terms of our recommendations to clients, especially when every brand has its own set of unique needs.

WD: Blitz is an agency with some very talented people on-board. What advice would you give to anyone trying to get into the industry?

KM: Jump in head-first. Do not be afraid to make mistakes. Live, breathe and eat the industry – study what’s been successful and deconstruct it to discover why it worked. Learn to be a thinker and understand why user experience matters. Get your hands dirty. Learn to love Red Bull, or in my case, candy. Practice, practice, practice and then, work hard.

In a modern society obsessed with celebrity, there becomes very few actual stars blessed with the power to light up our lives. It seems that just about anyone can ascend to iconic status by merely appearing on TV as themselves or by being written into the tabloid headlines for all sorts of scurrilous misdemeanors. When Andy Warhol uttered his famous quote in the early 1960’s, “In the future, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes” – he surely couldn’t have known how prophetic this would become. Although television shows such as Big Brother and earlier examples of ‘docusoaps’ like BBC’s Airport have been hugely influential, we now find that the web is just as furtive for establishing real-world personalities on a global scale. A lethal combination of freedom, a perceived lack of control and an ability to define new rules for reaching an audience has yielded a YouTube generation with the potential to become an overnight sensation. Probably the most powerful tool on the modern web is blogging and in terms of redefining content publishing online it has opened the floodgates for those who were once inhibited by the complexities associated with building the necessary infrastructures. Those with something to say can simple type it out and post it without first becoming a master in HTML, CSS, PHP etc. Current darling of the geek glitterati Twitter is derived directly from this culture, in the same way Facebook’s wall and status updates can make you a legend within your own friendship network. If full-blown blogging was defined by market share however, then the undisputed star would surely be WordPress. Propelled by an open approach to the platform that anyone with a hosting account can setup, coupled with a devoted developer community and you have a decent formula for success that others have indeed followed.

An Open Approach

The real story behind WordPress begins with a young man named Matthew Charles Mullenweg. He was born January 11, 1984 in Houston Texas – which eerily enough makes him exactly 26 on the day this piece was written. He then went on to work for CNET Networks in San Francisco before founding the startup firm Automattic in August 2005. It was from here that WordPress evolved, along with projects such as the spam-killing Akismet, universal avatar creation tool Gravatar and a few more initiatives that all support the Open Source philosophy so integral to Matt’s initial vision. “The website says WordPress is “a state-of-the-art semantic personal publishing platform” but more importantly WordPress is a part of who I am”, as his official blog at http://ma.tt explains. “Like eating, breathing, music, I can’t not work on WordPress. The project touches a lot of people, something I’ve recently begun to appreciate. I consider myself very lucky to be able to work on something I love so much.”

Although it’s worth underlining that Mullenweg didn’t create the blueprint for WordPress alone, credit must also go to co-developer Mike Little, he has been recognised since as one of the web’s most influential people operating today. So we see it as something of a coup to present an exclusive Q&A session with the man who made web publishing go pop – offering his own view of the past, present and future on blogging’s rise to superstardom…

MATT MULLENWEG TALKS TO WEB DESIGNER…

Q. First off, there can be very few web designers that haven’t heard of WordPress. But how and when did it all come about?

WordPress started about 6 years ago because I wanted a simple blogging tool that was easy to install, easy to modify, and friendly with web standards. I teamed up with a fellow Open Source contributor Mike Little (in England) and we started hacking on the first version. It’s come a long way since then, with some key improvements being the creation of the plugin and theme systems. We got the current logo about4.5 years ago when Jason Santa Maria got involved to work on a redesign and rebranding.  I’ve considered changing the logo before, but earlier this year a very dedicated WordPress user in Hawaii actually got it permanently tattooed on his arm, so we’ll probably stick with the current logo for the foreseeable future.

Q. What was the original vision for WordPress and were you/are you surprised at how successful the platform has become?

As growth started to pick up and it began to look like this thing had legs, we started to think more about vision and possible impact. “Wouldn’t it be cool if we could democratize publishing and make it available to a wider audience?” That idea of making it easy and hassle-free for anybody to publish online has stuck with us.

The first time I was really surprised by the community was when some users in Japan downloaded the software and then replaced every English string with a Japanese translation. I installed it and it was surreal, all of the layout and buttons looked the same but there was this beautiful, exotic script gracing everything. It was like a dream where everything is familiar but all your friends are speaking a language you don’t understand. The idea that someone halfway across the world would contribute so much time and thought to the project was very humbling.

Q. If you had a crystal ball would you have given more thought to the commercial aspects that WordPress has to offer?

No, I wouldn’t change a thing. The GPL license that WordPress is under enables a large amount of commercial innovation while still protecting the rights and freedoms of users.

Q. Automattic began life as small startup and has grown into a massive online presence. What have you learnt along the way and what advice would you give to anyone thinking of starting up their own online enterprise?

On the commercial side Automattic has definitely been a learning experience as our sites have grown to more than 260 million unique visitors and our team has grown to over 50 people located around the world. With a distributed company model like Automattic has you rely a lot on your colleagues, so hiring is paramount. The most important thing one does as founder is hire the right people and set the company culture.

The best method I’ve found for hiring is to avoid fancy interview-type questions or put people under a lot of pressure, instead I just to get to know them and see if they are someone I would want to be in the trenches with. I check out their work to see if it is the level I am looking for and if it is we do a trial project (paid, of course) where I can actually see what it’s like to work with them over the course of a few weeks. There is no better barometer of what someone is actually like, how they communicate, collaborate, and manage their time.

Q. After nearly 15 years of service GeoCities was finally closed down this year by Yahoo. Do you see any similarities between WordPress and GeoCities? Do you think WordPress is the modern day equivalent of GeoCities?

I actually had a GeoCities site back in the day. In fact I just paid the ransom to have it redirected to a domain so the old links don’t break. I think they did a fantastic job at whetting people’s appetites for having a web presence but much like early social networking sites, once you set it up there really wasn’t any reason to go back and the pages weren’t terribly engaging for visitors. Blogging added a little bit of structure in a format that has proved resilient for a decade.

Q. What is your current involvement with WordPress?

This year a lot of my time has been spent bouncing around the globe to attend WordCamps, which are one- and two-day conferences organized by the WordPress community. I love meeting WordPress users and when come to a WordCamp I typically do a town hall-style Q & A session to try to answer as many questions as possible and spread the gospel of Open Source, open standards, GPL, and WordPress.

On the product side I try to take what I have learned back to the rest of the development team and that influences the direction we take the product in. I don’t need to personally write code much these days because we have so many talented folks involved but I am jumping back in on bbPress and will be hacking around in there.

Q. As WordPress reaches the web masses new markets and opportunities i.e. Themes, have been created around the platform. Is this something you encourage and do themes have to go through a vetting process.

Themes are incredibly important and I think the diversity of themes available for WordPress has been part of the success of the platform. In the past we had some trouble with the quality of themes available on different directories and such, so when we decided to make an official one on WordPress.org we decided there would be a vetting and mentorship process. We check themes for the obvious stuff like malicious code but also for WP feature support, browser compatibility, and even API compatibility so if you get a theme from our directory you can be sure that it will be safe now and in the future.

Q. The WordPress developer community plays a huge part in the WordPress lifecycle. How does the community work and how can designers get involved?

The community is very collaborative. People from all different backgrounds are involved and we are joined together by a shared philosophy – Free Software – and a common passion – creating websites.

Developers usually join some of our mailing lists, like wp-hackers (http://lists.automattic.com), or peruse our Trac instance (http://core.trac.wordpress.org), where we keep track of bugs. Writers contribute to our documentation, called the Codex, which runs Mediawiki software like Wikipedia. Designers used to have a hard time getting involved but that has changed since version 2.7 when we did the dashboard redesign. Now we experiment with things like distributed usability testing and we also have a budding Open Source Design group (three people so far).

My dream is to grow the design group so they can help out with different plugins in addition to core work. Many of the plugins are written by people with a passion for development and could benefit greatly from some help on the visual side.

Q. Do you think that WordPress is removing the technical element> involved in the web design process? Or, alternatively do you think it is encouraging a new generation of web designers?

Absolutely. I have been to twenty or thirty WordCamps this year and at every one I met several dozen folks whose entire businesses, all the websites they have built, are on WordPress. It’s where they start and end every project and they are bending and stretching it in ways I could have never imagined. It’s something with the power of any other CMS out there but that doesn’t intimidate their clients or require recoding their site every 16 months because compatibility broke.

WordPress started with very modest ambitions as just a blog tool, but we have always listened closely to our user community and we have grown together into something much more flexible.

Q. WordPress for the iPhone is already available at the iTunes App store. What features are you looking to put into future editions and how do you think the app compares to the standard version?

Our app is better than it used to be, but still sucks in a lot of ways. As a WordPress user I want to see my stats, get a push notification when there is a new comment, search my archives, visit people linking to me, respond to comments, take and upload video… we still have so much to do!

Q. There are thousands of WordPress sites across the Net. What do you think are great examples of the publishing platform and why?

We made a whole site for exactly that. :) Check out http://wordpress.org/showcase. Some of my recent favorites are hypebeast.com, ilovetypography.com, icondock.com, grainedit.com, pro.gigaom.com, and gigaom.com. (My site, of course: ma.tt.) WordPress.tv is a great example of WordPress powering a Hulu-type site and also a great way to learn about WordPress itself.

Q. What does the future hold for WordPress?

A number of things. On the interface side I think that you will see WordPress become more streamlined in the future, as we balance ever-increasing functionality with cognitive load when using the interface. [re-write please: You will start to see more customization options for the back-end so people can tailor it to the things they use and also perhaps see some of the functionality move into plugins so people can optimize their site for exactly what they want to use.]

Performance-wise I’m not worried because we already run some of the largest websites in the world and solutions like wp-super-cache and Batcache have already been shown to scale to tens of millions of visitors per day.

A lot of plugins today are solo enterprises and I think you’ll see these become more collaborative just like WordPress did in the beginning. It’s not unheard of for a plugin to get half a million users, and that’s hard to support on your own, so they’ll start to turn into little mini-WordPresses with their own documentation, support forums, developer teams, and everything else.

Themes are going to evolve to include more functionality, almost like little mini-applications. A good example of this is the P2 theme we released — it’s a theme but it adds a lot of functionality to the front end of the blog so you actually never have to visit the dashboard. You can write, edit, upload images, comment, everything right on the home page, and everything new comes in real-time to anybody that has the page open. This type of model will be used for more than just blogs, you’ll see a theme that perhaps provides address book-type functionality (I already saw one of these called RoloPress) or something for managing a vinyl collection. (I want the latter. :)) Because the front-end presentation and the back end functionality are tied together you will be able to create very rich experiences and bundle and distribute them through WordPress’ existing networks.

WordPress provides a robust content model with post types, taxonomies, custom fields, threaded comments and moderation, everything you need to build almost any website you can imagine.