According to Wikipedia: Augmented reality (AR) is a live, direct or indirect, view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are augmented by computer-generated sensory input such as sound, video, graphics or GPS data. It is related to a more general concept called mediated reality, in which a view of reality is modified (possibly even diminished rather than augmented) by a computer. As a result, the technology functions by enhancing one’s current perception of reality. By contrast, virtual reality replaces the real world with a simulated one.

Augmentation is conventionally in real-time and in semantic context with environmental elements, such as sports scores on TV during a match. With the help of advanced AR technology (e.g. adding computer vision and object recognition) the information about the surrounding real world of the user becomes interactive and digitally manipulable. Artificial information about the environment and its objects can be overlaid on the real world. The term augmented reality is believed to have been coined in 1990 by Thomas Caudell, working at Boeing.

Research explores the application of computer-generated imagery in live-video streams as a way to enhance the perception of the real world. AR technology includes head-mounted displays and virtual retinal displays for visualization purposes, and construction of controlled environments containing sensors and actuators.

What are people doing with AR?

There are many examples you can or have seen. Here’s a recent one made by Disney and displayed in Times Square:

Of course, with Pixar tucked neatly into their back pockets, Disney’s AR piece is the top of technology. Appshaker, London did a really impressive AR piece for National Geographic:

There are some demos from smaller companies and individuals that show the capabilities of AR. Check out these cool applications:

Why just buy a product when you can see what it will look like out of the box?

Your face as your business card

Not all of the AR applications are fun and games. Recognition and information are also possible. This video was posted to YouTube two years ago:

In fact, stalking will be a breeze with facial recognition software on smart phones:

When I first ran across Augmented Reality almost nine years ago, it was phone-sized tablets that identified places and directions. This phone app is an example:

The future of business cards

While the QR Code may take you to YouTube or a web site, imagine what it can do for your business card! It’s a bit like Emperor Palpatine popping up to give order 66 (ask a local Star Wars nerd what that means) but why make people read something about you when you can tell them yourself:

Try one for yourself HERE.

While most AR recognition needs a code, very much like the QR Code or, apparently despised Snaptag, this experiment by innovative campaign from Crispin Porter + Bogusky uses a simple dollar bill for a Burger King AR piece:

There are numerous tutorials on how to create AR pieces. Check them out.

Are you ready to jump into Augmented Reality?

So, I’m guessing by now you are saying to yourself, “I’ve got to get into this!” and my family and I are safe from comments on different inappropriate things we can do…unlike my exploration of Snaptags.

AR is not just about learning some new software. There is obviously video, writing, graphic design, and type skills needed but any creative should be able to handle it. I’ve yet to see anyone at any networking event or cross paths with anyone who has an AR business card to date. That seems odd, considering the explosion of the technology. Perhaps the technology hasn’t quite exploded as of yet, so why not be the first kid on the block to have one?

Suggested reading on Augmented Reality

http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-08-sony-augmented-reality-tv-buyers.html

http://mashable.com/2009/12/05/augmented-reality-iphone/

http://technabob.com/blog/2008/12/17/mini-augmented-reality-ads-hit-newstands/

http://boingboing.net/2011/11/21/layar-augmented-reality-for-ma.html

*There are many sources for AR software but I cannot suggest or recommend any in this forum. All of the examples used in this article were solely for the purpose of inspiration and information on AR technology and is not an advertisement for or an endorsement of any of the firms that created the videos included.

Speider Schneider is a former member of The Usual Gang of Idiots at MAD Magazine and has designed products for Disney/Pixar, Warner Bros., Harley-Davidson, ESPN, Mattel, DC and Marvel Comics, Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon among other notable companies. Speider is a former member of the board for the Graphic Artists Guild, co-chair of the GAG Professional Practices Committee and a former board member of the Society of Illustrators. Follow him on Twitter @speider

Do you use Augmented Reality for your work? Give us a link to your video or post your AR code for people to print out and try.

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While, there are many people out there who have made a nice living working for other companies, it shouldn’t be crazy to think about going into business for oneself, whether it be a full time job or a part time gig. With the changing economic climate things aren’t guaranteed and, quite frankly, the time spent helping someone else achieve their goals could be time well spent on chasing your own dreams.

As graphic designers, freelancing and creating our own small business is usually a pretty common thought; it’s almost a given. Even if we don’t market ourselves as freelancers, I’m sure some of us have gotten into doing side jobs to put some extra cash in our pockets. Some designers just like to offer design services while others have full businesses revolving around clothing design or creating products, or perhaps partnering with someone else to offer more products and services.

Regardless of what it is that you do, in order to see some growth in your business you’ve got to figure out who you are targeting. Many of us may believe that our product is for everyone, but trying to get your product in front of everyone is going to be painful and expensive. What you want to do is figure out who you are specifically targeting, figure out that niche and put your efforts into them. Finding out more about them will help your effectiveness and eventually help your reach because once you know who you’re selling to, you’ll better know how to design for them.

Before we get started…

If you’ve never taken the time out to do some customer research, don’t go nuts now. Hopefully you have enough customers to try and figure it out, or perhaps you have developed your product or service far enough to know around about who you think you can pitch it to. The biggest mistake is to throw your product or service into everyone’s face and hope that they bite. That’s a part of working hard, but in business you want to work smart. So here are some things to get you started on figuring out who purchases and should be purchasing your product.

Who are they?

The first thing you have to figure out about your target audience is who they are. What kind of things do they do? What kind of music do they listen to? What products do they use? How old are they? The answers to these questions and many more will help you better understand the people you are designing for. Getting an understanding of these individuals helps you create with ease and make something you know will relate to them and end up communicating well.

As a young designer, I notice that I take an interest in flyers and brochures that relate to me with great design techniques, a clear message, and a professional look. I’ve also been known to brake for really creative ideas or illustrations and things of that nature. I like that type of thing, so for me it’s easy to want to create that type of thing but the truth is the audiences I sometimes end up designing for could probably care less about design and making things clean and professional. It sounds absurd but it’s true; you’ve got to relate to the audience.

Again, you have to know the target audience. If you or your client have no idea who you’re designing for, you’re really taking a stab in the dark and hoping and praying you come up with something. There are times when you may have a wide variety of people in your audience, but you’ve got to find a commonality between the majority of folks.

Do the research

Finding out more about your audience does not have to be rocket science and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. It’s not about how you get your information, but what questions you ask and what you decide to do with it. Let’s say for example, you run a brick and mortar t-shirt store. You’ve got a shirt design that sells really well, but you want to know how to create more like it. If you have a low volume of folks coming through, just ask them what attracts them to the particular shirt. Not only are you doing research here, but you’re making connections with your customers. If you have more volume, or you run an online store, create a quick and concise survey that asks the questions.

Also be aware that you’ve got to ask the right questions. If I want to know why people like that t-shirt design, I’m not going to ask them what size shirt they wear, I’m going to focus on the design. For example, why they like the design or what it means to them. You want to ask questions that will help you figure your audience out and help you make educated guesses on the things they’ll like in the future.

Keep in mind, demographic information is only useful to a certain extent. You still need to figure out what your audience likes and what they feel (as well as what they like to feel). Don’t get so caught up in asking the regular boring questions about age and income that you forget to ask about their interests as well.

New products may make it hard to figure out your target audience, but you can research similar products and do beta testing. With your beta testing, you can continue to survey your group of users not just on the effectiveness on the product, but about all things design-related as well. Also, keep in mind that who you intend to purchase your product is not always the same person who will purchase it. Oftentimes, we will have a big great idea and we feel like we know who’s going to buy it, but sometimes it doesn’t always go as we plan. This is why beta testing and gathering information are important.

What are you doing?

Once you feel like you have a good grasp on your target market, you need to have an even better grasp of what you’re trying to do or what it is you are trying to design for. If you are trying to sell a product or service, what are you trying to convey about that product or service?

When you come to this step it’s easy to want to set up some sort of feature-benefit analysis. This means, for example, if you are trying to sell your graphic design services, you may feature that you do great print design as well as web design, so your benefit is that you’re a “one-stop-shop.” That’s really nice, but you’ve got to be more than that. Try to highlight what you can do for them and not just your skill set. Say that your print designs have the ability to captivate the intended audience, not just that you can do print design. Say that your web designs allow users to connect with a company in ways that were never imagined. Say that your product isn’t just a product but it contributes to your life in much deeper ways.

Knowing what your target audience likes and is interested in will help you come up with these types of things much easier. It’s not wrong to display the features and the benefits—for some audiences that’s all you really need. But in a competitive market, you have to know what makes your audience react and whether or not your product or service has that.

Design basics

After you have gathered all your information and you feel like you’re understanding your purpose and your audience, then it’s time to do your designing. Just because you’re designing with greater intentions does not mean you forget any of your fundamentals. You must continue to incorporate all the theories of design so that you can make an effective piece of design.

The greatest fundamental theory that you cannot ever lose is be visual hierarchy. As a designer, you have to remember and understand that you have all the power of figuring out what your audience looks at when they look at a flyer or a package. Use that to your advantage in everything you do. This theory basically states that you create hierarchy or importance based on what is the biggest and what is the smallest. While that’s the first contributor, the second contributor is going to be placement. Your most important visual, whether it be a headline or a picture, should be above or at eye level. Putting it below eye level or out of the initial view is a complete and total waste of time.

With visual hierarchy, you want to keep in mind the layout, the balance of the layout, and good proximity. These are just the basics to ensure that you have some sort of order and cleanliness about whatever it may be you are designing. A lot of times, we want people to stop and notice something crazy we’ve done with a layout or something, but we shouldn’t be reinventing the wheel, we should just be making sure everything makes sense and is legible. You want whoever sees your visual to get the main points even if they’re only passing by.

Putting the two together

Knowing your fundamentals of graphic design is essential. That’s going to make sure your audience, whomever they may be, can understand what it is you are trying to say. The purpose in researching your audience and getting to know them is that when it is time to design, the visual speaks to them and gets them to move.

As I said before, as a graphic designer, I just want to do fun designs with crazy colors, cool shapes, and illustrations. For my own personal business that works, because I tend to cater to trendier, younger folks who are interested in trying new things. However, sometimes I get a client who is less interested in that. I sometimes get clients who are extremely corporate, so I have to pull myself in a bit as they aren’t interested at all in cool and crazy designs. I don’t bore them to death with my design, but I will make sure there is focus on what needs focus.

Many times we can get caught up in ourselves and what we want, but it has nothing to do with what we want, and everything to do with what the audience wants. If you feel like in your design you want to be extremely creative with what you’re doing, you have to have a purpose for that. You have to know that that is something your audience will respond to. Being unnecessarily creative and crazy can alienate a large portion of your target audience if that’s not what they are into.

The ultimate goal with whatever you are designing is to get the people to move. You have to relate to them in a way in which they get. If you are catering to 60+ year-olds, you’re not going to use pastel colors and illustrations to attract them. If you are trying to attract teenagers, you probably aren’t going to use earth tones and photos of older people to get them to do something. You have to know the demographic and, most importantly, the psychographics (how they think, feel, etc.). When you have a real understand of the psychographics you can get them to do anything. If you want them to feel excited about your product and elite for owning it, you should know how to convey that to them. You should also know that’s what they want to feel about your product.

Creating a visual doesn’t have to be extremely forward. You do want them to think about your product a bit and let it relate to them. Basically while you are worrying about your target or niche market, every so often you have a person that comes along that doesn’t fit any of your research, but you don’t want to shut them out completely. Use design to tap into making someone feel a certain way because that’s what gets people interested in your product or service.

Try to put yourself in their shoes—what would you like to see and what would you not like to see? Even if it’s unrelated to your product, put yourself in a consumer’s shoes. For example, I dislike picking up a flyer or seeing a site for a real estate agent and the only visual given is a nice glamor shot of the agent. What is that doing for me? How does that make me want to purchase property? Well, it doesn’t. If you were to create a visual and just have a picture of yourself or even just the product or service, how would that really make a customer want to make a purchase?

Designing your website

One of the most important visuals you will have and use, is your website. Some people are just going to stumble on it and want more information, and some are going to go to your website specifically in an attempt to gain more information. You have to keep your research consistent with the visuals on your website. Part of your research should indicate why customers come to your website and what they desire from the site.

Many designers and owners believe a website’s sole purpose is to tell everyone about your product or service and why it’s completely awesome. Well, I beg to differ. A website is supposed to be an extension of your business and should be used to communicate with current customers as well as potential customers. Keep it consistent with your target market and make yourself available on your website.

Make sure you have a clear message on your site—if you sell several products try to highlight one. If you have several different services highlight one or highlight the reasons why people keep coming back; create a feeling. No matter the demographics of your audience, your website should be clear and consistent.

More on research

As graphic designers and/or as business owners, we have to learn how to understand marketing tactics as well as research. Determining a target market doesn’t take a lot, but you do want to make sure you’re doing it in a way that suits your needs. Your business and your clients depend on the visuals you make—if they end up being non-effective, that tends to be a direct reflection of your work. Once again, you want to make sure you are working smart (by doing your research and utilizing it), rather than working hard (creating a bunch of blind visuals hoping someone picks it up).

It can sometimes be a tough concept to understand, so I’ve added some pretty solid and helpful resources.

• How to Define Your Target Market
• What to Ask When Designing For a Target Audience
• Conducting Market Research
• How to Do Market Research

Kendra Gaines is a freelance designer from Virginia, USA. Connect with her.

Have you had experience switching from a large audience to selecting your target? What was your experience?

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Today, the web offers us a myriad of solutions and methods for delivering information to a wide audience on demand.

Options include Flash, PDF, video, photo slideshows and jQuery. No matter which format you choose, the presentation itself needs to be compelling, easy to follow and compatible with multiple devices to have the most impact.

A web presentation designed using modern techniques offers a high level of interaction, fast loading times and responsiveness that a desktop presentation cannot provide. However, the format you choose for your presentation matters little if the presentation itself is not effective. Here are some guidelines to follow to ensure your presentation is memorable and conveys the message you want it to:

1. Keep it short and sweet

Strip the fluff out of your presentation, and get down to the stuff that matters. If you will be speaking or narrating, the majority of what you want to communicate should come from you personally. Use your presentation slides to highlight key messages and topics using as little text as possible.

2. Style tastefully

A pleasing design and focused layout can help define the overall purpose of your presentation. You have the power to direct the visitor’s eyes where you want them to go as you design each slide. Choose backgrounds that provide sufficient contrast and do not interfere with text. Maintain a consistent color palette and stick to colors that are not hard on the eyes.

3. Use bold typography and proper hierarchy

Your presentation must be readable on a variety of devices. Use a small number of complimentary fonts for their weight and style, and use effects such as gradients or shadows to help set them apart from the background.

4. Illustrate your point

Charts, infographics, photography and art can demonstrate what you don’t have room to say with text, or add emphasis to the topic. Don’t be afraid to inject a little humor here and there if appropriate to your subject.

5. Give your reader control

Always allow your readers to move between slides or pause your presentation. Slide-show style solutions usually include a set of controls – build similar controls into your HTML presentations or any format that does not use an embedded player.

Making it happen

You have several options for creating and displaying the presentation on your website. You could use your web design skills to create a presentation in Photoshop, and then upload it to Flickr or Picasa to create an image slideshow, but your presentation will lack any interactivity. You could create a basic presentation in Keynote or PowerPoint and upload it to a sharing service, but then you limit your viewership to those with the right browser plugins.

Another option is to create your slides using HTML and CSS, then present them through individual web pages, a PDF or jQuery slideshow. HTML presentations designed with accessibility and responsive techniques excel over any other option by virtue of being truly scalable and available to anyone, anywhere, on any device. Enhance this option by offering a download version for viewing offline.

Below are a handful of free resources for creating stunning presentations in a variety of formats.

Prezi

Prezi is a truly unique presentation editor for creating dynamic and multi-dimensional slides using text, images, videos or documents. Viewers can zoom in and out to inspect each high-resolution element in a very intuitive interface. The drawback? Prezi is a Flash solution that will not benefit viewers on iOS devices.

Google Docs

Google Docs provides a clean and simple interface for creating slideshows and presentations with features similar to what you find in Keynote or PowerPoint. Presentations can be shared with individuals, specific groups, or sent to Google+ .Google’s Publish feature allows you to embed the presentation into any webpage via an iframe, and uses the browser’s native capabilities for displaying slides. The downside is not having access to Google’s font library, forcing you to use images for a majority of the slide design.

Empressr

Empressr is a rich media presentation tool that allows you to include video, text, images or audio for a fully featured experience. Empressr hosts your presentation free and offers direct sharing to a number of platforms or embedding for your website. As an added benefit, Empressr provides analytics for tracking presentation views. Empressr files are created in Flash and there is no option for downloading.

280 Slides

280 Slides can create presentations from a number of existing file types, or offers a user-friendly interface for creating one from scratch. Images and video from services like Flickr and YouTube can be included through the built-in media search, or you can add your own. The font selection is a little broader than Google Docs, but you will still find yourself limited to designing slides locally and then uploading them for the best results. Presentations are converted to PowerPoint format on download or shared directly to SlideShare, another Flash slideshow option.

PreZentit

PreZentit is a fantastic solution for creating cross-browser compatible HTML presentations. Team members can be invited to collaborate on the presentation with you in real-time and you choose if your presentation is public or private. Each presentation gets its own URL and can be shared or embedded anywhere, or you can download to edit offline and upload to your own server.

Create Your Own

If you really want to show off your skills and stun your audience, create your own presentation using your web design skills. Jeffrey Way provides an excellent tutorial for building slides from HTML and CSS in this Nettuts article. He builds each page with HTML, embedded fonts and images, and then uses a combination of Ajax, jQuery and CSS3 techniques to produce elegant and interactive slides that are compatible with any browser or screen size. This technique is a sure winner if you are comfortable with using JavaScript.

Written exclusively for Webdesigner Depot by Vail Joy. She is a freelance designer and tech blogger with a deep interest in all things web-related. She also enjoys writing for WIX, the free website builder.

What online slideshow and presentation software do you use? Let us know in the comments!

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Certainly social media has taken business by storm. People are still in a quandary about how it works, despite proven stats and ROI. Some companies do it on the cheap and some throw millions into it. It seems odd that so many people can’t see what social media is all about – being social!

When I hear someone say, “I don’t like Facebook,” I think, “enjoy the rest of the 20^th century and I’ll catch up with you later…maybe!”

It is, of course, more serious than that. If you’re not keeping in touch with old friends and former coworkers, you are letting your network die and, as many articles keep pounding into our heads, your network is the most important way to get work. As with the occasional phone call to a close friend to see if they’re still alive, sharing some news and laughs and just showing them that you care, social media is the new phone call—it’s how we are social now. It’s important and cannot be ignored.

Your network

There are too many articles out there about the importance of having a strong network, so I won’t elaborate too much. Suffice it to say that if you aren’t keeping in touch with the people you know, you are losing valuable contacts. We all have friends that we forget to call every now and then. When we have a chance meeting with them in the street, it’s an awkward moment of lying about being “too busy” or “I was thinking about you the other day.” Admit that it happens to you, too. That relationship is weakened or broken either through the embarrassment of having been caught in not caring enough or using the age-old excuse.

The importance of Facebook connections, at least in my case with old friends and former coworkers is that I can continue to tease them and show I care in just a few minutes a day. I’m at my computer 18 hours a day, so why not use it to reach out? LinkedIn, while more business oriented is another important network but it goes beyond people we know or have known. As with Twitter, with whom do you connect?

Creatives tend to be drawn together in life and on social media. We follow other creatives, connect with them and spend an inordinate amount of time-sharing our work, dreams and disappointments. Misery does love company but how much time is spent on this commiseration as opposed to searching for solid business contacts?

When it comes to business, other designers aren’t the number one source of work for us as freelancers or referrals. The dark side of relying too much on connections with other designers is that they can sabotage others. People can be petty and the current financial and competitive environment is fierce. Learn to trust your own efforts!

While your trusted friends, whether designers or “normal” people, are great connections and should be treasured and nurtured, you need to seek out those who BUY your services.

Facebook

I’ve had friends who’ve used Facebook ads for their business. While FB demographics certainly make up business owners and executives, no one seems to have been successful using Facebook as a marketing tool. If you’re Coke or Toshiba, then Facebook fan pages will be a necessity but for the design business time is scarce for properly using social media, so use Facebook for keeping in touch with your friends and family. Taking time to update a FB fan page takes away from other social media channels that will be better for lead generation.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a purely business site and douche bag hangout. After a while you’ll learn who is legitimate. Most people are there to do business networking. You will get a fair share of requests for free work and spam for energy drinks, real estate in Costa Rica and vitamin supplement pyramid schemes but you can also connect with some legitimate heavy hitters.

Build a list of a hundred dream clients. Search companies, identify the right people (not the CEO; try people who are in a position to book design projects) and build a list. Make sure you respond to every accepted connection with a personal note (via LinkedIn) to thank people for connecting with you and include your site URL for “more on me.”

LinkedIn has thousands of groups you can join and even more “questions” that you can answer for awards for “best answer.” Search for questions on marketing and answer how design helps marketing initiatives or advertising. Become an expert in the eyes and minds of possible leads who will need your services. There are some members of LinkedIn that like to give one-sentence answers that usually make no sense or don’t even address the question. They like to have the “most questions answered” title for all to see. Their reputations aren’t the best on the site so think quality and not quantity! Good, sound answers show others you are knowledgeable about your field. Building trust with prospects is an important step in gaining new clients.

Groups allow you to create closer connections with prospective clients. Are you going to join the “Lovers of Joomla” site or the “Small Business Marketing Ideas” group? The latter is filled with people who need your services. The idea of marketing yourself is to reach out to prospective clients, not to be friends with other creatives. Leave that for local design group bitch sessions. The biggest mistake a creative makes is failing to network which, in its most simple state, is sales or selling yourself and your service. If you attended a college or university for the art program, you will have an alumni group that will contain members that were not art students and they have businesses that need design services. So, why not urge them to use a fellow graduate? Surely you talked to other people at that school… right?

Were you a member of a fraternity or sorority? Your brothers and sisters are no doubt members of a LinkedIn group. If not, then start a group. Starting a group puts you in charge and number one in the spotlight.

Here’s a handy infographic to get you started!

Twitter

I once explained what Twitter is to a client in very simple terms: It’s a billboard you pass at 70 miles per hour on the information highway!

For creatives, Twitter is only good for driving traffic to your site or blog. Twitter is also only as strong as your followers or ability to hashtag tweets to the right people. I know this sounds easy but it’s not.

Most people on Twitter follow back without thought. This may lead to quantity but not quality. Unfortunately, as with everything listed to this point, designers tend to huddle together and follow each other. Do you want your competition showing up on your follow list when a prospective client is checking out your Twitter profile?

As with LinkedIn, make your Twitter follow building the people you want to reach. While my “Speider” account follows creatives and design publications, I won’t follow back “daily deal sites,” “insurance agents,” “real estate agents” or “fitness and diet gurus.” For my design Twitter account, these are the prospects that get followed back because they buy design services. See how that works?

When I add a new campaign to my site I worked on for a client, I tweet about that to this list. I will also hashtag (# symbol, such as #business branding #real estate advertising, etc.) to reach out to those who follow those interests.

Both LinkedIn and Twitter have intuitive feedback that help you connect, join groups, hashtag to hot trends and see who is following you or viewing your profile. Use this information to connect with the right people!

Blogging

We are in a Googled world of information flying left and right. With sites like Stumbleupon and Digg, just to name two, and aggregators by the dozens, your blog will cross someone’s path at some point, either via a shared link, Facebook “like,” or just showing up in a search for some odd term. The key is to bring that person BACK to your blog again and again.

At my last full time job, people complained that I sent too many links every day. I would send out interesting product ideas or inspirational pieces to people in my department for the good of our company and business. Blogging wasn’t as popular as it is now (this was only seven or eight years ago, mind you) and I was receiving a weekly email blast from a design studio, which they called “The Hip-O-Meter.” It simply had three entries of interesting products or links, which weren’t even done by the studio. There was “Hip,” “Hipper” and “Hippest.” They followed it with a short blurb about something the studio had created as an ad for their services. Simple and brilliant. They touted that the e-newsletter, which was only type, went out to four thousand people. I was inspired but took it to the next level.

Taking all of the daily links I would send out, I created an e-newsletter with an embedded animated gif header, designed separators for each entry and drew together a dozen or so links of unique ads, products and other interesting stuff that would provide inspiration for our company business. Each Monday morning, the “Innovation Lounge,” as I called it, would go out to the department email list. Within a couple of months, it was going company wide solely through requests from different departments. The power of viral blogging that was shared by workers at this twenty-five thousand-person company and distribution grew. Workers even shared it with people outside the company.

When I was laid off from the company (that’s a whole other article in itself!), I branded my new freelance-self and started a similar blog, using Twitter, Stumbleupon, Yahoo and Google to drive traffic with links to the new entries, email blasts to former coworkers and other connections and created an opt-in list for new subscribers aside from those subscribing to the RSS feed. Thanks to the viral nature of the web, the blog garnered over seven hundred unique hits on days new content was published.

The downside was it took a LOT of time and research. When my branding changed (yet another article… which is actually out there on someone else’s blog), I abandoned the blog but every now and then I check the stats and it still gets between fifty and two-hundred hits per day due to the tags and images.

The key to this blog is that it was aimed at prospective clients. As with the “Hip-O-Meter,” it contained an ad for my services at the end of each entry. If I spotlighted vending machines, the ad focused on my studio’s ability to do work along that line and so on.

The mistake many designers make with their blogs is they focus on design issues and techniques that only appeal to other designers. Other designers do not buy your services, so it’s a waste of time. Focus your efforts on business and not fame among peers.

Blogging is a great way to reach prospects but very labor intensive. This is why many firms start to ignore their blogs – they don’t want to have an employee using their time to update the content or pay for someone to dedicate the time and effort. I have several clients that pay me to write blog posts for them. The big danger with a blog is having it show that it hasn’t been updated for months or over a year. It reflects badly on you and your company. Update it at least once a week, even if it’s just one little blurb. Ignore it and it is a blot on your company’s ability to keep up with marketing, which is not a good sign in our business.

Direct mail

Yes, what’s old is new again! I traded my blogging in for something less time-intensive but a little more expensive – direct mail. I created a “wish list” of one hundred dream clients (and about 100 other people with whom I wanted to keep in touch) and send out a greeting card format card with examples of work and a funny message. At first I sent out one a month for the first six months. After that it was one every three months. Due to costs, it’s about twice to three times a year now but I hear back from people how they “loved” the card and either show it to other people or it’s made the prominent place of being tacked to their bulletin board. Being in plain sight is one of the best advertisements as it reminds clients about you and other people will see it and take a look. Referrals from these cards have grown my mailing list.

Some figures on mailings are startling. The average person opens 14% – 28% of all email. 48% of all snail mail is opened but 98% of greeting cards are opened…and opened first! As with blogging and other social media, it’s important to balance time + effort + costs to equal a return on investment (ROI).

Fun images showing your work will get posted on people’s bulletin boards, so think of using interesting designs for direct mail pieces, like the ones below.

Face-to-face

Never forget the power of actually meeting people. This gets back to “your network” and you need to spend time building and replenishing that network.

It’s hard for creatives to properly network. First: we have to talk to people who are not other creatives. Second: we are strange, which adds to our creativity. If I had to make a list for creatives to follow in social networking situations, I would have the following important rules:

• Listen more, talk less. The more you talk, the greater the chance you’ll say something strange and upset the people you want to impress.
• Let your work do your talking for you! Why hand out a business card when you can hand our a set of images and let people faun over it? Don’t print up letter-sized promotional pieces as people like things they can just put in their pockets. Why not think “flash cards” and create a small set of images that are business card-sized to hand out?
• Ask about the person you are meeting. People love to talk about themselves. Once they have finished talking about their business, one of the best answers I have ever heard in response to listening to someone who has just finished pontificating about what they do is, “I help businesses like yours!”
• Don’t tell them too much. Give them the snappy answer mentioned above and then hand them your samples. Tell them you provide marketing services for business. Either they will nod and walk away or they will tell you about something they need. BINGO!
• Don’t dress TOO creatively. A nice weird pair of shoes is a focal point. Purple Mohawks, studded leather jackets with tartan pants and jackboots are a bit much for the business crowd. Remove the piercings, hide the tattoos and look just like the people you are trying to reach. You aren’t “selling out,” you’re selling!

Two or three minutes per person and then move on. Most people have something called “the elevator speech.” It’s called that because you spend approximately thirty to sixty seconds in an elevator. If you had to turn to the person next to you and tell them what you do in that short time, what would you say? Practice it and keep it simple. It can be as simple as, “I design marketing and business solutions for businesses via web sites and graphic design.”

They ask you the inevitable question of, “how much does it cost?”

The answer has to be another question. “It depends on your needs.”

Some people believe that if you mention an hourly rate, it separates the truly interested people from the freeloaders and saves you time and effort. Unfortunately, when pitching creative services, it’s best to back up fees after the proposal has been made. It let’s people see the value and when pitching your work to any client, found through any social network, it’s important to show value.

In conclusion…

All of the avenues mentioned in this article are dovetailed to work together. One is not better than the others and some just may not be necessary for what you want to accomplish. Any small business needs to advertise, market, brand and reach out to prospective clients. Target your clients and go after them. The idea is to use what works best for your needs, keep at it and make everything count towards gaining clients and business. When you don’t have actual paying work, use the time to market yourself but use it wisely!

Written by Speider Schneider. He is a former member of The Usual Gang of Idiots at MAD Magazine and has designed products for Disney/Pixar, Warner Bros., Harley-Davidson, ESPN, Mattel, DC and Marvel Comics, Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon among other notable companies. Speider is a former member of the board for the Graphic Artists Guild, co-chair of the GAG Professional Practices Committee and a former board member of the Society of Illustrators. Follow him on Twitter @speider

What social media channels have you found effective for your business? Which ones are not effective? What do you think of the media outlets mentioned in this article?

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Does this design fall in line with the overall theme of the company?

Does this design ‘say’ what the company tries to say?

In some instances and with some clients, you don’t even have to make a ‘great’ design, however, you are expected to make something that would be well received by the company and their audience.

Being aware of this is being aware of the branding of a company.

What is branding and why is it important?

A quick lesson on branding: Companies should be trying to brand their company (especially if they believe they have a unique service or product to offer). The benefits of branding are often long term, but include customer qualities like loyalty, memorability familiarity and at some point, your marketing expenses will significantly decrease because an audience is already familiar with you. All that stuff sounds good, HOWEVER, the catch is that the company is not in direct control of the brand. In a nutshell, branding is the perceived emotional image of a company as a whole and, in its simplest form, has nothing to do with things like logos and stationary as many designers will lead you to believe.

Branding is a fairly complicated subject because typically the company’s management and the designer are trying to figure out how to brand the company, or how to find a way in which the company will be unique and find a place in the customers mind; but it’s really not about what the management and the designer want, branding really relies on the perception of the audience. So the next question is, ‘How do you find out what your audience is thinking?’

The answer is pretty simple: by doing marketing research—in its simplest form, this could be a survey sent to past customers asking them their perception of the company. The main goal here is to understand your audience and what they think about your company. The next step is how to capitalize (or fix) that perception. That’s branding!

Why is branding necessary?

Every good company should be trying to create a brand and not just creating a company or a nice product. A nicely branded company has placement in your mind–when you think of innovation, perhaps you think of Apple Products. When you think of graphic design, you may automatically think of Adobe Products or Photoshop directly. These are just examples of what good branding is and how they create an attachment with their audience.

When you create a business without really throwing attempts at branding it, your audience will kind of lose sight of it and most times think of it as a copycat business or nothing to really write home about. Worst of all, you may not have an audience at all! The best way to find out if your client is serious, is to ask them what they would like their brand to be perceived as. If they don’t have a decent answer (that makes sense: saying ‘We want to be the next Photoshop’ doesn’t count), then they aren’t serious about their business and desire no long term success.

Brand recognition and consistency

The ultimate goal of a company, is to win the hearts and minds of your consumers. Once you’ve done that, you have achieved what is called ‘brand recognition.’ This means your audience knows the company well enough to know what they may or may not say, and what they may or may not look like.

As a designer, you try to help with the recognized look of a company. For example, if you see a red bullseye, you may automatically think of Target Stores. If you are a designer working with Target Stores, you better believe you aren’t designing something using predominately blue squares—that’s just not that brand. You want to create something that is consistent and adds to a company’s brand and if you are working with a company that does not have an established brand, you want to create something that works within the views of the company. For example, if I’m working with a brand new music studio start up that wants to focus on traditional country music, I’m not going to give them something that looks like it was made for a pop star.

Consistency is absolutely key if a company wants an audience to recognize them. Recognition also works in a way that creates placement in a persons thought patterns. This recognition and placement can work positively for one company and maybe even negatively for another. For example, some people think that Volvos are some of the safest cars or Chevrolets are gas guzzling machines—positive and negative effects. In another example, a car might try to brand itself as a super safe car, but an audience may feel its safety features aren’t better than a Volvo, so they just end up getting a Volvo.

Once your audience has clamped on to that recognition or that placement, if it’s positive, you want to do everything you can to continue with it. If it’s negative you want to do everything you can to change it. Recognition and placement for brands can end up pushing sales harder than any marketing or advertising plan.

How designers contribute to brand consistency

Design is only a small portion of branding. Creating a super sweet logo and letterhead doesn’t mean a ton if the consumer doesn’t have a great perception of the company. However, good brand design can help build a solid foundation for a brand. If the brand is to be known for their scholastic wealth and achievements, you want to create something that gives off that feeling. If a brand has a product that is designed to make the consumer happy, don’t create or use anything that could do otherwise. Pick an idea or feeling and nail that down as best as possible.

Designers can also contribute to branding through creating work that is consistent with the views and perception of the clients company. Something all designers (and companies, for that matter) must understand is good design equals good quality. When you really brand something in a consumers mind, it can really stand out for ever, for example color schemes and logos are really memorable and help create a good foundation or start of branding. You want to keep this in mind so that you make something that can be EASILY remembered, rather than easily forgotten. When you are working for a company that isn’t quite new and isn’t quite old, just try to create something that follows along with the design and perception that they already have going on. There’s no need to re-invent the wheel (of course unless asked) but you should think of more creative ways to get across the same message they have.

Most of the branding should come from the company—what do they stand for, what do the sell, who do they cater too—so hopefully for a good designer, branding should be a breeze, as far as logos and color schemes go. Designers can also contribute not just by the design but by the way in which the design and/or the company is presented. For example, if a company sells a product that needs packaging, what is the best kind of packaging for that product and how is it designed? Or even simply, should a company have a tri-fold brochure or just a simple sell sheet. Though minute, these things have a ton to do with how a company is perceived and remembered.

Further Reading

Branding isn’t a simple task, but once you really start to research things and understand what your client’s audience is looking for, then you can be extremely successful in this area. If you want to be really great with branding, check out some of these articles:

• Branding, Identity & Logo Design Explained
• A Practical Guide to Branding
• What is a Brand?
• The First Step of Building an Awesome Brand
• Brand, Innovation & Design (Presentation)

Kendra Gaines is a freelance designer from Virginia, USA. Connect with her.

What are some ways you as a designer, have helped contribute to the branding of a company?

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Cutting the bar code by half, in height and width, was celebrated as a major advance in the much-needed item used for scanning the price by, at best, only half the retailers, seems so petty and foolish now.

When printers discovered you didn’t need to place the codes on white boxes, we rejoiced at not having the little lines popping out on what were beautiful covers, interrupted by alien chunks of absurdity. Again, it seems odd no one had discovered this fact for all the years bar codes had been used.

When we discovered that we could play with the bar codes, making fun little designs and jokes; we wondered why something so simple had escaped us for so long. We reveled in the design challenge of playing with the codes while still keeping them functional.

Not long ago The QR Code appeared and changed instant information access via a scanner. Created by Toyota subsidiary, Denso Wave in 1994 to track vehicles during the manufacturing process, they didn’t enforce their patent and everyone has been able to generate their own codes for private and professional use. The little black squares that reminds people of a crossword puzzle, very much like the bar code, was quickly evolved to show the capabilities of a 30% error correction rate when people started designing the codes to accommodate logos and other information (read more here on our article on QR design).

As always, technology marches on. The newest roadside diner on the digital highway is the SnapTag.

SnapTag technology is really no different than a QR Code with a couple of exceptions: Consumers with either a standard or smart camera phone can snap and send a picture of the SnapTag to a designated short code or scan the SnapTag using a SnapTag Reader App to instantly access offers, content, promotions, and information whereas the QR Code needs a smart camera phone with a reader app. By driving activation via text or e-mail the SnapTag adds a CRM element that can then drive a mobile opt-in vs. simply sending a user to a pre-determined location via a QR code, which will also make analytics easier to track. The second thing is; SnapTags are not free.

The Social SnapTag is the product of Denver, CO-based SpyderLynk, whose focus is “connecting brands with mobile marketing opportunities.” SnapTags are rings, with visual information aligned in a pattern of bars and breaks, that tell a reader app what content to pull up. And where the SnapTag is unique is that each tag also has an SMS short code, so people who don’t have smart phones can send and receive text messages that will connect them with a campaign. The SnapTag is a technology that rivals the QR code, but offers specific benefits to marketers who want to reach specific users and demographics through targeted campaigns. Unlike Denso, Spyderlynk is not about to let the technology be generated all over the web for anyone to use.

There’s no denying that the SnapTag is a better looking version of the QR code, because its simple ring wraps around a company’s logo, for automatic visual recognition. Marketers who are using SnapTags would probably agree, along with other differences. Whether inside the ring or outside, the design capabilities are easier than the QR Code.

While marketers may be in a rush to capitalize on growing awareness of QR codes, it’s going to be a while before they hit critical mass. SpyderLynk CMO, Jane McPherson, says that “a significant, but small percentage of the American public have a smart phone with a QR code reader app on it. Just 35 percent of U.S. mobile phone subscribers in the U.S. have a smart phone, and of those, just 17 percent have a QR code reader app. Everyone with any kind of phone at this point has the ability to use SMS.”

Orbit gum recently produced 1 million packages of its chewing gum with SnapTags. When people snap the tag, or text their information, they can be entered to win great Orbit prizes. Of course, to get the full benefit of the SnapTag, you still need to download the app, just as with QR codes.

SpyderLynk founder, Nicole Skogg, was looking at a pair of shoes in a magazine, and would have bought them on the spot if she had access to the Internet. She did have her phone on her though, which is where the idea of the Snap Tag first took off. Skoggs, whose background is in lighting and optics used this knowledge to develop the ring method for storing information. On the back-end, the SpyderLynk platform matches the ring with a specific marketing initiative, and serves up the right campaign on demand.

Still, not a huge difference from the soon to be antiquated QR but enough of one to help the SnapTag reign supreme until something new comes along to fill the gap between smart phone and non-smart phone. Rest assured… something will, but the accessibility of the QR Code to anyone may never be found in any emerging replacement.

Speider Schneider is a former member of The Usual Gang of Idiots at MAD Magazine and has designed products for Disney/Pixar, Warner Bros., Harley-Davidson, ESPN, Mattel, DC and Marvel Comics, Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon among other notable companies. Speider is a former member of the board for the Graphic Artists Guild, co-chair of the GAG Professional Practices Committee and a former board member of the Society of Illustrators. Follow him on Twitter @speider

Have you incorporated QR codes into your marketing yet? What were your results? Do you think SnapTags are the “next big thing” and how do you feel about having to pay for the technology to have such tools for your own usage?

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We would laugh at, be upset with, and critique most of the million dollar spots. Even though I was more interested in designing and directing print ads, I figured it couldn’t hurt to contribute to an upcoming topic and knock back a few brews.

Either way, once the final quarter ended and the winners celebrated by dumping Gatorade on their coach, I always felt unsatisfied. I know football isn’t my sport of choice, but most times the commercials were lackluster (and the half-time shows have been the pits). Most times I found myself making excuses for the commercials; “oh, that’s great for their target audience” or “oh, it was only a 15 second spot.”

Then it hit me one day after discussing the commercials with my baby-boomer mom. We were just talking about a pretty terrible commercial when she responded, “Yea, y’know commercials just ain’t what they used to be.”

While she probably said it flippantly, today, she is absolutely right—advertising as we know it just isn’t the same, and it’s truly on it’s last breath. Here’s my take on why…

Technology is changing

It may just be me and my peers but we rarely watch television. I mean, we get into the big events, but we aren’t that into a specific series, and if we are fans of a series we’ll catch it “On Demand” or on Hulu with a fraction of the commercials. Perhaps we’re too busy to care.

It’s not a huge deal because people are still obviously watching some shows and most networks are finding new ways to monetize their company. However, the issue is not the show or the network, it’s the viewer and their growing immunity to these commercial breaks.

I recall in some science class, we talked about how farmers use pesticides to try and kill the insects that were eating up their crops. Through evolution and adaptation, the bugs were becoming more and more able to resist the pesticides—they had gotten used to them. Farmers would make stronger pesticides, but the bugs kept multiplying and leaving offspring that were getting stronger and more immune to the chemicals.

Now, I’m no scientist, but I’d say the general population has reached a point where we are almost immune to commercials. I mean, half the time, we get up and do something else anyway. And most of these commercials are using the same tactics anyway (which we’ll get into a little later). We know all too well that it’s coming so we attempt to avoid it. And while I’m targeting television, it doesn’t work too hot across other media either. Internet banner ads and text ads are losing a bit of their sting as well.

Why? Technology is changing. People are spending less time on the couch and more time at the desk. Social media is the new trend and folks don’t want to be just sold to, they want to be interacted with (and we’ll also get into this point later). People want a good reason to go out and purchase a company’s product or service over your competition, and the fact that a company can give you a good laugh doesn’t necessarily give a company an edge. Companies have to make sure their audience frequents whatever media they’re looking into and why their audience is there. Slapping a commercial together and hoping someone will hear it or see it just won’t do.

It’s all the same

Now once again, this could be my own solid issue, but if I seriously see another company try to sell me something by using dry humor, I’m going to go nuts. I haven’t seen a good commercial in a while—one that both makes sense and is effective. It’s almost like everyone figured out being funny was cool and they just went with it. Little do companies know, that past that good chuckle, half of us still aren’t running to your places of business and buying two of whatever it is you’re advertising.

Humor is good and works in some situations but I think companies mix up a response to an ad with the effectiveness of an ad. Most ads try to draw us in with a story line, sprinkle on some humor, and then BAM—the product shot. For example, I think this Sonic commercial is absolutely hilarious—probably because I’m catching the subtle innuendos here, but hilarious nonetheless. I just wonder what it has to do with hot dogs. While I’m a fan of Sonic, the commercial doesn’t do much for me other than make me laugh.

What I’m trying to say is, advertising has straight up lost its creativity. Even if the hook isn’t the go-to humor, you’ve got sex in ads that never really need it, ads that are solely product glamor shots, or something that’s already been done a million times. And because of that, the general population is not amused (remember that immunity thing we talked about?). It’s one thing to recognize an ad or company because it’s funny, but it’s another thing to remember the company because the commercial actually stuck and drew something out of you.

The dagger is branding

Companies, especially new ones, just do not understand the importance of branding. It isn’t just picking a logo and colors, and it is no longer the ability to just inundate our media with commercials for products and services. Most want to put together an ad campaign and hope that we’ll watch TV at that time and giggle so hard that we’ll buy something from them. Hell, sometimes it works, but what a company needs to be sustainable is customer loyalty.

And this is where branding (specifically cult branding) comes into play. Customers today really desire a connection; there’s got to be a reason to use your product other than it works. We want to feel like the company understands us, our needs, and our lifestyle so much so that it feels like they cater directly to us. The way a company brands themselves and positions themselves in someone’s mind truly determines how a customer will react to them. Companies have to figure out what makes themselves and their audience unique and how to cater to those people, and create a brand out of that.

When you think about cult brands, it’s easiest for us designers to relate to Apple products. Steve Jobs does a great job at really romanticizing many of the Apple product features, but notice he never brands his products as a feature-benefit type of deal. He tells you how great and unique this product is and how it’s going to not just change your life, but change the way the world does this kind of product. So you don’t just have the ability to purchase and own a neat cell phone, but you’ve got the opportunity to be the first to have this cutting edge technology, to stand out amongst your friends, and frankly, be better than them. And their regular advertisements are more like party flyers and announcements than commercials. You get to see the product in action, how it contributes to your life, and figure our where to go check it out. But that’s not where it stops. Mac has events, conferences, pretty exceptional customer service, and much more. Owning Apple products is less about owning a phone or a tablet or a computer, and more about owning a lifestyle.

Regardless of how you feel about Apple’s products specifically, all companies could take some notes on their techniques.

So, when’s the funeral?

Advertising as we know it (TV commercials, radio, commercials, print, and some web) is no longer going to cut it, especially by itself.

Campaigns are going to have to draw customers into a brand and lifestyle or something greater than just a product or service. I will say, it’s a bit easier for older companies—they’ll get repeat customers just because of their age and reputation, but the newer companies are really going to have to take some time and figure out what makes them new and unique and cater to that small niche so that it can grow.

I remember our first family computer back in the 90s was a Macintosh and folks laughed at us—now, 20 years later, Apple practically rules the technology world and folks laugh at you when you don’t have a Mac. Advertising as a cut-and-dry proposition is dead and gone. Clearly, putting in extra time and effort now is a requirement, much like it was in the early days of advertising.

Kendra Gaines is a freelance designer from Virginia, USA. Connect with her.

What do you think is going to be the next wave of EFFECTIVE advertising? Are you tired of the funny commercials, or is it just me?

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Having worked with a ton of design and development professionals in the field, I’ve seen that some of the most successful, most productive and busiest contractors have a blog attached to their main website or portfolio. Surprised? You shouldn’t be. By not having a blog, you could be missing out on some serious contract work.

A blog could be one of your most powerful assets in getting your name out there and securing new jobs. In fact, considering how simple it is to get started, the extremely low startup costs and the minimum of time required to create compelling content, I’m baffled as to why designers don’t consider it a priority when running their freelance business.

Here are the top three reasons why you, the budding (or even experienced) designer, need to start a blog (and sooner rather than later).

1. Marketing and promotion

Your blog could end up being the best darned thing since sliced bread for marketing your business and promoting your work. How hard would it be to take 5 to 10 minutes a day and share some of your work in a blog post? How hard would it be to post a screenshot with a blurb and to discuss your design philosophy?

Not very. A blog promotes both you and your work. It also enables you to leverage the power of social networks such as Twitter and Facebook, where people will share your work for you.

Your next client could be a tweet or Facebook update away. They are looking for the type of work that you’re passionate about and the style that you’re known for. A static portfolio won’t cut it.

Use your blog as a channel for promotion and marketing. Install a plug-in that enables you to share your content even more broadly, such as Jetpack for WordPress. Or use a WordPress theme (such as Standard Theme) that has a sweet sidebar for social sharing:

Here are a few tips to get started:

• Set a goal
  Commit to blogging a few times a week. Three times is great. Every day is even better.
• Start simple
  Choose sensible categories, and get started. The more relevant the categories to your blog, the better; they will also help you create content. A “Design” category is not specific enough. Go deeper: for example, “Fonts” and “Typography.”
• Post images
  And do it every single time. People want to see your work, remember?
• Publish
  At the end of the day, you have to click that dreaded “Publish” button. Go for it! No one’s looking (at least not yet).

With your blog launched, you can start passively (and strategically) marketing who you are. A blog tells people that you love what you do enough to share it with the world.

2. Search engines

A blog is usually more accessible and search-engine friendly than a static portfolio, especially if the portfolio is a Flash-based PHP script that you bought for $15 back in 2009. You need something better for people who are performing organic searches to find you.

A blog can do just that. By creating text, images and video related to the work that you do, you’ll get visitors who find you from organic search results. All else being equal, a blogger will get more traffic than someone with a static portfolio. And more traffic means more exposure with potential clients, and more exposure means more paying projects.

(Image: Google)

Simply by creating and maintaining the blog, you will achieve the following:

• More pages indexed by Google and the other major search engines.
• More fresh content that will be in front of people searching on Google.
• A more keyword-rich website that targets the clients you want to work with.
• A dynamic place to grow your SEO strategy (although the blog will do much of the work for you in the beginning).

By blogging, you exist to Google (and other search engines). And by existing to Google, you exist to future clients.

3. Direct income

This strategy is becoming more and more popular as experienced designers realize how potentially lucrative their blogs are. Your blog could be a significant source of direct income, aside from being a marketing channel for your work.

The most obvious strategy in this regard is advertising: using the sidebar space to sell advertisements. On blogs with great content and a healthy subscriber base, advertising space can sell for hundreds or thousands of dollars a month. Consider what you’d do with another few hundred bucks in your pocket, money that you’ve earned merely from spending a few moments every day talking about what you love?

(Image: ceekay)

Another effective strategy is affiliate marketing, which basically means telling your audience about products and services that you already love and use. Let’s say you love Photoshop CS5 and the rest of Adobe’s products, and you constantly talk about them on your blog. If you share an affiliate link to CS5, and someone purchases the product through that link, you’ll get a nice little check in the mail! Do this often and you may find that the blog covers its own costs (and then some).

It’s no secret that affiliate marketing works, but do you recognize it as a simple way to leverage your blog for additional revenue?

Here is one simple way to get started:

1. Sign up for Amazon’s affiliates program.
2. Identify applications and products that you use and love.
3. Blog about them in a few of your posts. Don’t just put up spammy links: talk about how you use them, why you love them and why your readers should try them, too.
4. Rinse and repeat.

If anyone makes a purchase through your link, you’ll be compensated. This is just a simple example; you’ll want to do your own research and refine your execution, but it’s a start.

Some freelancers whose blogs have become popular enough have turned into full-time writers. Ever consider that your true love is writing about design? Who would have thought?

Good luck everyone and happy blogging!

Written exclusively for WDD by John Saddington. He is a professional blogger who loves sharing his blogging tips, tricks, tools and insights about SEO, WordPress and making money by blogging! You can follow him on Twitter, too: @TentBlogger.

What’s stopping you from starting a blog? What are your apprehensions? If you already have one, is it as good as it can be? How could you make it better? Do you need to post more regularly?

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For as long as I can remember, the primary focus in web development has been on ensuring that websites render the same across all browsers. We took great effort to ensure that a client’s website looked exactly the same in everything from old versions of Internet Explorer to the latest Firefox, all at once.

In the past few years, we have witnessed growing interest in what is known as progressive enhancement, which is the technique of serving advanced features and styles to modern browsers but not to older unsupported browsers.

This approach never seemed to settle in across the board. Most agencies still strive to make their websites universal. And progressive enhancement was often regarded as an excuse to ignore annoying problems. As it turns out, web people are rather crafty and have created tools that overcome countless browser problems.

Some of these developments have led to the notion of “responsive web design.” If you are not familiar with the term, be sure to check out the definitive introduction to it on A List Apart.

To sum it up quickly, the gist is that you customize a page’s rendering to suit the user’s device. For a while, this was easy to do: if the user was on a mobile device, they were redirected to a separate mini-site. But with smartphones and especially tablets, the line has blurred.

Responsive design has quickly become recognized as an incredibly smart way to build websites. How far you take it is up to you. But one thing is for sure: it is radically changing the industry and is affecting countless practices and tools that we have used for years. Let’s consider the impact of this new approach on some of the basic tools we have come to rely on and on web design in general.

Raising the bar

Almost everyone working on the web has at some point been faced with someone who believes their friend’s teenager could handle their project. This perspective has always been annoying, but there is some light at the end of the tunnel. With responsive design, things just got a lot more complicated. There is now a tremendous opportunity for web professionals to stand out from the herd.

There are thousands of web designers and developers around the world, and we are all connected by the magical medium we work in. This is both great and problematic. Given the number of people available for work, standing out can be hard.

The opportunity

There is actually a fabulous opportunity here. If you’re aggressive enough, you could stand out by working your tail off to quickly grasp responsive design and development. Dig in and learn it, update your personal website, and talk about your results. I guarantee if you put up a fresh portfolio that demonstrates this skill set, people will be interested in working with you. But the window for this is fairly short, depending on how quickly other designers get on board.

Budgets

Budgets pose a significant hurdle with this approach. With responsive design, we have to create as many as four variations for every layout, to target smartphones, tablets, netbooks and desktops. Consider a basic website with only two pages: a home page and an inner page. Those two layouts become eight variations when you implement them for four device sizes.

Does this mean we should charge four times as much for the work? That hardly seems likely. Obviously, the costs will be incremental, but the time required to prepare the layouts and code them to function properly will definitely increase.

Client education will play a huge role. We have to help our clients understand that while iPads and iPhones are cool, those devices are driving up the cost of quality development. Getting clients to understand our costs is tough enough as it is.

The opportunity

If you want to make a splash in the community, create a tool that addresses budget issues. Many have already done so, with tools like 320 and up and the Less Framework. Both of these reduce the time it takes to build products, and they help developers trim time off of budgets. 320 and up in particular is a perfect example of how to capitalize on this opportunity.

With the field wide open now, introducing tools to the marketplace that streamline the development process in support of responsive design will be much easier. We could even create tools that replicate existing ones but that are oriented around responsive design.

JavaScript libraries and their plug-ins

One of the many areas that could get turned upside down is the market for plug-ins that work with popular frameworks such as jQuery. The market is stuffed with gorgeous plug-ins that do a vast array of things in the browser: slideshows, photo galleries, forms, pop-ups, the list goes on.

The opportunity

The opportunity here is insane. Take a common plug-in, such as the slick slideshow tool Nivo Slider. This awesome tool is in countless developers’ tool belts. The market is ripe for someone to create a similar tool that self-adjusts to function smoothly across devices using a responsive approach.

The same goes for almost any plug-in. If you’re looking for a project that virtually guarantees success, choose a hot plug-in, and create a responsive version that adapts to function properly on different devices.

Browser testing

While this article is more about the development process, let’s consider browser testing. This is a basic part of building websites. Anyone knee-deep in building a website is likely testing stuff in multiple browsers as they go. And at some point, most websites undergo an in-depth test in numerous browsers.

But how do we tackle this through responsive design? Should the team own all of the most popular devices? Sure, there are emulators, but most are painful to install and work with. And nothing beats testing with the real thing.

The opportunity

Setting up software on computers to take screenshots on a variety of browsers and platforms is kind of hard. But setting up systems to automatically capture screenshots from the ever-increasing number of devices is really hard. The solutions that do exist are expensive, and I have yet to find a good service for this.

This is one of those situations where complexity is an advantage. If someone manages to skin this cat, then it would be rather hard for others to follow. There are many solutions for taking automated screenshots in multiple browsers, but the first person to offer screenshots for devices will have something quite unique to sell. And the community will respond in a big way.

Templates and themes

The market for ready-to-go themes is huge, but responsive design is a monkey wrench here, too. Template providers won’t likely retrofit their designs to accommodate these new requirements. Rather, they will probably add responsive features to future releases. And therein lies the opportunity.

The opportunity

Old templates have not been rendered useless; they are just missing an important component. This levels the playing field for a while. If you’ve been considering jumpstarting your own theme business, this is a great time to do so. Established companies will have to support their legacy templates, and while they enjoy some advantages, the barrier to entry in the market just got a bit lower.

Software services

The community has come to rely on software services for things like wireframing and usability testing. But how do these tools handle multiple devices? Many tools address, say, usability testing, and some new ones even address mobile testing (such as YouEye Mobile), but they solve only part of the problem.

In the wireframing niche, there is a common way to handle various page layouts, but I have yet to find a solution that handles a single page layout for various devices. The need is so simple, yet many systems simply break down. Should we create a new wireframe for each device? The answer is not clear.

The opportunity

The market is ripe for tools that support people’s current approaches to working online, while embracing responsive design. You might be able to lure customers away from competitors by offering features that embrace these modern techniques.

Conclusion

Change can be unnerving, even overwhelming. No matter how much you learn, you always feel like you’re lagging behind. But everyone is in the same boat. In times of great change, you can maximize opportunity by diving in and riding the first wave.

Written exclusive for WDD by Patrick McNeil,  a freelance writer, developer and designer. In particular, he loves to write about web design, train people in web development and build websites. Patrick’s passion for web design trends and patterns can be found in his books on TheWebDesignersIdeaBook.com. Follow Patrick on Twitter @designmeltdown.

Do you see any other opportunities to capitalize on the movement towards responsive design?

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QR codes, if you haven’t heard of them or clicked the link above to see the whole explanation, are scanned via a reader application (usually on your smart phone) that will take you to a video or web page.

They have been used in Japan for over a decade (invented by a Toyota subsidiary, Densu Wave), and now the rest of the world is catching up.

Why not just have the URL and let people hand key it in on their cell phones? WHAT? And make people actually expend energy? Charlatan!

Seriously, you can’t fight technology so make the best of it.

The trouble with barcodes is they are linear one-dimensional codes and can only hold up to 20 numerical digits, whereas QR codes are two-dimensional (2D) matrix barcodes that can hold thousands of alphanumeric characters of information. Their ability to hold more information and their ease of use makes them practical for small businesses and individuals, as well as… well… any size company.

When you scan or read a QR code with your iPhone, Android or other camera-enabled Smartphone, you can link to digital content on the web; activate a number of phone functions including email, IM and SMS; and connect the mobile device to a web browser.

QR Codes are even showing up on cemetery headstones.

Although a QR looks like a crossword puzzle, there are ways to manipulate the code. As with barcodes, that could be truncated and limited, colored and designed, the QR has properties that allow creativity.

The twists and turns of the little black squares, as with a barcode, has a unique imprint, recognizable to scanners or readers but there is a 30% correction allowance, so a third of the code can be discarded and replaced with images, type or anything you can imagine. This article on Mashable outlines some ways to deal with the 30% error correction rate.

Patrick Donnelly, owner and creative whiz of QR Arts (and creator of many of the examples included here) was recently interviewed on CNN about the explosion of QRs and the uses:

Patrick also speaks about how he got started and how they fit into internet marketing:

Recently, an exhibition of QR design was held in Paris:

So, are you ready to make the jump into the next wave of integrated digital marketing? Are you ready to design the codes needed by a multitude of businesses? To help catch up on the technology, here’s a site you need to visit often: http://2d-code.co.uk/.

What can be done?

Check out the raw QR. Simple, boring and, as mentioned previously, it looks like a crossword puzzle. You can generate one of these via a QR generator found on many web sites. The next step is up to you. Here are a few examples of QR design.

Color and background are the easiest changes one can make to a QR code. These examples show that you are not tied to just one color and even textures (to a point) as well as gradients (to a point) can be used. Ideally, rather than try to understand the code itself, you should use a QR reader to keep testing the code with each step. It’s easier to take one step back if the code ceases to function, rather than design freely and be disappointed at the end.

Rounding and softening the edges are another design change you can make within the error correction and still be readable.

One of the most popular design practices with QR codes is to insert images within the code. Again, the 30% error correction will help but read this first!

Even small images, scattered throughout the code can cover or delete needed code blocks and/or be read as information by the scanner.

According to QRStuff.com, “Compromising the scanning safety margin of the QR code by adding an image to it can also be further complicated if the scanning software interprets any part of the embedded image as actual data, and then decodes the contents of the QR code incorrectly.”

Hints from that article are surely words to the wise:

If you are going to tackle it yourself, here’s a few pointers on do’s and don’ts if you’re attempting to put an image into a standard QR code that hasn’t been specifically created to accommodate one:

• Keep the size of the embedded image well below 20% of the area of the QR code itself – 15% is probably the best compromise.
• Put the image in the middle of the QR code and definitely don’t obscure any of the 3 big squares in the corners (they have a special purpose and must be retained).
• Always leave a white border (1-2 times the width of a single data square in the QR code image) all the way around the edge of the embedded image so that the data areas of the QR code are separated from the image.
• Make sure that all the data squares left in the QR code are intact – remove any partially obscured squares completely.
• Check that the embedded image doesn’t coincidentally contain any small square (or squarish) elements that may be interpreted by the scanning device as part of the QR code’s data, rather than being ignored as part of the image.
• Most QR code scanning devices scan in grey-scale so using contrasting colors to differentiate the image from the QR code is not going to help you at all.
• It’s probably also a good idea to make the QR code image larger than you would have if it didn’t have an image in it.

If your head is spinning, perhaps it’s better to seek out software that will do this for you.

With all this in consideration, one finds a huge amount of respect for those who created the previous samples as well as this one for Wired:

While these examples for Time make more use of the code intact but still part of the design, they are better suited for beginners or the very nervous.

A friend of mine recently posted a picture of a QR code his eight year-old son made out of LEGOs. With no surprise, it WORKED! I’ve seen hand-drawn QR codes that work and these photo QR codes are a huge and impressive undertaking. Still, if all the bottle caps, M&Ms, beans, ink spots, etc. work, why not get creative? There’s even someone who grew crops in Farmville to create a QR Code.

I wonder if builders will design neighborhoods so from the air, the houses and stores form QR codes? The possibilities are endless!

Speider Schneider is a former member of The Usual Gang of Idiots at MAD Magazine and has designed products for Disney/Pixar, Warner Bros., Harley-Davidson, ESPN, Mattel, DC and Marvel Comics, Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon among other notable companies. Speider is a former member of the board for the Graphic Artists Guild, co-chair of the GAG Professional Practices Committee and a former board member of the Society of Illustrators. Follow him on Twitter@speider

Have you used QR codes yet? Have you designed one? Tell us if you had any trouble getting around the coding/error correction and any tips and tricks you want to share with other readers!

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