The work I’ve done, my blog and my résumé give you a fair idea about what I’m capable of and what I’ve done so far. But they don’t present well what is my offer, and distracted by the designed material, you could get the impression I want to present myself as a designer.

In a first attempt I tried to roll it up backwards. I started by editing my résumé, and once I thought it was cleaned up enough, I sent it to a friend of mine who works in an advertising agency. She sent it back with one line that said it all: You want to say too much.

There I had it. She was right. I always wanted to transmit everything, to make sure my audience wouldn’t miss anything. I wanted to make sure I would qualify for any thinkable job in Web business, be it branding, strategy, IA or design. And while I was packing product-features in my own résumé, I missed the point of transmitting a concise, reduced package of information.

The average résumé is reviewed in 15 seconds. Okay, I made that one up. But it’s true none the less; the principle behind it is a good measurement. It puts me on a track: If I had a stage and 15 seconds and need to convince a lady in the audience that we are made for each other and that she must marry me, how would I sell myself? Which words would I use and how many? What kind of media would I use? How could I tell what she knew about me, or needed to know in order to make such a decision?

The stage and the marriage proposal may be metaphoric, but they aren’t too far from the real situation. My potential client has a short attention span and within this brief moment I need to show him I am worth looking at closer. Chances he will marry me are low, but perhaps he wants us to work together.

To present myself the best way I can, in relatively short time and so anyone would understand me without my physical presence, I needed to do the following:

• Get their attention and keep it
• Talk to them in a direct language, casual but business style
• Make sure they get the message
• Make sure they don’t get bored
• Which means to keep it compelling and yet not complex
• Give them a good reason to say “he’s right”
• Addressing only a few topics that describe my offer best

So what did this mean for my presentation material? It meant good bye résumé. Farewell showcase. What I needed was a single file that shows my thinking rather than making the client think. I have 15 seconds on stage and I want the audience to feel comfortable and laugh with me. I want them to listen up.

This document for potential clients needed to play both roles, one of a résumé and be a portfolio at the same time. But it shouldn’t be bloated or too complicated. I wrote down a list of notes, random thoughts that basically summarized my thinking about everything I found important: brands, marketing, advertising, direct marketing, media, communications as a whole, strategies, concepts, user experience, social networks and design. Out of these notes I developed a few thoughts with a hook. And one thing seemed to stand out above everything. It became a meta topic: honesty.

I believe honesty is what can save the future of marketing as a business. I believe this is our only chance, and it is here now. I also think it is part of my mission to make this happen. You will find my solution below as an interactive Quicktime movie, or your can watch it directly, hosted on SlideShow.

Resources

Download the Zip file with my latest presentation (English)
Hosted on SlideShow (English)
Die Präsentation ist auch auf Deutsch verfügbar.

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Conditions

The company seems to be on a quest of finding the right format of what it is and how it works. Since core had consulted wis.dm in autumn 2006, the website has had three facelifts, changing the logo and the brand look in colors and experience, and the idea behind the project has also gained maturity. It was first a community of people giving comments and rating news they had found online. Now it is about asking questions and starting discussions about anything

This is not unusual for Web startups. Part of the Web 2.0-experience to the outside and inside is to look at the company as a changing and growing, living organism. The only drawback of that is the lack of consistency in brand experience. While you add new features and dismiss concepts that didn’t work out, your new visitors will embrace these things, while your existing user base will have trouble getting used to the changes.

Changing colors, a logo, icons, graphical language or the placement of navigational elements may be less disturbing than we would think, but they do have an influence on the overall feeling for the brand.

Solution

The following list includes consulting results and materials core has developed for wis.dm:

1. A user-centric design concept, joining identity design and brand experience with the user experience
2. Creation of design patterns: cleaning up existing design elements, giving each element a purpose, improvement of usability and the user experience
3. A result of a consistent language of design elements, fonts and colors
4. A whole range of icons for directive- and action elements, using consistent icon language
5. A new homepage template
6. An invitation graphics for the homepage
7. A HTML-based, standards compliant email template
8. An improved logotype based on the original logo

All work core developed in collaboration with wis.dm was based on the situation of September 2006. Meanwhile these conditions have changed a lot. Wis.dm has not only changed its website and user experience, they also changed their very definition of the product. The current line of wis.dm is “Question everything”.

Of course it would have been nice to see some of the actual design work of core being used, but overall it was a great experience to work for wis.dm. Their approach as a Web 2.0 company and their open mind towards simple, clear design solutions match with what core stands for. A lot of the thinking behind those solutions went into wis.dm and can be experienced on the community site today.

Resources

About wis.dm’s mission
Q&A for wis.dm

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Conditions

The original website of JWT+H+F had been a static website, with a classic approach of displaying content with practically no interaction. The task was to shift the user experience towards Web 2.0, enabling direct user interaction with all content, adding rating, giving space for personal opinions and integrating the site with existing Web services such as Google Video.

A major part of the assignment was to develop a concept that was both, intelligently designed and flexible for the future. Coming from an old, table-based website design, a website with limited interactivity and an awkward user interface, we aimed to create the very oposite: A site that would taste like fresh orange juice, fun to surf; it would be a pleasure to dive into its content.

Another important part was content: Theoretically, it should be possible for every member of the agency staff to publish content. Core chose Wordpress as a CMS foundation because it was a perfect match with the requirements. Wordpress is easy to use, it is widely spread, has an excellent and flexible API, it is supported by a great Open Source community, and its software design is prepared for the future of Web development.

Solution

Our solution was based on a simple but changing insight, which makes a huge difference in comparison to most other ad agency websites:

People don’t come to look at ad agency websites if it is just a static show. Threads of comments will lead to more intensive interaction with the website’s content. If you enable an interactive platform, providing tools to rate and give comments to the ad agency’s published work, chances rise that your visitors will return to see who else left a comment, and how the rating of a certain advertising campaign is doing.

The client brief was developed by core in a workshop with the client, and it included the following important points:

1. The new website needs to be an outstanding, active, dynamic, smooth and fresh experience
2. By analyzing mistakes of other Swiss ad agency websites, we can improve our website on every level
3. Give it a simple user interface and make it easy to use for the agency staff
4. Enable easy, quick and simple content publishing
5. Incorporate a gallery for showcases
6. The website must be highly interactive, standing out in contrast, if compared to other Swiss advertising websites
7. In comparison to the old site, the new website should be more important for Google and Yahoo
8. Make it modular and keep it open for optional feature updates in future

Throughout the development of the website the client changed the list of requirements and features. This is normal for clients, as no one can possibly grasp such a project fully from the start. Some things you conceptualize turn out to be impossible later, or they simply need a redesign of elements. The commission contract allowed a certain flexibility within reasonable terms, so the project wasn’t getting out of hand.

Core used Basecamp for project management. This solution was extremely helpful in the process. It allowed centralized communication in threads between project manager and developer, and at the same time it allowed us to provide a certain transparency to the client, letting them observe the individual steps of development and giving them controlled access to some resources.

The Swiss website of JWT now ranks in the first results of a Google search, while the international JWT website is listed in the lower ranks. This is a great example for the good effect, if a website was developed with consistent use of Web standards, using a solid, logical Information Architecture, avoiding Flash and integrating third party services. Combined with a higher degree of activity on the website, this practice leads to better ranking results in Google search.

Additionally to the actual website, core also developed training material for the ad agency staff, with a centralized user manual that can be updated online.

Resources

The Swiss ad agency website of JWT+H+F
The website of JWT International
Ben Hayes’ Website, Jackfruit Design

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In the process I will work out fresh content, fix loopholes and remove redundant or confusive elements. Dense, my culture blog, is closing for now, and new stuff is lined up. Incubator was a start, overhauling the CSS was a consequence. As always, your feedback is welcome.

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Conditions

The identity had to be simple, but very strong and recognizable. At the same time it needed to be durable, so it could be applied in different sizes in virtually all media.

Result

Core came up with a solution that fulfills these practical demands. The new logo expresses the dancing motion in a unique, single line, which forms the two letters N and B in a mechanlical but fluent shape.

This unique abstraction gives the identity a visual presentation that leaves a strong impression. The words Nutbass Records are lined up leftbound under the N part of the shape, which adds to the dynamic and modern effect.

The new identity was designed with best design practice in mind, keeping it flexible and yet durable. The examples shown here give a brief idea of various possible combinations, free play with shape and color, so the identity will never get old.

The logo itself allows a lot of flexibility, to use it as illustration element for various applications

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Task

The “Praxis für vitale Zahnheilkunde” (Dentist office for alternative medicine) recently changed ownership, and its new management assigned core with the task to develop its business website.

Conditions

The dental office is located in Lutzenberg, a small village in Appenzell Ausserrhoden, bordering to Thal which is located in Kanton St. Gallen. The surrounding villages, including Lutzenberg, are very small, and clients come from a number of villages in this area.

The project required a very simple and clear navigation, with additional contextual navigation throughout the site. Core solved this task by using category pages as landing pages, so that articles around the same topic will be stored on one page, while each entry is created dynamically on a page of itself.

Consistent use of detectable naming of the URLs throughout the site, plus the high amount of informative text, combined with the ability to change content dynamically, lead to a high degree of importance for search engines such as Google. In other words, SEO for this site was not implemented later. It was an important factor right from the start, when the IA concept of the website was developed.

Result

Core developed a concept that was flexible in both ways, for visitors as well for the dental clinic. A CMS enables the client to edit, add and delete content. Visitors can send an email or leave their comment on each single entry. This provides a high degree of social interaction. It is more involving than most websites of its kind. The Dynamo Effect will attract more and more people.

The website was executed using XHTML and CSS, and we are proud to state the site validates with W3 standards.

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Conditions

The idea behind Friends Of ColorVision is to create some sort of rolemodel leadership, an elitary selection of photography artists, which will stand for the application of ColorVision products. The logo had to be simple, iconic and very straight forward. The client asked for something with symbolic character, that could be used in various formats and on virtually all media, ranging from T-shirts to Powerpoint presentations and TV screens. Core decided to use simple shapes, no gradients or photography elements and it, and making it work for black and white usage. Color was just an additional option.

Result

By using the basic shape of the product design from the ColorVision line of products, core implemented a visual citation, recognizable but reduced to a sketch, giving the logo a dynamic yet technical impression. There is also a resemblence to three people standing in a circle, facing each other as if in a discussion. The shapes are centered above the logotype, but the direction and stand of the logo is turned by 90 degrees, to give it a more dynamic impression. The logo is going to be used on websites, T-shirts and other media from now on, in white on black, slate and black and white primarily.

Resources

ColorVision Europe

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