While I’m an ardent supporter of promoting the WordPress platform any way I can, the contest documentation sent up red flags after the first and second read through:

1. The rules for entry had been modified once (noted by the site owners) ;
2. The foundation of the contest is rooted in the participant submitting a “concept” but later defines a concept as being a production comp.
3. There’s a fairly ambiguous panel of judges as implied by, “Designs are assessed by a special team from ColorLabs Project…”  — who are these people?
4. Lastly, this: “You understand that by participating in this contest, your theme concept is possibly used by ColorLabs Project and may be made available for purchase on our site. Winners will be awarded a cash prize for their work. Any other theme concept will only be made available for purchase after a once-off fee agreed by both parties. Sales generated off the theme will be kept by the company.”

Get Your Story Straight:

First off, if you’re going to launch a contest, make damn sure that the language surrounding the rules and regulations, as well as the terms and conditions are as clear as you can possibly be. I say this as a a Creative Director and planner who has been involved in advertising campaigns that were build around some hefty prizes. Nothing makes a contest go south faster than poorly written contest literature. Once you post those rules, you had better ensure they are final. I can’t speak for the legal ramifications of changing contest details mid-way through, but I can say there’s a significat level of trust that is lost in having to do so.

Concept vs. Concept Art

Second, a Concept is quite different from Concept Art. Be sure what you’re asking participants for. A Concept, e.g. an idea — is typically something you solicit in written form. Concept Art is visual. In a design contest like this (and considering the last condition in the T&C), asking for a visual concept without providing appropriate conditions to protect the artist’s work is borderline unethical. There is nothing to prevent the contest hosts from turning around and re-creating the concept art into production-ready source files. Participants should be well aware of this possibility.

Industry Peers/Professionals or Your Grandmother?

Third, who the heck are the judges? While there is nothing wrong with not disclosing the judging panel to the general public — to me, there’s a level of trust that a contest host can provide through disclosure. Quite frankly, are the members of the judging panel qualified to act as judges given the criteria? This is pretty grey-area from my experience.

Exactly How Are You Planning To Use My Work?

Lastly, the final condition on the T&C is loosely worded, and relinquishes — as I understand it — a considerable amount of the artist’s rights to the contest host. While on the surface, there is nothing essentially wrong with this practice, but it leaves me questioning the ethics of amassing a royalties-free library of design for resale. On one hand, it may be quite alright to capitalize on the award-winning themes as well as the runners-up, but what of the rest? Are the remaining “unqualified” designs to be saved for later resale or are they to be destroyed? What about compensation for artist? The language surrounding this particular conditions is a little vague.

In any case, I’m not a lawyer — just someone who really wanted to participate in a contest, but unfortunately this one comes off as a scam poorly disguised as a contest. What’s next: timeshares in the Bahamas?

Seriously though, if you are considering participation in any contest of this kind — take the time to educate yourself on your rights as an artist/designer and pay particular attention to the organizers of the contest. At the end of the day you’ll need to judge for yourself whether or not a contest is legitimate and what your work is worth.

Given that I am not the only one to encounter this issue, I thought I would share my recent experience and a work-around.

DISCLAIMER: Please note that I do not in any way advocate this as a permanent solution for any mass e-mail deployments on a budget. At best this article should be taken as a cautionary tale.

The Task

I developed an micro site for a client for an HR and team-building campaign. The micro site required internal users to claim their pre-assigned accounts through a simple “claim” URI provided in a email that was to be sent out after an internal event. One click; confirm the email address; accept a new user-defined password, and that was it. Simple and quick.

The Issue

The account claim workflow was simple, and my team and I had tested the system numerous times. We tested the standard exploits; we tested cross-location claims; we tested unorthodox methods of faking and breaking into the site. What we hadn’t tested as thoroughly was the e-mail deployment.

I made the assumption that we wouldn’t have issues with the email deployment since my team had done previous deployments for this particular client in the past. Easy peasy, right?

Not really.

The email was scheduled to deploy close to the end of the day yesterday. It went out. It came back. Rejected. As it turns out, I had also forgotten that the previous deployments were for external email lists — this was the first time we were handling a mass deployment to an internal employee list.

The Drama

By 9:30 this morning, I had a couple urgent notes from the client and spent the following hours following up with their IT department and our email service provider, along with our bulk e-mail distributor. It was then I found out that the email servers and the domain needed to be “white-listed” before any mass emails could filter through.

(You know those moments when you take a second and realized what a rookie mistake you just made — that was me this afternoon — email deployment cardinal sin numero uno).

By 4:00PM I was pretty much ready to hang myself after waiting for hours to hear back from the “deliverabily” department and the support desk to whom I submitted this rather urgent ticket. Not a fun day.

Desperate, I considered last resorts:

1. Have the client distribute the email themselves.

2. Set up a new account with a new provider specifically for this project.

3. Delay the deployment.

For various and obvious reasons, neither of the options were appealing to the client. The email deployment was 24 hours behind schedule at this point, and employees were chomping at the bit to claim their promised accounts on this micro site. It was time to fall back to some unorthodox means.

Enter Microsoft Word and Mail Merge (I feel dirty just writing this already).

The Solution

Mail Merge is one of those Microsoft Office features (there may be similar features in other products — I wouldn’t know), that is either loved or hated. I personally dislike it for the fact that it just wasn’t easy to use, and the lack of an intuitive workflow; however, it did come through for me today, so I’m going to cut it some slack.

Before we get started, this is what you should know:

1. If your target company has an IT policy in place to deal with bulk emails and spammers, you need to contact them first in order to get your e-mail server “white-listed”. No solution, even the one I’m outlining here, will get through a well-implemented IT policy. Read that last statement again and remember it.
2. You will need to provide the IT administrators at the target company with at least two things: the static IP address (possibly range) of your email server, and your the domain you are sending from. e.g. sender@somedomain.com — you will likely be asked to verify this through some simple test emails.
3. You will want to setup a new mailbox or profile through your Exchange server (contact your system admin for help on this). This will prevent you — your email account — from receiving a potentially overwhelming volume of bounce-backs or auto responses, etc.
4. If you have MS Outlook installed, start it up as you will need it to connect with your email server to send emails.
5. Lastly, you are definitely going to need some patience.

If you’ve done your due diligence and saw to it that the IT department of your target company has “white-listed” both your email server and domain, you can safely send a volume of emails through.

As with any bulk email deployments, you will also need a target list. Your list can come in one of several formats, the most common of which is a *.CSV formatted list.

I had several data fields in my list such as “first name”, “last name”, “email”, and “claimid”, so take some time before firing up MS Word to clean up your list.

NOTE: for the purpose of this article, I am using MS Office 2007

Step 1: Prepare your email list

Assuming that your list was previously validated, here are a couple house-keeping tasks that you might want to deal with first:

1. Ensure that your target list has the appropriate field/column headers.
2. Remove unnecessary fields.
3. Remove duplicates (mail merge helps you with this, but take the time to parse your list previous to using it).

I’m sure there are a number of best-practices you should keep in mind when dealing with email lists, but that’s not what this article is about (and it’s clear that I am not an authority or I wouldn’t be writing this article).

You can create a *.CSV using any text editor, but the most popular method for businesses is to take an existing Excel spreadsheet and save it as a *.CSV formatted document. Doing this will essentially strip out any proprietary document format information, but preserve the data, its structure, and order.

In this example I have two records (recipients) to whom I will send the email message to. I have four main fields which are denoted as follows (you can name and format them as you wish, this is just an example): [firstname], [lastname], [email], [claimid].

You will need all of the fields despite the fact that you may only use one or two of them for personalizing the email message.

The last step here is to save your *.XLS (*.XLSX if you’re using Office 2007) as a CSV, but before you do that, you should be aware that the application will display a couple of warnings regarding saving the file in a different format. To avoid multiple warning, simple delete out an unused worksheets from your document.

To save your file as a *.CSV you must do the following:

1. Select File > Save As.
2. When you see the “Save As” dialog, click on the “Save As Type” drop down and select “CSV (MS-DOS) *.csv” from the list. If you’re on a different platform (mac), select the appropriate encoding type (“CSV (Macintosh)”).
3. Click Save.

The first warning should pop up, which looks like this:

Click “Yes” to finish saving your document. If you did not delete any unused worksheets as I mentioned earlier, you may be prompted with a second warning; get past them and save out your CSV or use another application if the experience is becoming frustrating.

Step 2: Prepare Your Message

If you’re planning on sending out a mass email, you’ll need to have a message to send, and fields to populate. At this point you can fire up MS Word. You should be presented with a new document. Compose your message (or copy and paste it from whatever document you had originally composed it in), and create personalization fields. For example:

At this point it is safe to note that the Microsoft Office development team should seriously consider over-hauling this component for usability (their usability metrics be damned).

Step 3: Import Your Email List

This is the part that I had the most trouble with as I was both nervous about supplying the wrong fields, and generally hitting the wrong button that might cause MS Word to send the email “accidentally”. Zero points for usability Microsoft.

Jump back to MS Word and select the “Mailings” tab in the ribbon (if you’re using previous versions of MS Word, you’ll have to Google the location of that feature). Once you have selected the Mailing’s tab, you can click on the “Start Mail Merge” button to kick things off.

1. When you click the “Start Mail Merge” button, you will be presented with a short menu of choices.
2. Select the option “Email Messages” from the list.

Next, click on the “Select Recipients” button. You will be presented with three options in the drop-down list. Select “User Existing List…” from the options.

You will be presented with a “Select Data Source” dialog. Browse to the location where you saved your *.CSV and select the file and click “Open”. If you still have your CSV file open in Excel or another application, you may receive a prompt to open a “Read-only” copy or create a “Local” copy. Select read-only as that is about the only action we’re performing with the file.

If you’re curious to see the data you imported, click on “Edit Recipient List” in the main menu — you will get a dialog that lists the records in your *.CSV. There are a few useful aspects to this feature such as selecting and deselecting recipients, de-duping, sorting, and validation.

Moving on…

Step 4: Customize The Message Format

This next step is important (as are the following). You will need to personalize the email message along with some fields which are not readily apparent later on. The first thing you should do is customize the appearance of the recipient’s name. To do this, click on the “Address Block” button. You will receive a dialog that will assist you in choosing an appropriate format for the name. I’ve chosen the disable “Postal Code Insert” as those fields do not exist in my email list; however, the last option is worth considering — “Format address according to the destination country/region”. A sample of the output is displayed on the right-hand of the dialog.

Click “OK” when your settings are customized.

The next button beside “Address Block” (working from left to right), is “Greeting Line”. This feature allows you to create a greeting line such as: “Dear John Smith,” — going so far as to allow you to apply additional formatting. It can be useful for form messages, but for the purpose of this exercise, we’ll use the sample message and greeting like we created earlier.

The next thing you’re going to want to do (in fact, you can probably do this before some of the previous steps to personalizing the message), is match the fields in your CSV to the fields the typical Mail Merge expects. You can do this by clicking on the “Match Fields” button:

You will be presented with a small dialog which, if you’ve formatted your CSV properly will have automatically detected the matching fields, otherwise you will need to manually troll through the list and match the fields as needed. Since we have only a few fields to deal with, it shouldn’t be a big chore. If you recall, we have a fourth field “claimid”. We’ll get to that one in a moment.

Click “OK” to continue.

Step 5: Personalizing The Email Message

At this point the task is almost complete. You now have all the necessary mappings for your email list along with a working copy of your message. It is now time to insert the personalization fields.

To insert personalization fields perform the following steps:

1. Select [firstname] from the greeting line (first line).
2. Click on the “Insert Merge Field” button. You will be presented with a list of fields matching your email list.
3. Select “firstname” from the list.

What you should now see is the greeting line as it is customized with the fields. e.g.

Dear [firstname] [lastname], is now Dear «firstname» [lastname],

Repeat these steps for the last name and any other field you might want to insert into your message.

NOTE: since MS Word 2007 automatically converts text that looks like a URI into an html link, you will need to ensure that the link remains as plain text, especially if you are adding a personalization field. Allowing the application to automatically format your links does not mean it is correct. e.g http://www.somedomain.com/«claimid» may be parsed as:

<a href="http://www.somedomain.com/">http://www.somedomain.com/«claimid»</a>

Once you are finished with this step, you may want to use the “Auto Check for Errors” feature located here:

There are three options — the first of which is likely the most useful (and grief-free).

Step 6: Deploying The Email

This IS the last step, after which I highly recommend you take a breather and get yourself a beer, if only to calm the nervousness of relying on this method of deployment — believe me, it’s understandable.

To send your email message, click on the “Finish & Merge” button:

There are three options with this feature, but the one you’re going to want to use with this excercise is “Send E-mail Messages”. Selecting the last option will present you with a dialog (yet again); complete the dialog options before sending.

1. Select the field you’ve mapped for the recipient’s email address.
2. Supply a relevant subject line.
3. Select a message format (text or HTML).
4. Select how many recipients are to receive the message.

Click “OK” when you are done.

MS Word will now send your Mail Merged message(s) — individually — using MS Outlook. If you have not started the application, it will automatically prompt you to do so. To be safe, monitor your outbox and your sent messages to confirm that the email was deployed. Depending on the volume of email recipients in your list, you should have just as many individual emails sitting in your sent/outbox.

That’s it. You’re done. Go get a beer (I need one now after writing this).

Conclusion

As I warned in my earlier statements, this method is not ideal — and in all likelihood should be avoided at all costs unless you are in a serious bind.

I cannot guarantee the results of this method as it will vary from deployment to deployment. If you skipped past the first few steps and neglected to contact your target company’s IT administrators to conform to IT policy, you’re in for an inbox loaded with bounce-backs and delivery failures at best — at worst, you’re going to get a call from someone with a lot of very uncomfortable questions.

Again, there ARE repercussions if you avoid your due diligence; however, if you are attempting this method, you’re best off to apply it to low volume deployments. If you want anything larger than say 100 recipients, you’re better off using a service provider who can supply a smoother process, and help you navigate the pitfalls of email deployments.

You’ve been duly warned.

Mr. Armstrong opens with a fairly provocative statement:

You may have noticed that in certain business and marketing circles there exists a “backlash” against the design community. Despite the rise of attractive, user-friendly solutions, in such circles unattractive designs have somehow managed to remain at the verge of acceptance.

There are two things I would like to note about this broad-reaching statement: the backlash is not against the design community, but rather the agencies, vendors, and consultants. More specifically the backlash is a direct response to service-providers who are unable to provide solid end-to-end solutions to answer key business and marketing requirements.

Good or bad aesthetics aside, a business to business (B2B) or business to consumer (B2C) website that provides leads or successfully converts a prospect to a customer is more valuable by the simple fact that it does what it was intended to do: to market or to convert.

No amount of “business speak” by a designer agency/vendor/consultant can compensate for a poorly conceived product.

“Pretty doesn’t mean effective: statistics are your friend!”

Mr. Armstrong makes some good points in the article, the most notable — I believe — is this first guideline.

It is true that statistics are definitely your friend, but you have to be very careful on how you interpret the statistics.

The example given compares two websites from dramatically different industries. The first, 2Advanced Studios, is a design firm while the second, Perry Marshall is an author’s site. You might argue that they have similar business goals in mind, but the reality is that you cannot effectively compare these two businesses and glean true insight into what works and what does not.

Comparative statistics should be taken from competitor websites within the client’s industry or a related industry.

The adage: “What’s good for the goose…” does not apply here.

When refreshing an existing business website, your client will usually have a number of pre-conceived goals in mind.

The most typical goals are:

• Improve sales
• Capture more leads
• Build awareness (brand, industry issues, products & solutions, etc).
• Foster brand trust and build brand equity.

Your client’s business goals should be your Rosetta Stone when interpreting and establishing your baseline metrics for success, and at this point aesthetics are a non-issue. This segues into Mr. Armstrong’s second guideline…

“Every design should have a measurable goal”

I have a particular issue with this statement:

Saying that the goal is to “build the brand of XYZ” or “create an online presence” is basically meaningless to a business-minded person. A goal is only a goal if it is measurable.

I agree that brand building might seem ephemeral and subjective, but there are quantifiable metrics for this — it does have meaning for a client.

A smart business will have clearly defined what constitutes effective brand recognition and build their brand’s equity on these definitions. The brand-building activities and their results are quantifiable (see “build brand awareness, Foster brand trust…”) — “Build the brand of XYZ” is a legitimate business goal.

That aside, “measurable goals” should be a reflection of the business goals, and if you can answer the challenge from a design perspective, and provide insight through incremental testing, etc. you will have built a stronger foundation for the client to determine their success metrics.

“Your site should have one clear path”

Mr. Armstrong suggests that:

As a customer comes to your site, you want to be in complete control of the 1st thing they see, the 2nd, the 3rd, and all the way down until they accomplish your goal that you’ve set. In other words, they have entered your sites “funnel” or “chute”.

In a perfect world we would all build sites that work on this principle. The reality is that entry points into a website vary from user to user, campaign to campaign, and search engine to search engine. The notion of strictly engineering the site to control your users and their behaviour is akin to trying to catch the wind.

On a business site, the most overlooked exercise is to determining what the audience wants from the website and compare it to what the website actually offers. What you should expect is a handful of common use-cases which illustrate the behaviour of the target audience and how they truly interact with the website.

If your client’s website offers only one service or product, then the primary audience will likely follow one common path, and Mr. Armstrong’s proposition can ring true; however, if your client’s website offer’s multiple products and solutions to several key audiences, the most effective thing you can do is develop a user-interaction strategy to help users qualify themselves quickly and funnel them to the right place regardless of their entry-point into the website.

E.g. from a user’s perspective: “I am this type of user, and I am looking for this type of content.”

Whatever strategy you take, the execution should remain simple, effectively changing the principle to : “Your site should drive your traffic effectively”.

“Provide performance metrics”

I would consider this an irresponsible statement:

Finally, if you really want to impress business people, put together a little report of how a design performs. It doesn’t have to be fancy — maybe a little spreadsheet (those business types do love Excel) with some basic metrics you can pull off of Google Analytics like visitors, time on site, most popular funnel path, and even a goal conversion rate.

I definitely agree that providing post-launch metrics are an effective means of helping to justify or support certain design decisions on a website, but this needs to be put into serious perspective: a responsible designer Agency/Vendor/Consultant will look first to ensure that the metrics support the design recommendations as it applies to the business goals.

To be clear: look to the business goals of the website FIRST — design decisions when it comes to websites should be considered with an eye towards better usability to support those business goals.

My biggest point of contention with this last guideline is that metrics are interpretive and can easily be used to disguise a poor architecture or site user-interaction strategy.

The value of certain metrics are largely determined by type of website, which in many cases is a reflection of the fundamental difference between a E-commerce website vs. a Lead Generation website. “Traffic Volume” for one site does not equate to “Lead Capture” on another.

Simply providing a spreadsheet and some screen captures is a easy way to obfuscate or skew the meaningful metrics. Be responsible and avoid polluting your client’s metrics without providing a deeper understand of the ‘why’ behind the numbers.

Conclusion

What the last section of Mr. Armstrong’s article should have proposed is:

Much of the time, “business speak” can (and will likely) hamper true conversations and discussions around meeting business goals. I would suggest that rather than effect pretence, speak plainly.

When you are engaged with a client to develop or refresh their website, it is your responsibility to educate yourself and your client about what constitutes good design as it is applied to their project, and ultimately how the goals are quantified.

This is how an agency/vendor/consultant can add true value for a client.

The creative industry has seen an incredible upsurge in companies adding “interactive” to their service offering, and along with that we have a number of other vendor companies which bill themselves as agencies with similar services.

If you are a student, you may want to consider that the idea of “working for the best” is more of a matter of determining where you can best hone your craft — in this case, web design or development.

Is there a difference?

Yes. But let’s take a step back for a moment and take a look at the question holistically.

The creative industry is comprised of many players, but you can draw a clean line right down the middle — I can say this because I’ve been on both side of that industry line.

The players fall into two distinct categories: the traditional Advertising Agency, and the Boutique Shops (vendors).

In the past, it was possible to make a distinction based on their portfolios, but given the current state of the creative industry, we need to consider what makes an ad agency versus what makes a boutique shop.

For the most part, ad agencies have a much broader service offering than a boutique shop. A traditional ad agency will typically offer their clients such services as: branding, messaging, conceptualization, and design. These types of agencies bill themselves as a “full service” agency as most of them include additional services like “media buying”. A full service agency also has the added benefit of several organization layers — management specifically designed to handle a large volume of projects.

The service offering of a Boutique Shop is considerably less. In most cases, a Boutique Shop will offer only a fraction of the services which an ad agency supports. The services are typically design, development, broadcast, post-production, etc. Companies like this have chosen to specialize in one field or another and offer their specializations to larger companies who outsource to them. A Boutique Shop does not [always] have the organizational layers to handle volume.

When it comes to Interactive Services such as web design and development — this includes flash, application programming, etc, — ad agencies typically rely on outsource partners to provide that specialization.

At this point I can already see the emails coming in to argue this particular point, but let me say this much: ad agencies can often provide “Interactive Services” through internal web-teams, but most of them do not. This as more to do with their particular focus in the industry (traditional media, print, etc).

Why the distinction?

The distinction has less to do with size than it does with capabilities. More specifically, it’s about the creative.

Advertising agencies want to own the creative on every level. Quality is obviously important, but the execution is not something they want to concern themselves with most times. The capabilities of an advertising agency are quite considerable, but again, this all relies upon their outsourcing relationships — printers, media, etc. An ad agency relies on the specializations of a vendor to help them execute a concept.

Boutique shops typically do not have the capability to execute a fully integrated campaign on a national level let alone a global scale. That is not to say that they can’t leverage serious partnerships to allow them to do that, but even then the campaigns are limited in scope — mostly online with limited if any offline components.

Interactive boutique shops know this. Quite honestly, most of them appear to be quite happy with this distinction. There are certain financial and client-related constraints which boutique shops do not have to worry about simply because they typically will not encounter them. On the flip side, you get the few who attempt to bill themselves as a full service “agency”. Well, nobody is being fooled, least of all the client (if they’re smart).

Don’t get me wrong — a boutique shop can be creative and have great ideas. Sometimes those ideas resonate so strongly that they propagate into a campaign idea or platform, which may or may not turn into a national or global campaign. But you get the idea.

Suffice it to say that what a boutique shop does is execute on components of a campaign. A boutique shop can do this quickly where ad agencies with internal web development teams might take longer — specializations remember?

Which is better?

Neither is better … or worse.

Ad agencies offer tremendous opportunity for creative development, where as a boutique shop might offer better opportunity for technical development. For students, an internship is an opportunity to challenge the way you think and work, and ultimately what you’ve learned. If you are a student, you may want to consider the company which offers you the best experience in terms of professional growth and opportunity, and not necessarily what looks best on a resume.

When it comes to interactive — web design and development — I strongly suggest interning with a creative company which will challenge the skills and theories you’ve learned in school. The work you may encounter as an intern is a direct reflection of the capabilities of a creative company (ad agency or boutique shop), so make the determination based on what you might end up working on, and what you can walk away with.

I fully intend to release it as open source.

The problem isn’t so much that I don’t have the skill to do it my self, it is that this application requires a level of artistry with code that I have not yet accomplished with one language (C++). And so, finding a developer with the level of skill has proven to be quite a task.

Sure, I’ve considered using online services like RentACoder, or GoFreelance and their like — but the problem with services such as those, is that you inevitably find a whole world full of ambitious developers eager to bid on your work, get the job done, and move on. That does not mean the work is top-notch, or that they are remotely interested in why I want to have the application developed.

Who can blame them? They are, after all, trying to eck out a living. And in the grand scheme of things, my application is just another grain of sand on the beach. But not to me.

So I am left with two choices: the first is to develop it myself, and through much trial and error, create something that modestly resembles what I had in mind; the second is to keep waiting, be patient, and hope that I stumble across a developer willing to work with me.

I can do it. I can be patient. But I don’t want to be, so I am asking for some help.

If you are a developer who, like me, sees the beauty in code. If you have no reservations about releasing the product of our collaboration to the world (the world in this case being creative writers), with no intentions of profit — contact me. I want to work with you

This is not a good thing considering I the external drive was both my external storage and "backup" device. I use the term "backup" loosely as I don’t actually have a consistent backup policy. You would think I would have a policy considering I’m quite diligent about backups and redundancy for my professional work. But I don’t.

So now I am left with the dilemma of choosing between a very expensive data recovery service of which there is only a marginal chance of retrieving any of my data intact, or walking away from this small catastrophe and chalking it all up to a lesson learned. This is not enjoyable at all.

While I have yet to come to a resolution on that particular dilemma, I thought I might take a little time to expound (a little) on the benefits of developing a backup and redundancy policy. This is just a fancy way of me trying to encourage other writers to take the time to backup their work and ensure it is somewhere relatively safe.

So first off let’s consider offsite storage:

Don’t take your work for granted. If you’re a writer, a creative professional, or just have work that you do in your spare time which you value — don’t take it for granted that where you store your files locally is ever safe. As experience has recently taught me, anything can happen. In my case it was a simple mistake of plugging in the wrong power adapter to my external hard drive. I can only imagine other scenarios where data might be lost through carelessness, neglect, or by accident/design.

Second, if you value your work or value the time you invest into your work, consider investing a little bit of cash into offsite (typically online) data storage. Here is a brief list of services which others have recommended and which I am currently investigating (descriptions lifted from their sites):

1. SyncToy by MicroSoft – a free PowerToy that provides an easy to use, highly customizable program that helps users to do the heavy lifting involved with the copying, moving, and synchronization of different directories. Most common operations can be performed with just a few clicks of the mouse, and additional customization is available without added complexity.
2. Mozy – a simple and safe way to back up all the important stuff on your computer. A copy of your data is stored in a secure, remote location for safekeeping, so that in the event of disaster your data is still retrievable.
3. XDrive – the best alternative to other storage devices. Get easy backup and more secure storage with protection for your precious files. And all of this without the worry of losing or damaging a piece of hardware.

Caveat emptor: As always, be sure to read the EULA (end user licence agreement) or the terms of service and privacy policy before agreeing to use any online service. This is important as you need to ensure the rights of your work remain yours while sitting on some remote server. Understand what you or the service provider are responsible for and work accordingly.

Let’s also consider a version control system:

For those who do not get that warm and fuzzy feeling about offline storage services, you may want to consider developing your own backup service. This isn’t particularly easy — as most things to do with backup — but it is not impossible and in the long run, this will go a long way to developing a better sense of security when it comes to your work.

Here’s what you may want to consider when developing a personalized backup system:

A hosting package: The monthly cost of hosting is minimal these days and you can get away with setting up a decent hosting package for the price of a Starbucks Latté and cookie (not including initial setup fees). Here are a couple hosting providers that I have dealt with in the past:

• BlueHost.com
• DreamHost.com

A version control system: Okay, I know I’m on shaky ground here and many of you might be thinking this is overkill or way too technical for you — to be honest, you may be right. But this might also be exactly what you might need.

A version control system like "Subversion" is used by developers (and creative professionals), to create incremental versions of files they are currently working on. The most typical use is for code files (HTML, CSS, PHP, etc,). But this does not preclude you from using the system for other files (images, text, word docs, etc,). The beauty of a version control system is that is is both offsite and automatically creates versions for you. Not only that, but with most version control systems you can roll-back to earlier versions of a file (or group of files).

Developer services: setting up a version control system is not as easy as installing software on your computer, but in most cases you can hire the services of a local developer or alternately ask your service provider to help you set it up. Connecting with the system may require you to install a client, but once you get those components set up (and with some basic training), you should have little problem with backing up your files.

Things to consider

Though I’ve discussed — in general — a couple methods for backing up your files and handling version control, it is nothing without diligence. The lack of diligence is what landed me in this pickle in the first place, and I should know better consider the work I do professionally. It is not an easy thing to develop new habits, but if you are serious about protecting the integrity of your work, it is time well spent. I won’t go into detail about how you should accomplish this — that is up to you — but I can tell you that even if you haven’t lost work recently, you should consider it a dangerous probability. In the end, there are no true guarantees with ephemeral things such as digital files, but you can work to ensure that you minimize the risk of loss or damage.

Further reading

Matt Jadud discusses the topic of backups at length on his blog, which covers some of the more complex issues surrounding backups than I am disposed to exploring at this moment. Most of this was written a few years ago, but the principles there are still valuable.

Mischief abound.

And for no apparent reason it seems. Between last night and this morning, I’ve done nothing to the settings and now that I’ve stopped in, all hell has broken loose. thankfully the mischief was manageable and the problems have been corrected. But that still leaves me puzzled as to what went on between then and now.

I’ve just now backed up my database, changed my admin password, and exported all of my postings and bookmarks etc., which I have been dreadfully complacent in. Lesson learned. I’m going to start backing up my postings on a more regular basis.

In any case, I hope this is an isolated event, otherwise I might have some serious issues (related or unrelated to the software — I hope never to find out).

The C4C system is a great method by which to receive feedback and reciprocate in kind. I understand that I my sentiments on the matter may be over-blown, but you would think that this would be a common practice like an honor system. That might not be the best example of a self regulated system, however, my point stands: people should reciprocate in kind. A kindness for a kindness. Someone took time out of their day to read your material and offer insights that could possibly better your writing. I am not absurd enough to expect it the hour I after I post a review (how great would that be?), or the next day – but not posting a reciprocal review at all? Come on.

I am told that there are quite a few aspiring authors with the same pet peeve and I have to wonder how much of it is due to people simply not being interested in the genre. Most poetry makes me want to yak, and the vast majority of the material out there is unbelievably inane, but I still read it, and I still offer criticism even if it is only on punctuation or grammar (to the extent that I am capable or *ahem* knowledgeable).

I hesitate to pay for a subscription site on principle. It is not because I cannot afford the annual fee or any such rubbish, but I feel that if I am willing to give my time, it is not unreasonable to hope someone else feels the same way.

Am I being a naive, idealistic nut?

Other links:

1. Visit Absolutewite.com, here;
2. Visit PluggedOut/Writers, here;
3. Visit Booksie.com, here;
4. Visit WriterBeware.org, here;
5. Visit Victoria Strauss, here;

For further reading see:

1. YH Collab: Redesign famous logos in web 2.0 format!
2. Digg: Famous logos done in Web 2.0 Format

My original rant below:

The act of creating a logo is more than simply throwing typographic elements together with graphical objects and slapping a “Web 2.0″ label on it. To imply otherwise is a disservice to our industry. To actually claim to distill it into a few simple steps is irresponsible at best. The web is cluttered with so much crap as it is; and though many of you might argue that we need to see more such “Web 2.0-ish” material online, I disagree. Whole-heartedly. Before you read further, just know that I am on my soapbox right now.

For reference, you can read the posting here.There are some amazing logos out there; some truly amazing applications have benefited greatly from well thought, well executed logos. Take Blogger for instance. The logo is constructed of very simple objects; the typography is straight forward and relies heavily upon the character of the typeface rather than any shiny treatments as illustrated in the aforementioned posting. The glyph again relies more upon the uniqueness of the character and is further strengthened by the color choice. The impact behind the combined image is solid. It is iconic; works well at a number of different sizes; conveys in a straight forward manner the purpose behind the concept; and finally delivers an image that people can recognize as a brand. Blogger is indelible in the minds of our industry.

The purpose of a logo can be thought of in the same terms as a “maker’s mark”, “craftsman’s mark”, a family or clan crest, etc,. It seems to me that the weight of its meaning is lost upon our generation. A logo – personal or otherwise – says a lot about a person or company. There are so many logos cluttering the advertising/marketing/design world that it is increasingly difficult to establish a recognizable brand or image. But it is not impossible. It requires thought, patience and a real understanding of how design comes together to visualize an idea and execute it in such a way that it becomes, for all intents and purposes, a living image that represents you, your brand, or your company. Far be it for me to tell you what that is or how it should look. All I know is that logos should not be created in such a careless and irresponsible manner. There are standards that we are all responsible for upholding.

Visit your local Chapters bookstore (or Barnes & Noble if you live state-side), and look through the many books they have on the subject. There are dozens. Only a bare handful of them will actually purport to using the techniques outlined in the tutorial I have mentioned. Only a small percentage of those might actually claim to be “Web 2.0″. From my perspective, there is no such thing as a “Web 2.0″ logos. There is style; there is trend; but there is no such thing as a “Web 2.0″ brand of logo. Like a “maker’s mark”, a logo is timeless. Trends are not.

In my mind, when I hear the term “Standards-based design”, I think beyond the underlying code behind a site. For me, “Standards-based design” encompasses the whole of the site from the coding to the presentation layer. The logo for such are truly the pinnacle of achievement – it is the single visual element that tells the user “This person has invested time and energy into this site”. Before the advent of truly “Standards-based design”, we had proponents such as Jeffry Zeldman and like-minded fellows. I found him personally annoying at the time, but he had a message and we are all benefiting from his work and many like them. Design is not so different in those terms. There are standards we should all expect our fellows to abide by or at least strive for. Let us not masquerade as something and claim quality.

I find it deplorable that one might post a tutorial under such misleading terms. Shame on you. May Cerebus gnaw at your legs with all his many heads filled with keen, razor-like teeth.

Technorati : Design, Logos, Web 2.0