Article Dynisco.com Goes Live by Justin Kerr on August 2, 2010 Last week Newfangled launched a re-designed site for Dynisco, a provider of high-performance, cost-effective sensors, controls, and analytical instruments for plastics extrusion processing. The cleaner and more contemporary dynisco.com is based on branding developed by one of our agency partners, Blass Communications. The goal of the new site was to focus Dynisco's message and reduce the complexity of their old site. Read Now About
Article Prospect Experience Design Simple Design is Good Design by Christopher Butler on July 31, 2010 Why do we continue to trust the methods of the mass-media sites? We should know better than that. It's because when it comes to solidly debunking their strategy and providing a better one for our clients, we fall short of a good argument. We—designers, developers, and agencies alike—don't do a good enough job reassuring our clients that following the leader is not only unecessary, but bad for their business. So, for the remainder of this article, I want to dig a bit deeper into two examples of influential but poorly designed sites we're likely to take cues from and then provide a, well, simple plan for staying simple... Read Now About
Article Winter/Spring/Summer Reading by Christopher Butler on July 28, 2010 It's been a few months since my last book-recommendations post, and in that time I've read a few I wanted to share. My selections include a book on writing as mapmaking, a collection of essays on the attention economy, a post-apocalyptic meditation on reality, an autobiography of my favorite founding father, and brilliant analysis of the progress of civilization. I hope there's one among them that piques your interest... Read Now About
Article My Interview with Anaezi Modu at REBRAND by Christopher Butler on July 28, 2010 Last week, I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Anaezi Modu, founder of ReBrand. Gearing up for the 2011 ReBrand 100 Awards, Anaezi will be interviewing the jurors, of which I am one, and posting her conversations to the site. I was first.. Read Now About
Article The Talk Bubble is About to Pop, Part 1 by Christopher Butler on July 26, 2010 Yesterday, Mark (who is building sandcastles on the beach with his family and finally reading that Buckminster Fuller biography I loaned him in 2006) and I were chatting over the phone and got to talking about the value of implementation to what we do and how we are positioned in the market. There is a tension between implementation and strategy when it comes to positioning: with the implementation being almost to the point of commoditization, differentiating your service in terms of a strong point of view and focus on richly researched planning is essential. But without following through with implementing that planning, I'm not sure how to maintain whatever perception of value you may have built. Reflecting upon how the market has been squeezed so significantly over the past couple of years, forcing people to question what they are truly getting, I remarked, "Yeah, the talk bubble is about to pop..." Read Now About
Article The Talk Bubble is About to Pop, Part 2 by Mark O’Brien on July 26, 2010 I've been on vacation, so instead of having our typical 8 a.m. conversations over coffee in the office lounge, Chris and I have been keeping up over the phone. During a call last week Chris said something that really caught my attention. We were talking about the glut of advisors and the lack of doers these days and he said "the talk bubble is about to pop." This quote really caught me, and we thought it might be fun to write a pair of blog posts about our thoughts on this topic--so here's my take. Read Now About
Article What I’ve Learned (or, the Longest Post Evar) published on July 23, 2010 Getting ready to leave Newfangled, I've spent a lot of time thinking about what the past couple of years have brought. Here's some of what I've learned through the daily work of being a project manager... Read Now About
Article SEO Quick Tips published on July 21, 2010 A question we hear from clients quite often here at Newfangled is “How do I get my site to rank... Read Now About
Article Prospect Experience Design Design 101: White Space is Not Empty Space by Justin Kerr on July 20, 2010 White space is not "empty" space, nor is it necessarily white. It is the unmarked area between elements on a page and is a critical component in good design. White space serves an important purpose; ignoring it can not only yield some unattractive visual results but also hinder content comprehension. Read Now About
Article Prospect Experience Design A Conversation with Information Designer Michael Babwahsingh by Christopher Butler on July 16, 2010 Inspired by a Core77 Wiretap that I read back in March, I suggested that my friend Michael Babwahsingh, Information Designer at Humantific, and I record one of our Saturday Skype chats and see if any of it was blog worthy... Here is the result: a long(ish) conversation about design, travel, the human-technology adventure, and much more... Read Now About
