I’ve just finished reading an excellent blog post from Cameron Moll about Cufon, an emerging technology for font replacement on the web.

At Bloom, we’ve experimented with using Sifr for font replacement, however, personally I always try to avoid using Sifr unless it’s an absolute necessity. It usually seems to cause me as many problems as it solves. In fact, I would go as far as saying I hate Sifr! I find it complicated to setup and time consuming to update. I can often be heard muttering expletives when I’m trying to get Sifr to behave properly.  This is probably due to the fact that I’m a designer, not a developer.

Cufon appears to be as simple to set up as declaring a couple of scripts in the head, uploading a font file and adding a few lines of CSS. Even I could do that without furrowing my brow too much!

However, Cufon does have one major, major drawback compared to Sifr and that is font licensing. Cufon violates EULA (end-user licensing agreement) and copyrights due to the fact that fonts are uploaded or embedded.

Apparently, with a bit of jiggerypokery, unscrupulous characters can actually copy and download the font you have embedded on your site, the Type Foundries are understandably not happy about this.

Put simply, it would appear it is illegal to use Cufon for font replacement. This isn’t just a drawback, it’s a complete showstopper. However, towards the end of his blog post Cameron mentions that talks are ongoing with the powers that be and he is optimistic about sorting out the licensing and security issues. If this can happen then typography on the web will have made another huge leap forward.

Until then I’ll have to stick with Sifr and turning the air blue as I try and get the b*st@rd thing to work!

For a more detailed breakdown on Cufon, have a read of these:

http://www.cameronmoll.com/archives/2009/03/cufon_font_embedding/

http://wiki.github.com/sorccu/cufon/about

http://thinkclay.com/technology/cufon-sifr-flir

I have been working with a lot of different usability agencies lately and it struck me that very small differences in how a user centred design project are run can have radically different outcomes, not all of which are positive. The main pitfall as far as I can see it occurs as a result of prominence given to either the usability or the development agency in the process and critically on how far the usability agency are asked to go with the process.

Scenario 1 – Usability agency engaged to define the brief to be handed to design/development agency for implementation

This scenario is defined by the size of the remit given to the usability agency, here (in brief) the process runs like so:

1. Engage users and test current website and competitor websites
2. Internal stakeholder engagement
3. Open & closed card sorts etc to define information architecture and functions
4. Produce wireframe prototype of proposed system
5. Design agency apply design to wireframes
6. Clickable jpeg prototypes are tested with users
7. A/B test
8. Launch

Outcome: a detailed and actionable brief effectively written by the target audience to meet their needs.
On the face of it this sounds great yet on more than one occasion the website produced as a result of this process has immediately and intuitively looked wrong to me and the conversion rates have in the end backed up my initial reactions. So what is going wrong? Time to consider a second scenario.

Scenario 2 – design agency led process
In this scenario the usability agency are used by the design agency for insight and verification of ideas prior to implementation, actually a lot of the tasks carried out are the same but this subtle change of focus and instruction has a radically different outcome.
Here the process works like so:

1. Engage users and test current website and competitor websites
2. Contribute to Internal stakeholder engagement with design agency
3. Open & closed card sorts etc to define information architecture and functions
4. Produce functional lists against proposed architecture
5. Brief client and design agency
6. Design agency brainstorm solutions ‘big ideas’ and produce clickable jpeg prototypes
7. Design agency finalise the brief
8. Usability agency test prototype variants and feedback
9. A/B test
10. Launch

In this scenario the design agency are using the usability company within their process taking user insight as just one strand of the briefing process. This has several critical differences from the initial scenario.

1. Before the invention of the car if you had asked a user how to improve their journey times they would have asked for a faster horse. The point here being that it is dangerously limiting to let users define the brief in its entirety, the only outcome will be a better version of what stood before.
2. User insight misses the bigger picture, if the voice of the user is too strong in the brief then the website will be too focussed on what users want (yes there is such a thing) at the cost of the commercial success of the site, sometimes less is more, but this rarely comes out of user feedback. This subtle shift in power is what sets the project free.
3. Wireframes are the death of creativity, there I’ve said it! Wireframes are of course useful in some contexts (lengthy form processes for instance where the design will actually reflect the boxes). In marketing led sites however, a wireframe design results in a web design that looks like the wireframes. At Bloom we prefer functional lists in their suggested positions as simple text on white space, ‘no frames’
4. Freedom! The most important change here is in the user engagement is used to ask questions, it is the creative and technical challenge to the agency to solve these problems and users are used to verify the potential success of ideas prior to the costly build not solve the problems themselves (for the reasons listed above).

For the purposes of this blog I have deliberately simplified the process here but I have tried to capture the essence of my concerns / recommendations. I would like to just take the opportunity to state that I am very pro usability agency and don’t want this to come across as a criticism, however this is still a relatively new and evolving market and we can and are always looking to improve the way we work and the success of our projects for our clients. I’m also aware that many usability agencies wouldnt adhere to the process in scenario 1 anyway so i’m not trying to tarnish everyone with the same brush.

So on that note I’d be particularly interested in comments from usability specialists, agencies, and individuals to help refine this for the greater good. Perhaps some of you think i’ve got it wrong?

Being a ’silver surfer’, Chairman, CEO, NED, etc., gives me a privileged position of ‘outside-in’ insight into this industry which is still highly embryonic and quite naive in some ways; occasionally exhibiting the inconsistency of an early stage teenager! I am also ‘contemporary’ (some might say contentious) in my views on business management. I firmly believe that business sustainability is only enabled by developing real underlying value in the enterprise. Value that is founded upon market positioning, brand, image and stakeholder value with financial gain being the OUTCOME of leading, aligning and managing these essentially non-financial assets.

I am therefore always mystified by individuals and enterprises seeking short term gain by seemingly ‘following the money’. For example I recently read of an exclusively SEO ’start up’ seeking to invest big sums to ‘grab’ market share … WHY? Is it because they saw it as a quick turn investment? In my humble and biased(?) opinion, to REALLY make a success of SEO you need to know and have major influence on how websites work and vice-versa. Furthermore, social media is rapidly growing in terms of its influence on SEO/WEBSITE effectiveness. To  enter an already fairly mature yet dynamic and aggressive market in such an exposed manner seems at best, high risk.

DIGITAL now encompasses an ever expanding domain. With such rapidly growing technologies and techniques, the power of the collective (enterprise brand/image/credibility/etc.) needs to be harnessed TOGETHER with enabling the individual to express their flair and develop their own brand/image/credibility. Enterprise is then enhanced by the individual and the individual enhanced by the enterprise whereby such pro-active engagement enables each partners aspiration to be mutually enabled ….. engaging warp-drive if you will.

This takes enlightened leadership and staff engagement and is what true HOLISTIC benefit means.

2 + 2 = 6

Such an approach is also where stakeholder (enterprise, staff, client, partner) engagement is truly empowered. The focus for both enterprise and individual is therefore on mutually inclusive contribution and value add as opposed to I/me/my financial gain; albeit when WE get it right, mutually sustainable financial gain is a natural outcome.

Bloom Media helped launch a corporate blog for client Anglian Home Improvements in April 2009.  Realising that companies are becoming web savvier and socialising more on the internet, Bloom Media have made an attempt to tap Anglian’s potential to get closer to their customers through their blog.

The blog http://blog.anglianhome.co.uk/ is aimed towards giving everyone a behind the scenes insight into Anglian’s world, its employees and its culture. It will serve as a platform for exchanging information, comments and feedback between customers and the company, and will provide updated company news and information on the various charity and community events that Anglian participate in. There will also be a focus on the double glazing industry as a whole, and developments within.  Readers will be encouraged to participate actively in online discussions by posing questions, comments and responses through the blog.  The blog intends to show the fun side of working with Anglian but also convey its seriousness in promoting Anglian Home’s image as a customer friendly company that gives priority to feedback and answering comments from customers.

Since its launch in April, there have been numerous interesting posts on various categories such as updates on the marketing side of the business, a historical perspective of windows in its product development section and the company’s recent donation of a conservatory to a local charity in Norwich. This can be found in the Charity and Community section.

The launch of the Anglian Home Improvements blog is a positive step towards bridging the gap between business and customer and is a prime example of how the ever-evolving internet community can be used to benefit both customers and businesses. Customers now have the chance to get answers to questions and have access to advice from both past and present customers, whilst businesses have the opportunity to provide exemplary customer service with fast and thoughtful responses to any queries that arise.

This can be useful when you want to be able to tweak the postions of numerous images within a clipping mask without having to delete areas and edges of images.

1. Create the shape which will act as your clipping mask on a blank Photoshop canvas. For this example draw a circle.
2. Paste a new image over your ciclular clipping mask shape. This will create a new layer in your layers palette.
3. Draw a square path with your vector shape/drawing tool over the image (you must create it as a path and not a shape). Select the path with your ‘Path Selection Tool’, right click and ‘create vector mask’. Your image should now be masked by this square vector path.
4. Make this a clipped path within the circular shape right click (alt-click for mac) and select ‘create clipping mask’ (or pressing Ctrl+Alt+G). Ta-da, you should now have a mask inside a mask.
5. You can create multiple clipped vector shape layers by stacking them one on top of another in the layers palette as you turn them into clippling paths.
6. To move the images around inside your vector masks you musk unlink them in your layers palette. To scale images inside masks you will need to deselect the mask (pen icon) on the layer in the layers palette.

The creative section of the bloom blog is looking a little bit empty with a rather paltry post count of 0!

In order to keep the creative end up, so to speak, I’m posting a couple of medical concepts that I’ve been working on recently.

Here goes:

Woodside Radiology

Dr. Christopher Nutting