On a desktop as you scale the browser from it’s maximum to minimum width, the page layout adjusts accordingly. In most cases, what was a 2 or 3 column layout on a desktop, becomes a single column when sized for mobile. Check out the sites below and do this exercise. First, make the browser as large as you can. Notice where the logo sits in relation to the navigation, the amount of columns and image size. Now slowly make the browser smaller until you can’t get any smaller. You’ll experience the site “snapping” into different positions, representing how the site would appear on desktop, tablet and mobile. In the second and third examples you’ll also notice that text block widths and image size are also changing, making for truly flexible designs.

http://morehazards.com/

http://forefathersgroup.com/

http://www.frontend2011.com/

As always, it’s important to consider your target audience when accessing whether it makes sense to create a responsive design. Do you need a mobile optimized site or will a mobile friendly layout suffice? A site that is mobile friendly isn’t necessarily targeted to the resolutions of devices other than desktops, yet by virtue of not using flash, will be viewable mobile devices. You simply have to zoom in and “swim” around the site in order to view it. By contrast, mobile optimized sites are very easy to navigate and follow a design structure similar to an app. Simple vertical lists prevail, since there is little room for multiple columns, side bars and drop down menus.

Analyze your audience and figure out your needs in the site map planning stage. If most of your users are on desktops, it’s probably ok to have a mobile-friendly site. But, if your needs change, you can always make the site responsive at a later point, since the technology behind the technique is not complex.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaxDTtl1D6M

Over the years MSLK has had some truly gifted, inspired, and inspiring interns work in our studio. We find the experience to be rewarding and in many senses a way of giving back, showing others what we’ve learned over the years that has helped make our work award-winning.

Some of our best interns have been the youngest, and last year was no exception. We hosted a summer internship with a young gentleman named Leon Robinson as part of the Cooper Hewitt, National Design Museum’s 2011 Design Prep Scholar’s program. He worked with us to develop Read the Label, a self-initiated awareness campaign/eco-art project about the harmful ingredients found in everyday products.

The video above features Mr. Robinson recounting his experience here along with many other bright designers of tomorrow telling about their experiences. Congrats to all!

Challenge
After MSLK won two “Making the Case” Awards in 2011, AIGA, the professional association for design, felt we were uniquely qualified to create a new identity for this year’s competition. Upon receiving the design brief, we found ourselves questioning the fundamental theme of “Making the Case,” down to the name itself. In order for the AIGA to gain the widest recognition for this competition, it was crucial that the theme resonate not only with designers, but with clients. MSLK refined the challenge by elevating the competition to that of an Emmy or Oscar.

Strategy
We began by researching a variety of awards and competitions, categorizing them, and developing viable names within each category. This exercise was crucial in helping the AIGA determine the competition’s positioning. After a thorough investigation, we decided that it would be most effective to use a common industry term,” Justified.”  As a word, Justified has a number connotations, all relevant:
1. Entrants would need to justify their work through a written case study
2. You’re seeking justification from your peers and by the AIGA
3. Lastly, there’s justified type, which refers to the alignment of words in a column of text.

Initial Studies

Design
There were numerous requirements to satisfy: the design would have to stand out from the other attention-getting visuals in design magazines and on design websites. In addition, the identity would need to be flexible enough to accommodate a variety of different formats— from vertical magazine ads to horizontal web banners and small icons. We developed dozens of directions, exploring the many ways justified type could be represented. The winning design is a modern take on the graphic work that came out of the Wiener Werkstätte (Vienna Workshop) at the turn of the 20th century.  Brightly colored, force-justified type stacks in between bars on a black background, creating a bold presence on the page. The shorthand identity is the 9 letters of “Justified” broken into three rows in between bars.

Final Design

Success
The AIGA is currently accepting entries for Justified, and the identity has made its way into design publications such as HOW and Print, and across the web on Creative Hotlist, Communication Arts, and of course on the AIGA website itself. Our solution was cost-effective, as the AIGA will no longer have to rebrand their competitions each year as they’ve done in the past. They now have the tools, as will clients and designers, to brand their award-winning work with the Justified logo in years to come.

Individuals with namesake brands often ask me if they should maintain a personal profile or a company page on Facebook. These individuals are often designers, authors, consultants, photographers and other artists who do business as themselves, ie: Jane Doe who runs Jane Doe Inc.  These companies are small businesses with five or less full-time employees. Many of them are Jane Doe working single-handedly to find and execute business assignments.  Jane barely has any time for marketing, but feels the pressure to join the social media revolution.

I always suggest that Jane start small with a personal profile. I’d rather see Jane’s social media efforts be a huge success, then deal with the “problem” of too many fans and too much activity before splitting the account, here’s why:

Most people don’t realize in order to create a company fan page you must also have at least one administrator who maintains a personal profile page. Company pages cannot make friend requests directly; they can only “suggest” their company page to the friends of the administrator or pay to promote their profile page in Facebook ads. Therefore, Jane Doe must first friend request someone personally before being able to use the Facebook interface to suggest they friend Jane Doe Inc. Experience has shown, unless Jane’s company page has highly relevant, interesting, and different content from her personal profile, most connections will be happy with the personal connection already made.

We suggest the following as a first step with Facebook:

• Create a personal page, not a fan page
• Have people friend you at your personal page.
• Seek out people you know, and make the connections you want to make. Using this method, you will find that many old connections and your extended network will find you.
•Foster this network. Some of them may require your professional services and may not  know what you do professionally. If all your information regarding your professional services resides on your company page, your personal contacts may never receive this information.

Regarding Privacy
Most people don’t want to friend professional contacts due to fear of privacy, or lack thereof. Facebook has made significant progress on this front.

• When you friend someone categorize your acquaintance using “Lists.” For example: colleague, client, friend, family, close friends, etc.
• When publishing content, allowing people to tag you, and other privacy settings, create preferences that default to “friends only,” and “hide from” your most sensitive contacts such as your “client” and “colleague” list. This means only your close friends, family, and other lists will see that information. •Rest assured, this privacy setting is in effect, even if a mutual friend comments on the post. Furthermore, the client or colleague will never know what is being hidden. Your profile will appear normal and full of content to them.
• If you ever want to see what your profile looks like to friends you are hiding information from, Facebook has add a handy “view as” feature where you can do just that.

Promoting Content
The real benefits of this system come alive when promoting content. Maintaining one profile is easier to update than the task of updating two pages with duplicate content. Also, using lists and selecting specific individuals you want to share with helps that information receive higher priority within those friends’ news feeds. Even better, personal profile pages receive higher relevance than company pages. So you have a better shot of reaching the people you actually want to reach!

• When publishing content relevant to your colleagues and clients, select those lists and post to them and ideally to them only! This will help push this content into their Highlighted Stories news feed, ensuring that more of them actually see it.
• Note, friends can actually be in multiple categories. For example your co-worker could be on your Close Friends and your Colleagues list.

What’s Missing?
Personal profile pages cannot be customized to have a custom designed landing page or Fan Gate. Although these are great features for brand building, they must be designed and programmed by a professional and certainly add cost/complexity to a social strategy.

In addition, you will not have access to the fan engagement metrics, called “Insights,” Facebook provides for company pages. However we’ve found that these tools are woefully under-utilized by small brands.  Therefore the benefit of their inclusion does not outweigh the positives of utilizing a personal profile page.

We believe these tools are best utilized by a savvy Facebook-er who is ready for the next level of time commitment and content creation.

Pantone Postcards
Brighten up your Valentine’s Day by sending a Pantone Postcard! Trend spotters say direct mail will be hot in 2012, so show your love this season by mailing a swatch from the ever-famous designer’s tool, the Pantone Matching System. This box of 100 colored postcards will give you the freedom to send as many as you want.

Support Individuals and Individualism
If you’re not loving solid bold colors this Valentine’s Day, MSLK’s Sheri Koetting has a solution at Felt and Wire called Out of the Ordinary Love. You’re sure to find a one-of-a-kind Valentine here that will knock all other greeting cards out of the water. When you buy from Felt and Wire, not only are you supporting a local artist, but you are sure to get a Valentine that is as unique as your love.

Sleep No More
Macbeth as it’s never been interpreted before, right in the middle of New York City. We’re loving this interactive take on a Shakespearean classic. Wander at your own pace through five floors of an abandoned “hotel” for a truly unique theater experience. One part haunted house, one part choose your own adventure. Running through April.  Get tickets soon, you won’t regret it!

The Meatball Shop
Meatballs have moved out of the spaghetti bowl and into three NYC locations. You’re sure to fall in love with the flavors and atmosphere at The Meatball Shop. With the ability to customize your own dish, these energetic restaurant/bars have made the meatball this year’s macaroon. Vegetable, Spicy Pork, and Reuben are just a few of the many flavors of meatballs on the menu, catering to even the pickiest of taste buds.

Warby Parker
After breaking the bank on those pricey gifts for your significant other, you won’t have to feel guilty about this purchase for yourself. Warby Parker’s promise of “boutique-quality, classically crafted eyewear” will have you seeing crystal clear for under $100. We’re big fans of clear vision and pristine design, so Warby Parker is a match made in heaven.

Spotify
You deserve to get exactly what you want this Valentine’s Day, so why not start by introducing yourself to unlimited music and sharing between friends? With the ability to search for any song and listen to it right away, Spotify makes it easy for you to listen to what you want, when you want. Create your own playlists and share them, so your friends know what’s buzzing in your ears that day.

Love at the Met: Historic Valentines and Paper Kisses
Valentines have been a tradition ever since we can remember, but the Metropolitan Museum of Art is displaying a collection of Valentines and traditions that span over 250 years. Get a pen and paper ready.  You’ll want to take notes on how to create a real Valentine’s Day card after seeing this exhibit.

Pinterest
Who says you show your love only on Valentine’s Day? Pinterest is a way for you to organize everything you love in one place.  We love that Pinterest is perfect for image-driven brands. Create boards with specific topics and share your interests with friends on this virtual tack board of inspiration.

I came across such a brand during a search for eyeglasses. After numerous visits to online stores and brick & mortars, I found the whole process to be draining: too many choices, and a nagging sense that things were more expensive than they should be. Then I remembered an article I had read some time ago about a start-up making vintage-inspired frames with prescription lenses for only $95.00. I began my Google search using the keywords “New York Times vintage eye-wear website” which lead me right to the article.

Now, I’m the proud owner of a wonderful pair of stylish, vintage-inspired frames from Warby Parker. I only paid $95.00, and found the whole experience to be, well… fun, which is a far cry from my previous experiences. Here’s why:

Great website
The site is an exercise in simplicity. Focused content, clear layout, pitch-perfect photography, clever writing, and just the right amount of technology. By technology, I’m referring to an cool tool which allows you to use your webcam to snap a picture of your face, and then map several designs onto your face. I was very skeptical of this, yet it worked seamlessly and was actually quite helpful.

The website did a really great job of establishing that the company had a clear aesthetic from their products to their demographic. I knew right away upon my arrival that I wanted to stay here. We tell our clients all the time that your website is your virtual storefront to the world, and it’s great to see a company truly grasping the concept, creating an experience about you, not them.

Innovative Concept

Warby Parker has two main methods of connecting you to the perfect frame. The first is the “Virtual Try-On” described above, and the other is a “Try It Before You Buy It” program where you can test out up to five pairs at home. Again, they made the process easy to understand and execute.  One method pushes the envelope of technology; the other is an offline method giving you the comfort of trying things on in your own home.

Making it Easy
The “Try It Before You Buy It” method comes with a well-packaged box of frames and a witty card describing the simple steps to take. They also include a return address label to make it even easier to send everything back.

Passion
For every pair of glasses sold, they donate a pair to someone in need via a program called VisionSpring. MSLK  encourages all our clients to find causes they support or partner with, and this is a perfect example.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ox2L05rTC0

Extras Make All the Difference
I received an email last week saying “It’s Here. The 2011 Annual Report: 100% Full of Statistics, Facts, Figures, Maps and More!” It took me to a microsite of incredibly well-designed, clever, and informative statistics from the company’s past year.

Targeted Marketing
This last point is one that I have mixed feelings about, yet it is undeniably effective. Immediately after first visiting Warby Parker’s site, I started seeing ads for them on just about every blog and news site I visited. I soon realized that this was no mere coincidence; it is part of a highly-targeted advertising service called TellApart which tracks your web visits and presents ads from those sites to you on other sites. Weeks later, I am still seeing Warby Parker ads everywhere, even though I’ve already made the purchase. We think this approach is going to be essential to any online e-tailing strategy.

Image-based brands such as fashion, beauty, photographers, and artists will love Pinterest, a new social sharing platform dedicated to “connecting everyone in the world through shared tastes and the ‘things’ they find interesting.” Users create image boards on topics ranging from home, to travel, food, fitness, beauty, etc. They then find, follow, and share with friends who have similar interests.

Think of Pinterest as your virtual tack board. Remember the cork board you used to have over your desk? Instead of clipping and tacking physical inspiration, Pinterest allows you to keep track of all those virtual bits of inspiration you come across online everyday. Pinterest comes complete with a browser extension that makes pinning a snap. Simply click on the “Pin It” tool when viewing any standard web page and every image or video on that page can be added to your profile with two clicks. Users are encouraged to add a note to the image, and anyone can add a comment to it at any time. More importantly, the image is saved with a link to the URL of the original source. Goodbye long, scrolling lists of “Bookmarked” pages you can’t remember why you saved in the first place, Hello, Pinterest.

Image-driven brands will find this platform perfect for their social media outreach. No need to feel pressure to have a lot of content; beautiful images are once again worth a thousand words. Pinterest users are searching for inspiration for their hair, for their homes, for their lives. Users are encouraged to pick up inspiration from people they follow and “re-pin” it. Creative groups like MSLK can even create shared boards that allow multiple users to post to the same board. We are currently using Pinterest to gather inspiration for an upcoming project.

If you maintain a personal Facebook profile, you can login to Pinterest with your Facebook account. (Note: you’ll have to request an invitation to join, as Pinterest is currently operating with a waiting list for new members.) The benefit of using the Facebook connect is that your “Pins” will automatically feed to your Facebook profile, and although this feature currently needs a bit more development, the potential looks promising.

Speaking of future potential, Pinterest currently works best when you are pinning images already uploaded/hosted online. For brands, this is a great way to drive traffic back to your own website or blog where the images are already hosted. However, we found this a bit annoying for individuals looking to upload new content. You can upload photos from your computer, but the interface is cumbersome and slow. For those with iPhones, there is currently a Pinterest mobile App which makes shooting and uploading a bit easier.

Happy Pinning! Follow us at pinterest.com/sherikoetting and pinterest.com/marclevitt.

We are thrilled to officially announce that our new packaging for Wigwam just won an American Packaging Design Award!

According to the letter of congratulations:

“For nearly five decades, Graphic Design USA has sponsored national design competitions that spotlight areas of excellence and opportunity for creative professionals. Of these, the American Package Design Awards is the fast growing. The reason is simple but profound: marketers are challenged as never before to convey their message. Package design — along with the related disciplines of POP and instore graphics — are increasingly the difference-makers in the consumer’s purchasing decision. This competition celebrates well-designed graphics, of course, but also the power of design to advance the brand promise and forge an emotional connection with the buyer at the moment of truth.”

Making this even better is that we were able to top ourselves… having won the same award for our soon-to-be-the-old packaging in 2008. Lightning has definitely struck twice, and it feels even better than it did the first time! Congrats to all at MSLK and Wigwam who helped make this as great as it could be.

Look for the new packaging as it arrives in stores this spring!

MSLK believes transferring relationships fostered on social media to in-person encounters is a recipe for success. Companies are able to reach a wider audience through all of today’s online channels and utilizing social media to augment face-to-face encounters such as trade shows, events, and in-store promotions has proven to enhance results.

I was one of a group of six social media experts who were interviewed by Rob Murphy and GCI magazine at the end of last year to hear our thoughts on “Using Social Media to Enhance Face-to-Face Encounters.” Here are a few insights:

• The real win comes when virtual tactics are integrated into traditional face-to-face programs.
• For most industries, promotions on Twitter and Facebook are a safe bet; add in LinkedIn if you have an authoritative spokesperson or a key speaker at the event.
• Make sure to use hash tags for all promotions around your events.
• At larger events, tweet at the event’s hash tag and expand your reach.
• Tweet during events to involve contacts and press those who can’t be there live.
• Accept questions at events via Twitter; answer them live and virtually.
• Listen to your followers before and after an event to truly understand what topics are relevant to them.
• Make sure to promote your attendance at larger events in advance. Let people know you are interested in meeting up!
• Make sure you have a content plan to continue to engage new contacts after the event.

An integrated marketing strategy is crucial for keeping in touch with customers in today’s fast-paced world. Virtual communication is still no substitute for face-to-face interaction. However, these virtual efforts will help you ensure that no face-to-face opportunity is missed. In addition, these virtual tools will foster a consistent and continued relationship throughout the year.