Fresh

Why does copywriting for the web, which is so important, get so looked down upon by a lot of writers out there?

Well, there’s no denying that writing for the web is different than writing for print, TV or radio. And sure, we all know that what’s different is often looked down upon and shied away from. Is it because of some sort of misunderstanding? Is it just a lack of interest? Nope, it’s FEAR.

I say FEAR because there are no easy victories when writing copy for the web.

But WHY are there no easy victories? Because when copywriting for the web, you can’t ace the project just by writing a great slogan or tagline. There’s a lot of “click here, dummy” type stuff that needs to be written, and generally there way more copy than you have to write for broadcast or print projects. (Side thought, could a copywriting OG like James J. Jordan survive if he was just now coming up in the game?)

The writers out there who FEAR web copy are the same ones who never liked, or couldn’t adapt, to this new reality. I’ve heard people say they hate to write for the web, and that they don’t consider it part of the brand to write a website’s instructional copy, a captcha interface, terms and conditions (check out this one), or other parts of a site that aren’t blatantly front and center. I know, isn’t that ridiculous? With any type of web content we’re talking about voice, and voice is brand, right?

Then there’s the length issue when dealing with web copy. FEAR is everywhere when it comes to this. Whether it’s researching and developing massive custom content, or truncating the hell out of a client’s “finalized” web copy, managing length is always a tougher chore on the web than it is in print, and it’s definitely a constant.

Throwing yourself at this ongoing challenge can turn the sometimes dirty job of writing web copy into a chance to create an on-brand work of art. So copywriters, take advantage of those chances to make something beautiful on the web, because I’m sure a lot of you out there suck at drawing.

Everybody loves WordPress here at eROI, and over the past year we’ve fully embraced using it not just as a blogging platform, but as a full blown content management system.  But although it has so many great features built-in (and more to come with WordPress 2.7), there are certain plugins we always add on to bump it up to the next level of CMS greatness.  They mostly work in the background, doing all the hard work and not getting much credit.  Our clients may not necessarily notice they are there, but they would probably notice if they weren’t.

There are a few categories of plugins that are essential (or at least extremely beneficial) to any WordPress-as-CMS installation:  SEO, Spam Prevention, Tracking/Analytics, and Feeds.

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From Phillip Toledano, “Days with My Father” is the story of his last days with his father who has Alzheimer’s disease. It is one of the most beautiful photo essays that I’ve ever seen. The pacing is impeccable. The interface is so simple. It’s so touching and perfect in every way.

Wow, what a day our email group had. Wait, did I say day? I mean week.

While we work with and begrudgingly support Microsoft products this Outlook 2007 is really throwing up some roadblocks. Most recently, anchor tags. Has this always been an issue? To be honest we’re not sure. The anchors work in some emails and not others. What is up with that? Too bad were not scientists and can bust out the beakers, mix together some liquids and create a solution. The rhyme and reason of this latest issue is a mystery.

Our main conundrum is to press on and leave Outlook 2007 behind or modify the entire email to get along with everything. Is the anchor tag a deal breaker?

So we set sail for today and we’ll see what we can come up with tomorrow… stay tuned.

To be able to use custom fonts on the web without making it an image or using tricks to manipulate it would be a dream come true for most designers and developers. That dream has slightly come true but not quite all the way.

The Contenders:
In the left corner you have Typeface.js, which offers a solution for custom fonts to be displayed on the users system with a few lines of javascript, CSS for styling and doesn’t require Flash.

In the right corner you have sIFR (Scalable Inman Flash Replacement), which also offers the same role with displaying custom fonts, but is created in Flash and embedded into HTML with the help of Javascript and CSS for styling.
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Cre8Camp Portland is back for a second year!  Based on the popular Barcamp series, it is a selection of “unconferences” specifically for creative industries professionals. Topics are created by the participants. You can propose topics and learn more at the Cre8CampPortland wiki.

Saturday, November 15 10:00am-3:00pm $10
Location: souk, 322 NW 6th Avenue, Suite 200, Portland OR
Register Here.

Any site that can get our design team dancing and singing is an automatic win, I’d say.

Our Art Director Garrett found the Harajuku Lovers Fragrance Site via The FWA (an amazing resource, BTW) and brought it up at our last team lunch n’ learn. The Flash site promotes a line of fragrances by Gwen Stefani, and features some pretty engaging web design.

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Recently I was on the lookout for an easy way for clients to resize images prior to uploading them to their WordPress blog.  I had already used up the handy ‘thumbnail’ and ‘medium’ sizing rules built into WordPress, and was needing to resize the original to a maximum width or height of 600 pixels.  A quick search for plugins to do this for me failed, and I quickly decided I didn’t have the time or knowledge to whip up some server-side resizing code for myself.

So resizing images before uploading needed to be a part of the process of adding new content to the website.  From past experiences I know that just instructing a blogger or webmaster to ‘resize your image to 600 pixels wide’ is not necessarily enough to get them going, if they are not well-versed in the ways of image editing.  Even if they can take the red-eye out of their family photos in Photoshop, that doesn’t mean they know how to prepare an image for web.  When they upload their vacation pics to Flickr, it does all the resizing and prep work for them.  But we’re not developing Flickr-level apps over here. (Yet, anyway.)

So how to simplify this whole process so that it creates the least amount of frustration and confusion?

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This Background was created using a Photoshop brush called “Fresh_Foliage_HighRes001″ from Designfruit . Many graphic designers create there own custom brushes and allow anyone to download, install and use these brushes as long as you follow some basic rule regarding the usage rights that the creator establishes. This artist specifically declares that these brushes aren’t to be used for designing work to be sold on stock photography sites. The idea behind this background I created (using this brush set) was to create an early evening sky with some graphics to frame the composition.

Here are a few more wallpapers! This time they are dedicated to Portland. These started out as an illustration of Big Pink and quickly turned into a cityscape. I hope to keep these evolving. What else should be present? I already got a suggestion to get B-Roy and Oden in there…

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The original “Big Pink” wallpaper. Those are some sweet houses in the west hills.

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NEW: Added a few more Portland buildings and Fremont bridge. More to come!