Fresh

A never-ending battle has been raging since days of old about the virtues of custom, project-specific photography vs. stock photography. Each has its benefits and drawbacks and depending on your role in a project you could be on one side of the fence or the other. I am a designer with an extensive photography background. I have a bias, so if you’re looking for a true comparison as to which is better, stock vs. custom, look somewhere else. I have very clear views on the role of photography in design and how it can help achieve the goals of a given project. Achieving the goals of the client are always the top priority and finding the best way to do that is the responsibility of the designer.

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While much of the country is still reeling from the effects of massive winter-ness, PDX has had an untimely run-in with Spring for the last week or so. Our cabin fever has been relieved for the moment, and so our thoughts turn towards happy hour on the patio and unplanned use of vacation days.

Now, some of us have a not-so-healthy idea of fun (spring cleaning, anyone?). Of course, often it’s necessary to purge clutter and bad habits, and spring is as good a time to do that as any. In this spirit we wanted to take a moment to talk about some of the best practices we’ve found when working with your design files. Good habits can make the difference between a seamless development process and a complete nightmare, one that will try everyone’s patience and waste valuable time. We’ve even included a little treat at the end to help get you started. Ready to clean house?

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In honor of Valentine’s Day’s impending arrival, I’ve compiled some images that I found inspiring in a sweet, adorable, lovey-dovey sort of way. We’re working on incorporating more posts which are image-based and simply put – inspiring to us, so you can expect more content like this from Fresh in the upcoming weeks!

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In honor of WordPress week, I’ve collected an assortment of sites that are tickling my fancy in some way or another and oh yeah, they all use WordPress. Hopefully you will find a couple that you haven’t had the pleasure of checking out before.

I Love Typography

This is a blog about all of the intricacies of typography ranging from the basics to super technical jargon-filled goodness. The design is a beautifully simple execution of what they preach.

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Leading up to the holidays last year I was keeping an eye on what West Elm was doing with their email designs. They were aggressively marketing to me and I was impressed with all of the emails I received! The clean design and photography is really first class and they used a number of devices to keep them interesting day-to-day.

West elm has a slew of what look to be templates that are super clean in their design. They rely on the great product photography for the most part and always have a grid as the foundation. There is care taken with the typography and this helps the designs sing. The photography is very high quality with beautiful staging.

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Growing up, my mom always stressed the importance of having great undergarments upon which to build your wardrobe. Bras and panties had to match, and it was ideal if the set matched your full outfit. She said, “If you feel good in your underwear, you’ll look great in your entire outfit.”

The same principle applies to website planning. Now, I’m not suggesting that websites wear bras and panties, but each of the websites that we design and build have certain, ahem, undergarments. These undergarments are the building blocks of a good website wardrobe.

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Finding The Perfect Storm

Often email gets overlooked as a space for telling stories. The primary function is, rightfully, prompting action. However, sometimes the right mix of elements can come together to bring both of these things into one piece. This project was one of those opportunities, so we wanted to share it here.

Icebreaker is an apparel company focusing on a very special product that mixes the versatility of an outdoor technical product, the sleek aesthetic of an activewear product, and the sustainability few companies can boast with its refined merino wool fabric. They have a fantastic brand story and push the envelope with their presence, often using provocative and mythical imagery to support their ethos that reminds us that “it’s about our relationship to nature, and to each other.”

In this instance Icebreaker wanted us to help announce their newest line of clothing for the Spring 2010 season (It’s spring in the Southern Hemisphere). We took this opportunity to not only elevate the presence of their brand in email, but also to use some unique ways of getting their message across. We created two versions of this email, one vertical and one horizontal. Some background on why we wanted to try this out can be found on this previous post by Dylan over on Email Wars.

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Crafting a Better Experience

We have all sorts of fantastic projects that we get to do on a day-to-day basis. Some amazing clients come to us with challenging problems and often we feel very proud of the solutions. Solutions we think many of you’d probably like to see, and more importantly, know the thinking behind. This is what prompted us to start this new series called Fresh Projects. We hope you’ll find it useful and interesting. As always, we’d love to hear comments and critiques on whether we hit the mark.

This first time around we wanted to show a recently launched site we did for Wacom Technologies – namely, Pen Scrappers – a resource for digital scrapbookers.

Although we had previously worked with Wacom to create the first iteration of Pen Scrappers – which was essentially a contest site that helped generate awareness for Wacom’s Bamboo Craft pen tablet – we were given the chance this time around to up the ante. Wacom had identified this audience as one that they could talk to more specifically, and they wanted to foster the community that already existed by creating a website that would be a strong resource for those looking to hone their craft.

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You may have checked out the mobile site we launched in conjunction with touch.wacom.com after we mentioned it in our post, “Menagerie of Mobile Madness.” We’re really proud of that little beauty, and excited to see its getting some recognition out there in the interwebz. Big thanks to Mobile Awesomeness for featuring it in their gallery (And if you haven’t checked them out yet, go do it!)

Sterling Communications is a technology services provider located in Portland, Oregon with a national customer base. They specialize in VoIP business phone systems, colocation, and hosting.  Sterling came to eROI this year looking for a complete strategic overhaul of their website, which had grown stale over the years and didn’t reflect what they truly had to offer their customers. Take a look at the home page before we got started:

Sterling wanted a solid working relationship with a trustworthy, local agency. After having been through several agencies in the past, they were looking to work with someone new to give them a fresh perspective on their website, company branding, and marketing materials.

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