Which is why I’ve really enjoyed a bit of a reincarnation of boutique magazines over the past couple of years. Two of those such periodicals come to mind: Uppercase and Kinfolk. I remember when Uppercase began and I snatched up the first few issues as soon as they came out. Every issue of Kinfolk I’ve seen has blessed me with their incredibly well done photography and showcases of fascinating people. If you haven’t seen or read either of these publications, do yourself a favor and check them out.

I was on the Uppercase blog earlier today and they had a post about Anthropologie and how Anthro featured their magazine in one of their blog posts. I was pleasantly surprised to see that both Uppercase and Kinfolk made the list! Check out the blog post here.

For over four years now, I’ve had the privilege of being part of the incredible family here at JLB. I’ve been able to work alongside some of the most creative, hard-working, personable people that I will, without a doubt, come across within my lifetime. Games of ketchup basketball, beers, queso and deep, dark secrets have all been shared–well, perhaps not deep, dark secrets. Some of the greatest moments in friendship history will forever be captive within the JLB compound… and yes, this includes ALL friendship history.

As may be somewhat obvious by this point, I am announcing my official departure from JLB. Neither stepping forward nor backward, I am simply making a sidestep into another career journey. Today, I leave the future of development and life as we know it in the ever-capable and probably softer hands of the one and only Mary Plummer.

That said, I want to thank JLB, our clients and even the random JLB blog readers. You have made my job something to look forward to ever morning. But now, I must also say goodbye.

Forever yours and always and forevers,
John

And then there’s the TV. Your desktop, laptop, iPad, and yes… your phone. The imagery is inescapable.

But you know what else is still there? Albeit in the background… the words. The name of that company. The clever slogan. The two sentences that so perfectly complemented that photo, they got you thinking.

Words still matters. Copy. Still. Matters.

It matters even more to the Web than ever before. The search engine spiders are smarter than they ever have been, but they still depend on the most simplistic of devices — text. As copywriters or “SEO’s” (search engine optimizers), professionals in my industry know that the words on a web page, the links on a web page, the words linked on a web page, and the way those words are “marked up” can make a major difference in whether or not a website is indexed properly and subsequently, found by someone performing a normal keyword search.

This is why copy still matters. This is why it’s important, when you’re developing your brand (and carrying that all the way through to your web pages and your online marketing efforts) you need to think about both what you say and how you present it. And how the search engines receive that all-important text can determine where you rank in the searches (SERPs).

You don’t have to be an English major to appreciate that.

p.s. For more “food for thought” on why copy still matters, check out this article from Copyblogger.

“Adobe® Edge is a new web motion and interaction design tool that allows designers to bring animated content to websites, using web standards like HTML5, JavaScript, and CSS3.”

For the past few months, I’ve been playing around with Edge and so far, I really like it. It gives me the option of animating virtually anything I want within a web design while using mobile (and SEO) friendly HTML5. For now Edge is free because it’s still in beta, but it won’t be for long!

Here’s a link to download it. Adobe Edge

It’s a valid line of thought — and these are exactly the kind of questions clients should be asking. Mobile web usage is at an all-time high (see insightful article and “infographic” from DigitalBuzz). Some estimate that mobile Internet usage will overtake desktop Internet usage by 2014. The way your site looks in an iPhone, on a Droid, or in a tablet matters now more than it ever has. The W3C even has a standards section devoted entirely to mobile.

From our vantage point, there are really two viable ways to plan for mobile – Responsive Web Design and Adaptive Web Design. For the moment, our go-to choice is Responsive Design. There is a lot to be said for both approaches, but focusing on Responsive (in this blog post) reveals a type of planning ahead strategy with limited “moving parts.” Essentially Responsive Design involves creating a master graphic design (just like always) from which we then create a set of similar designs but at different sizes (i.e. optimized design for particular devices, i.e. screens). At the same time, when we code those graphic designs, we can operate from the same “playbook” (the same html, the same CSS, and the same PHP). So, rather than creating a separate site for Desktops and a separate site for Mobile Devices, we are creating one site with the same content but variable designs.

When a browser comes to the site, it is “screened” by the site for size and then automatically shown the size most appropriate for the device. In other words, the layout of the website changes automatically to the screen resolution of the device accessing it; thereby giving the user an optimized website experience. Think of it as a site tailored just for your iPad or Desktop, depending on which machine you’re using to view the site.

Using Responsive Web Design, JLB is able to streamline its approach to building websites for our clients, which translates into more modern websites, more flexible websites, more efficient websites, and gives us a cost-effective solution for clients interested in “mobile sites.” For a great visual presentation of Responsive Web Designs, check out Designmodo’s blog post, featuring 50 examples and best practices.

My socks are completely off again, this time due to Rocketgenius’s Gravity Forms plugin. As you can guess based on the name, it’s a plugin centered around creating and processing forms within WordPress. It does so elegantly, intuitively and quickly… but with no shortage of features. Not only does Gravity Forms offer everything most other form plugins do (i.e. creation and processing of forms and databased submissions), but it also adds to the mix with features like:

• Conditional logic for fields and entire forms
• Multi-page forms
• Advanced fields like pre-formatted URL’s and phone numbers, file uploads and even date pickers!
• Dynamically populated fields (yeah!)
• Entry limiting and scheduling
• Post fields (my personal favorite)

Yes, a developer license may be a bit pricey at $199, but that includes unlimited usage of the plugin across unlimited sites, a year of free updates and support all kinds of add-ons like MailChimp and Freshbooks integration as well as extra user registration features. Regardless, I’m stating right now–and you can quote me–that Gravity Forms is the single most helpful, feature-rich and intuitive plugin available at the moment… at any price.

Do yourself a favor and swing by www.gravityforms.com and purchase a license. You will not be disappointed.

When you first encounter the Timeline layout, it may be more than you want to take in. For most of us, Facebook is an escape, an opportunity to very passively socialize. And so that first encounter with the new layout is going to require the brain to turn on and readjust. That is kind of annoying. But for marketing teams and designer/developer types there are features, which we believe will be a benefit to both social and business users. We’ve been encouraging clients to take advantage of this more robust layout and have had a few busy days creating cover images, fitting profile pics into the new dimensions, and strategizing about which four “button boxes” (as we’ve been calling them) should sit on the top row. I’ll hand this post over to Micah now and let him describe his experience and process for designing within the Timeline layout and then will return with some perspective on developing custom pages and setting it all up.

Thanks, Mary…

When I was first tasked with designing for the new timeline layout, I immediately started looking for layout templates. Alas, I found none, so I decided to just make my own and share it with you all. Keep in mind that Facebook is always changing. They’re making minor adjustments almost daily that aren’t nearly as jarring as the new timeline introduction. Case in point: After laying everything out as pixel-perfectly as I could, I decided to check my work against screenshots of a couple of Facebook pages other than the one I was working with. For some reason, my cover photo pixel height was off by six pixels compared to one screenshot and off my twelve pixels (!) compared to another. This template is as accurate as I could possibly make it, but it’s certainly not perfect.

I know a lot of people like to complain about timeline, but personally, I think it’s a design and development marvel. The new layout lends itself to a little more creativity too, I think. Having the fairly large space of the cover photo area on each page open to literally anything I can think up is pretty nice. At first, I was annoyed by the way Facebook decided to handle the “recently tagged photo” section. But merging those four photo boxes with the left hand navigation of the previous layout iteration was a smart move. Now, those boxes can be customized to be actual links to interior “content” pages in your Facebook profile.

Download the template PSD I created in CS5 here and use it however you want. Please feel free to fill out the form below and let me know what you think. Thanks!

Thank you, Micah!

With the template Micah created, the process for developing a Facebook look is very similar to the process for creating a website. We take that visual map and work with the page settings in Facebook to recreate the look. Custom pages are not new to Facebook and the proces for creating them is the same. However, we do have wider dimension to play with and are no longer confined to that center panel.

Once you have custom pages in place and the page is set to the timeline layout, we can take advantage of the features that the new timeline layout allows. We are really fond of the ‘pinning’ and ‘starring’ options. ‘Pinning’ a post moves it to the top of your page of posts, and that post will remain at the top until you ‘unpin’ or at the end of seven days. The point here is to give businesses an opportunity to have a highlighted weekly announcement. ‘Starring’ a post will expand its width (a double-wide post!) giving it greater prominence on the page.

So there is lots to play with here. Lots to learn and more growing alongside the Facebook team. We’re having fun with it and look forward to seeing how the timeline will impact this online community.

We’d love to hear your thoughts!

Bottom Line? Google is moving all of its services under one Privacy Policy. Translation? Google is going to merge your profile, i.e. “compile and collate each user’s data from all those products” as NPR so eloquently describes it.

From Google’s perspective, this is an opportunity to serve up more relevant search results, ads that cater to each individual, and a litany of precise information straight to a user (based on that user’s online interests).

As Google explains, “to show you more relevant search results and ads, to help you connect with people or to make sharing with others quicker and easier.”

For some, Google’s latest decision is just one in a series of privacy intrusions (see Nick Bilton’s “NYT Bits” column). For others, the latest shift/consolidation poses the question, “Can we keep up with Big Tech’s constantly morphing strategies to track (aka monitor) our online behavior?”

Perhaps a more important question — do we have the stamina?
Again, NPR. “Privacy fatigue, they call it. Google is not the first company to wear him [sic] out; it’s just the latest.”

This sort of thing isn’t new, and it’s not going away. The last and defining question we all face is — Do we care?