When beginning a design project, I try very hard to sort of get inside a client’s head and figure out what kind of “look” they are imagining for their logo, site, etc. so that I get hit the nail on the head with the first round of options. It can be a challenge though. Conceptual ideas are often difficult to put into words. Obviously, a good brief is an essential part of the design process. There are plenty of articles out there about how to get a good design brief from a client. Two of the best are at Creative Design and at Freelance Switch.
In the last several months though, I’ve been experimenting with adding a questionnaire that has been extremely helpful with clients who have a decent idea of what they want and who are not really looking for consultation on their branding. I’m not sure where I came across this, or I would give credit where it is due.
Rate the items below on a 1-10 scale,
with 1 being the left item and 10 being the right:
- Elegant ———————- Grungy
- Modern ———————– Traditional
- Dark ————————- Light
- Tight ———————— Loose
- Personal/Casual ——————— Formal
I wouldn’t always take the above scores as gospel of course. If the answers given conflict with the other information in the design brief, I would want to consult with the client a bit about what they’re really trying to communicate with their brand.
Does anyone else use something like this? Would that kind of questionnaire stifle your creativity or would it be helpful? Is there anything else you would add? If you’re not a designer, I’m curious if you think that such a ranking of qualities would be helpful in getting your ideas across to someone you’ve hired to design something for you?
September 21st, 2007 
Everyone has failures in our lives and only by learning from them do we improve ourselves and succeed in our goals.
The quote above is from the the site of Ian Hedges who was the winner of the blog review in my recent Pimp My Blog contest. His blog title is “Failure is the Key to Success“, and he has been blogging for just over 2 years, most regularly for the last 6 months, posting several times a week. He uses a blog system I had never heard of called Thingamablog. I asked Ian if he was pleased with it:
I quite like Thingamablog. My hosting package didn’t have a database, so I was unable to use Wordpress. I found Thingamablog, which uses a local database and then publishes the changed pages. I have been able to adjust the html and style sheets of the templates to get the current layout and look. It is a straight forward program with a Java frontend to the database. Unfortunately, things like Technorati tags have to added manually to the post as the post entry template cannot be changed from the default. The disadvantage of a local database is that I can only blog from home where I have access to the database. Also, I miss out on all the varied Wordpress plugins, so maybe one day I’ll upgrade my package to one that includes a database and migrate to Wordpress.
Ian’s blog posts are mostly personal, and he isn’t concerned with monetizing his blog. He is interested in growing his readership, however, and while his posts are interesting, his site could do with more “focus” if he is to grow his readership in any substantial way. It is a rare blogger who can increase their traffic much with posts that are mostly of a day to day personal nature. Readers will return and subscribe if they are helped, amused, inspired, etc., but you’ll end up with very little growth without providing regular benefit to your readers. I know this because I have a site where I just post personal things, and it’s really only ever interested friends and family for the most part. This is not to say that Ian never provides benefit and even amusement to his readers- he certainly does. (I particularly appreciated the post he wrote about anti-virus software. I had not heard of the free program he’s using - sounds very good.) My observation is simply that focusing on whatever Ian is an expert at that others might be interested in learning would be good for growth, for example, self-improvement and motivational type posts, as the blog title hints at might be a good choice. You can read more about why Ian titled his blog as he did here.
Some design improvements could certainly be made, but Ian may be somewhat limited with the system he’s on, so I hesitate to say much on that subject. Migrating to WordPress and choosing a sharp theme would be a good step. Stop over and get to know him when you get a chance! Thanks again to Ian for participating in my little contest.
I have a new website: TumblrThemes.com! As I was doing some research for my recent articles on mini-blogging, I kept coming across people wondering if there was some sort of repository for free Tumblr themes. Finding none, and knowing how new the whole tumblelog thing is, I was curious what kind of domain names might be available. You know how hard it is to find a good domain name, right? I went over to Bust A Name, which is the absolute best tool I’ve ever come across for researching options, and sure enough tumblrthemes.com was available. So, I did what any person who already has way too many websites on her plate would do… I bought it. I then emailed Char and asked if there was a self-help organization for people like us who keep starting new sites. I knew she would know because she has more than me!
Anyway… have you tried Tumblr yet? If you have a blog, you may by nature be a person who likes to share what you find and learn with other people. However, your blog just isn’t always the right place for all those little snippets, videos, pictures, quotes, etc. that you find. What about all your other online activities? Your Flickr feed, for example can be imported into your tumblelog, as can most other feeds like Twitter, LastFM, Digg, del.icio.us, etc. It’s a great way to bring all of your online activities together into one “lifestream”. Give it a try. Here’s mine.
I am, of course, searching for people who have created free tumblr themes. I will feature your theme on my site, and I’ve already got a decent number of subscribers for a little site that’s just a week and half old and I’m already number 2 in a Google search for “tumblr themes”, so it’s a good way to get some exposure.
David Airey, a graphic designer specializing in logo design has recently reached his 1 year blogging anniversary. To celebrate, David is holding the mother of all prize drawings! There are $4,000 in prizes to be given away, some of which include:
- Logo design from Tara Roskell of Graphic Design Blog, and a logo design from David Airey.
- Revolution Premium WordPress theme package (personal package) from Brian Gardner, WordPress designer and consultant.
- $60 of books from Amazon courtesy of Darren Rowse of ProBlogger.
- Custom WordPress theme design from Nate Whitehill of Nate Whitehill dot Com.
- $25 via PayPal courtesy of Gayla McCord of Mom Gadget. Free money!
- A website critique from yours truly!
There are several ways to enter, including writing a post about the contest, linking to the sponsors and subscribing to David’s feed. I’ve been a long time admirer of David’s writing and work, and highly recommend subscribing to his blog. Check out his contest- the deadline for entries is September 26th.
I had planned a larger post today, but I am so slammed with work and life that I decided to post in answer to Brian Gardner’s questions he recently tagged me with, as I knew I could write it quickly!
What is something that would surprise people about you and design?
It’s probably not a surprise, as I’ve mentioned it before, but like Brian, I am completely self-taught. It took me a very long time before I was really designing things I was pleased with, and I definitely found that having the right tools in Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop made a huge difference.
If you could design one blogger’s site for free, who would it be?
The first person I thought of was Andy Beard. If he ever decided to dress up his site, I’d be game to participate.
What blog platform do you prefer, and why?
Like everyone else Brian tagged, WordPress is the obvious choice. It’s user friendly enough for a basic user, and advanced users can customize and tweak their sites to death if they want.
Aside from your own, what is your favorite blog theme/template?
I’ve used Brian’s Blue Zinfandel a lot, as the code is very clean and easy to customize. I have never used Michael Pollock’s themes, but I am so impressed with his stuff- I’d love to play with his Zeke theme. There a ton of others that I stand in awe of such as 5thirtyone and Subtraction that are using grid based design.
Do you have a blog-reading guilty pleasure?
I Can Has Cheezeburger cracks me up and I don’t feel guilty about it one bit. 
Read other designers’ answers to these questions:
Want to get an online degree in web design and do more than learn basic html? Sign up for one of many education grants and take that big first step towards a real education. From blogging to ecommerce it’s essential to learn the tools of the trade.
The first prize winner in the Pimp My Blog contest is Angela Stevens! I wasn’t even surprised when she turned out to be the winner because she stacked the odds in her favor by racking up 26 (!) entries by writing about the contest on all of her multiple blogs and adding my site to the blogrolls. Congratulations Angela! I’m looking forward to working with you on blog header/logo design. Now your difficulty is choosing which blog you’ll want me to work on.
The second prize winner is Ian Hedges! He wins a blog review- look for that in the coming week or so.
Everyone else wins a link out from my site, which I hope you won’t be too disappointed with considering it’s a PR5 site.
Thanks to everyone who participated in my first contest! There were 142 entries among 32 entrants:
Lillie Ammann
Logo Spotlight
The Beta News
iWatchBlog
VanityBlog
It’s Write Now
Rooms of My Heart
Free From
The Fork of Ambiguity
Super WAHM
Writing Thoughts
Graphic Identity
Graphic Identity Galery
Graphic Identity Tutorial
Graphic Identy Affiliate
People You’ll See In Hell
Confused Monkeys
Taylor’s Celebrity Quotes
Taylor’s Entertainment News
Stefan Graf
Mummy’s Musings
Shankrila
The Soap Vox
Checkup Today
Angela Stevens
Yoshi2me
Zero Jooce
Gack Ink
Ian Hedges
Cool Hotels
Blog Junkie
Nicholas Fiedler
Slightly Mordant
Notebook Meanderings
Babble Soft’s Blog
Affurmation
Webmastern
Macewan
Walter Burek
Random Jabber
Joyce Babu
Discussing Autism
I’ve got a new post up over at Wisdump about the top 4 mini-blogging options that are available, including a comparison chart to get a quick idea of what’s available. There are zillions more of course, allowing you to share your current mood and what you ate for breakfast, as if anyone cares, and I guess a lot of people do, given the popularity of these things. Whether you use them or not and how often really depends on where your friends are and what functionality you’re looking for.
What’s the point?
I personally have avoided things like Twitter, and didn’t care about getting a Pownce invitation and had never even heard of Jaiku until I went about writing this post. I had heard of Tumblr, but didn’t really see the need since I have a blog. I really saw them as a way of wasting a lot of time with things of relatively little value. However, for some the real value is just the ability to more easily connect with others.
Have I changed my mind?
Having tried them all in the last week or so, I think I at least get why people use them so much. And, though I have this blog, it’s just a small part of my online activities and having a way of aggregating them all in one place is a nice idea. Jaiku or Tumblr works best for this purpose. I decided to start a Tumblelog and maybe I’ll keep using it, maybe not - we’ll see. I do like the fact that you can pull all your feeds into one place there (I’m still working on that), and the ability to completely customize it really appeals to me, of course. I will probably also release a Tumblr theme sometime soon.
So, stop on over and read the post and either comment there or come back here and tell me what you think. Are you using any of these? I have some Pownce invites left, if anyone wants to try it.
When SheUnlimited contacted me recently about doing a podcast interview, my first response was “Me…? Really? Are you sure you don’t have me confused with someone else?” I was happy to do it though, and even though I apparently have a slightly Texan accent that I was unaware of, it turned out all right. They have over 300,000 podcast subscribers, so the interview was certainly an opportunity to connect with a completely different set of readers/listeners.
The site takes a rather light-hearted approach to things, and even calls their podcasts “She-Pods”! The intro they wrote is rather amusing. I apparently am a “web puritan” (do you think they meant “purist”?) and a “sassy woman”. Anyway, you can check out the interview here.