Recently when working on a project when I notice my the text looks really poor on some Linux distros.
A few years ago I wouldn’t have necessarily cared but because of the growth of Ubuntu, Fedora and OpenSuse as well as the fact that Linux is now pre-installed on many netbooks, I have decided it is something I will care about.
The reason for the font issues is because Linux does not necessarily have Arial or Helvetica pre-installed hence the users see system text instead. So I did a bit of research on Linux pre-installed equivalents and found FreeSans or San-Serif to be the most common equivalents installed. I now use “font-family:Helvetica Neue,Helvetica,Arial,FreeSans,sans-serif;” as my font stack. This seems to give the best results on every platform.
From http://mashable.com/ comes a nice little insight into how big brands are using twitter and more importantly the individuals in those corps who are doing the tweeting..
http://mashable.com/2009/01/21/best-twitter-brands/
There’s a mix of product plugging, customer service and general announcements, but most seem to be developing strategies and are recognising that they have to converse rather than simply broadcast.
I came across an article on I love typography that shows how type designers Pierre & Damien from Pleaseletmedesign.com created their typeface iQ Font. With help from interactive artist Zachary Lieberman, race pilot Stef Vancampenhoudt and the little Toyota iQ.
It looks like a great way to design a typeface.
I love watching the car make the lower case E and upper case Q the driver makes it look so smooth and simple.
An interesting article on designing for social networking courtesy of Smashing Magazine.
Statistics from Nielsen Online have shown that “social networks and blogs are now the 4th most popular kinds of online activities. 67% of the world online population are now visiting them and the time they’re spending on them is growing by three times the overall growth rate of the internet. Social networks are now visited more often than personal email is read. Some social networks have grown to such enormous proportions that they rival entire countries in terms of population…”
A very good and insightful read!
Your visual identity is arguably the most important aspect of selling yourself and what you have to sell. A shoddy identity, very few people will look twice. These very inspiring logo designs go to show that even if you haven’t heard of a particular brand, their identity should stick with you for a very long time.
The effectiveness of online display ads has always been a discussions point. Many of us consider display ads to be ineffective outside of very niche situations, in the same way that PPC only becomes viable for certain products or services. This situation is book ended by the fact that viewers are deserting TV and magazine advertising is falling through the floor. Many more brands and forward thinking marketing professionals are seeing the erosion of advertising in it’s current state in favour of brands as experiences and brands as participants not as projectors of message.
So, back to online display advertising. Comscore has recently produced a whitepaper entitled ‘How Online Advertising Works: Whither The Click?’, discussing the merits of online measurement – the click versus the view – and it’s well worth a read.
Some highlight facts from the front:
- According to Doubleclick and eMarketer, click-rates on static display ads fell dramatically in recent years to average levels of only 0.2% in 2006
- Rich media ads don’t perform much better, with a click-through rate of roughly only 1% in 2006, according to research from Doubleclick, eMarketer, Eyeblaster and ABI.
- Recent research conducted by comScore on behalf of Starcom and Tacoda showed that average click rates on display ads in 2008 were less than 0.1%.
- Further Starcom research suggests no correlation between display ad clicks and brand metrics, and shows no connection between measured attitude towards a brand and the number of times an ad for that brand was clicked.
- The research suggests that when digital campaigns have a branding objective, optimizing for high click rates does not necessarily improve campaign performance.
- The comScore research also revealed that two-thirds of Internet users do not click on any display ads over the course of a month and that only 16% of Internet users account for 80% of all clicks. comScore’s research also showed that the demographics of clickers are skewed towards younger users aged 25 to 44 earning less than $40,000 per year. This is hardly an attractive target segment for most advertisers.
- Even search ads, presumably the most effective form of online marketing, are only clicked on 4% of the time at Google, and 2% at MSN and Yahoo!, according to comScore statistics.
We’re in the process of designing and building an iPhone app for one of our lovely clients. Top secret I’m afraid but keep an eye on the blog if you want it first.
Pinch Media have done a really great report on the App Store which gives a really good insight into usage patterns..
Usage over time stats are quite interesting and they certainly show that Apps have a quiet significant honeymoon period beyond which usage drops right off.
That reinforces the challenge we know we’ve got to overcome, and that’s to make an app that is super fun and draws lots of initial attention but also that it has life beyond the first few usages.
