“Culture, like brand, is misunderstood and often discounted as a touchy-feely component of business that belongs to HR. It’s not intangible or fluffy, it’s not a vibe or the office décor. It’s one of the most important drivers that has to be set or adjusted to push long-term, sustainable success.”
Design to Inspire Confidence
Inspire confidence with instructions that help users make the jump from one service to another. These need to be rooted in the user’s current knowledge of the system, not their future behavior.
The key well received design will always come from a perspective of empathy for the viewer, user, client or culture. More on the topic of design and empathy:
“Don’t ignore your fear. Acknowledge it. As soon as you know you’re going to give that speech or design that training program, take a quiet moment and experience the fear that comes with the importance of the project. … Resist the temptation to minimize your anxiety. That’s a false macho response and it lacks courage. It’s also counterproductive; it gives power to the fear, almost guaranteeing that it will haunt you and prevent your progress.”
Peter Bergman, from his article How to Start the Big Project You’ve Been Putting Off
“Moving fast enables us to build more things and learn faster. However, as most companies grow, they slow down too much because they’re more afraid of making mistakes than they are of losing opportunities by moving too slowly. We have a saying: “Move fast and break things.” The idea is that if you never break anything, you’re probably not moving fast enough.”
from Mark Zuckerberg’s founder letter in Facebook’s S-1 to IPO
“We found the startups that did best were the ones with the sort of founders about whom we’d say “they can take care of themselves.” The startups that do best are fire-and-forget in the sense that all you have to do is give them a lead, and they’ll close it, whatever type of lead it is.”
— Paul Graham on the correlation between resourcefulness and success in startups.
I am incredibly thankful for my years at 2Advanced back in the fast-paced, mid-2000s Flash era. Everyone who worked on that team during that period of time learned the value of resourcefulness as you were expected to often single handedly art direct, animate, and develop large campaigns all while managing the clients. The level of expectation, stress and demand was high, but whether or not it was the best approach to it developed a character of resourcefulness by fire.
Design Sets the Tone at a New Start-Up Square
Square’s front door to customers is a smartphone application. Square has to provide the simplest experience possible, Mr. Dorsey believes, because, along with good design, it will evoke trust and confidence in a new financial institution that lives in a smartphone.
Yet another example that strategic differentiation begins with design.
A simple reminder that everyone should revisit often. Head over to islifegood.tumblr.com to grab the desktop, iPad and iPhone wallpapers.
I think that social blogging platforms like Tumblr may see a huge growth in 2012. Your designs are helping lead the way in responsive and more customisable themes.
I no longer believe in web designers taking thousands of pounds to design a small biz web presence. Social is doing more to drive traffic, and I think it can stand up as strong as seo driving new customers.
An excerpt of a Style Hatch support email we got earlier today. Small businesses need for expensive, custom designed online presence is declining as more of them turn to platforms like Tumblr, Virb, Squarespace and others.
Highly skilled and strategic web designers and studios will always deliver value to small businesses, but mediocre designers should be worried.
“When the song of the angels is stilled, When the star in the sky is gone, When the kings and princes are home, When the shepherds are back with their flock, The work of Christmas begins: To find the lost, To heal the broken, To feed the hungry, To release the prisoner, To rebuild the nations, To bring peace among others, To make music in the heart.”
Howard Thurman
“Melancholy shouldn’t be confused with depression. Melancholy is an active state. When we’re melancholic, we feel uneasy with the way things are, the status quo, the conventions of our society. We yearn for a deeper, richer relationship with the world. And in that yearning, we’re forced to explore the potential within ourselves – a potential we might not have explored if we were simply content. We come up with new ways of seeing the world and new ways of being in the world. Melancholy and creativity go together.”
Alexander Stutterheim, post on Melancholy & Creativity
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Designing a product is keeping five thousand things in your brain and fitting them all together in new and different ways to get what you want. And every day you discover something new that is a new problem or a new opportunity to fit these things together a little differently.
And it’s that process that is the magic.
”Steve Jobs
“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
Howard Thurman, an influential American author, philosopher, theologian, educator and civil rights leader (1899-1981)
PUMA Sailing Around the World with Tumblr
One of the most exciting things about creating Tumblr themes with Style Hatch is seeing how people and brands use the themes. Earlier this week I had the chance to talk with PUMA about a few of their Tumblr blogs, and I recommend they look into Juuvy since I felt it would be a good fit. Today I noticed that their PUMA Sailing team blog updated their look with Juuvy’s styling.
This site is a perfect example of what brands should be doing on Tumblr. They are posting a good balance of original videos and photography as they continue their 9-month, 39,000 nautical mile sailing journey along with other related reblogs. Whether or not you’re into sailing (how many people actually are) the videos, images and audio that they are posting is fascinating.
“My advice for entrepreneurs: Wake up terrified every morning. If that intimidates you, consider working for somebody.”
Dan Benjamin
“It’s easy to “design” when you’re unencumbered by things like metrics, creative direction, business acumen, sales experience, actual functionality, enterprise scale, or any thought about how a site with millions of page views and users has to function.”
Joshua Blankenship, from his post Creating Controversy for its own Sake (and How Humility is a Rare Bird Indeed on the Web These Days)
