IDEAS

This reminds me of cars, Detroit Raw Power VS Japans efficient motors.  2 completely different ways to do the same thing.  This one is interesting as I’ve done a lot of European travel and I’m very familiar with the green running man.  I’d like to hear our in-house designer’s views on this topic, so I’ll try to get them to comment on this article for everyone to read.

Read the whole article here

“The classic American emergency exit sign—the bold red letters spelling out E-X-I-T—seems at first glance like an unimpeachable bit of sign design. The contrast between the letters and the background renders it highly legible, the illumination stresses the importance of the message, and the color is evocative of both fire and fire-safety devices (fire extinguishers, fire engines, fire alarms, and the like). If you’re reading this in a coffee shop, cubicle, or other public place, pause and look around you; it probably won’t take long to find that glowing red beacon.

But people in the rest of the world—at least, the kind of people who spend time considering how to mark a means of emergency egress—think our simple red sign is completely nuts. Many other countries use some version of the ISO standard, a symbol developed the late 1970s by a Japanese designer named Yukio Ota and adopted for international use in 1985. This take on the exit sign goes by the informal name “the running man,” and looks like this:”

Have to admit, seeing this technology focused commercials gives me the goose bumps.  Saw this today on Hulu, we fortunate enough to find on youtube, tell me what you think?

Congratulations Marek and Flore! Welcome to the wonderful world of wed lock

But that’s how I got introduced to wedsite.com. My good friend and non web developer created a lovely online experience to introduce us all to his wedding plans.

Big props to wedsite.com for allowing couples to communicate their very special wedding plans.

Now, this won’t replace the formal invitation, but there are so many ways that this is a fantastic supplement.

• more information
• will keep me up to date
• photos
• music
• background (As I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting the bride to be yet)

Moreover, their pricing is great and you can get your own domain and a keepsake CD.

BTW – 4 out of 6 people who signed the guestbook complimented the website

And no, I do not work or get paid from wedsite.com to say this. Being in the web world, I get tons of friends asking me how much would a wedding site cost and this is my response.

We usually have to rapidly prototype website UI all the time. We’re asked all the time, what’s the best program to wireframe within. Yes, we use OmniGraffle, Adobe InDesign, as well as Microsoft Visio to properly document UI screens and flows, but that’s usually not where we start.

Working with programs are usually slow and cumbersome; not only that, but they force us to think within their own limited set of constructs.

We start with a pencil, eraser, and paper. It not only helps us to produce screens quickly, it helps us to push ourselves to create multiple variations of screens to fully explore different interaction models.

“But Pinaki, I can’t draw?!?!”, you say. After I give you a mocking laugh, I’ll tell you that anyone can draw. Go ahead, pick up a pencil and paper. Draw a line. Now, draw a rectangle. Next, draw a circle. How about a star? If the objects on your paper can be identified by someone else, then you can sketch UI and wireframes.

Geekchix.org’s Ivana Jurcic posted a lovely collection of printable paper-based wireframe templates and sketch books. Perfect for printing and prototyping.

Thank you Ivana, for the great post and photo for our homepage.

This pretty much blew my mind. Its all done in CGI, its some of the best Ive watched in a long time. Probably the most impressive lighting work ive seen. Watch it

After you watch Alex was kind enough to show a bit of the process to make it. Watch the video revealing some compositing of The Third & The Seventh.

Motiongrapher also has a interview with him about some process. Check it out.

Last year we run into the guys from 280 North, the makers AJAX applications like 280 Slides and Cappuccino. At the Future of Web Apps they unveiled Atlas, a visual development based off the Cappuccino framework tool that made us salivate.

Today they open the beta program! Hurry while the gettin’s good!

Check out this presentation on Atlas.

Week 45

This past weeks themes included, late night focus, sharing is caring, and another LWer gets married.

Let me start this review by saying last week was the rat race for our team. Our focus was parsed between brainstorming, designing, and preparing a very large presentation, sprinkled with other customer work and the normal internal-day-to-day business tasks…”I exhale.” One late night, in particular, had some us at the office past midnight. No worries though, burning the midnight oil only happens once in a-blue-moon and we always get permission from our wives or else. It’s weeks like that reassures the whole business ownership thing as everyday is a new adventure which consistently breeds new challenges.

Pinaki, Mike, and myself were invited to speak about entrepreneurship to the Society of Woman Engineers at Rutgers.  It was awesome and strange for us to go back to Busch campus and walk through the student center again after almost 10 years of not being a student.  Granted I do go to campus for Rutgers Football games but its to the stadium and home.  It felt good telling the Local Wisdom story and answering all the questions from the students. Thanks to Christine Sommoro, President of SWE and Evelyn Laffey, Assistant Dean and Director of Woman in Engineering Programs for having us.

Friday was Eric Williamson’s wedding, one of our website curators.  What a great time had by all.  Eric and Jessica had a beautiful affair in Jackson, NJ with the reception in Toms River.  We danced, laughed, and drank…we certainly let loose after a most stressful week. Check out the pictures.

It’s 4th-quarter here, busy will be the most often used word around this office, along with websites, design and curation in an almost tie for second.

With that said, so long and till next week.

This weekly review has been brought to you by Derrick Larane, Director of Sales here at Local Wisdom.

Week 44

This past week’s themes included all hands on deck, the art of proposal writing, and a Local Wisdom Halloween.

First, I wanted to start by congratulating members of the LW team, David Spira (Information Architect), Christine Robinson (Project Management), Pinaki Kathiari (Director of User Experience), and RJay Haluko (Sr. Web Designer), for the execution of a very large proposal. It was certainly a team effort and we got it done. Speaking of getting proposals done, there is definitely an art to writing proposals. No two proposals are the same. Our proposal process is as follows:

• Gaining an understanding of a customer’s business needs
• Aligning customer business needs with Local Wisdom expertise
• Defining project scope, timeline, and cost

The finesse is always in the documentation. The final proposal should always speak to a customer’s unique business needs, the overall execution strategy, as well as the personality of the project.

Last week rounded off with one of our intranet Design Discovery meetings run by RJay. We believe having e v e r y o n e on a project team to discuss creative, helps drive our work as well as achieve consensus on the overall design direction. Engaging workshops with interactive creative Q&A makes for truly productive sessions.

Halloween was celebrated on Friday at our office, with some interesting, fun, and original costumes. Look out for pictures very soon!!!

Week 45 looks to be busy one. So expect some good commentary.

With that said, so long and till next week.

This weekly review has been brought to you by Derrick Larane, Director of Sales here at Local Wisdom.

Week 43

This week’s themes included, for the love of Information Architecture, teamwork, sharing, Local Wisdom bringing the funny, bowling with wisdom and customer satisfaction.

The team had a second Information Architecture review meeting for one of our current intranet design projects. As an observant and empathic Account Manager, for this engagement, I was taken aback by the discussions, interactions, and overall teamwork between LW, the customer and their IT partners. What an awesome meeting. It’s always great when technology, creative, and customer business needs are aligned early. Wireframes, site maps, and content inventories can be a bit much to swallow but with a balanced diet of candid dialogue with a side of funny makes for productive working meetings.

Mid week our company had our monthly \\Share Meeting. We take this opportunity to come together and present new ideas, fresh perspectives, and also hear about the details and outcomes of recently completed projects.  These are always fun and enlightening sessions. Pinaki Kathiari and Christine Robinson really do an awesome job of putting them together each month.

Upon completion of the sharing process it was time to bowl.  North Brunswick Brunswick Zone was the location and fun was the situation.  For photo evidence please click here. Shout out to Hope Zelinski and Joseph Campbell for making the trek to the outing.

I end this week with a quote from Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com founder, “We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It’s our job every day to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little bit better.” Those words were very evident this week. Till next week. This weekly review has been brought to you by Derrick Larane, Director of Sales here at Local Wisdom.

Mike just forwarded two great links for designing websites in Microsoft SharePoint. Great read for all.

Real World Branding with SharePoint Server 2007 Publishing Sites (Part 1 of 2)
Gives an overview and covers the strategy, architecture, and design portions of a website project.

Real World Branding with SharePoint Server 2007 Publishing Sites (Part 1 of 2)
Gets into the nuts and bolts of developing the SharePoint site using SharePoint Designer