Strategy Blog: Post

The Agile process allows us to balance tangible deliverables with other feature requests that evolve naturally. Always keeping in mind the end user is super duper important to our process; but, sometimes a project can slow amid additional design iterations or unanticipated development requests that become priorities.

That’s the beauty of Agile!  It understands that a project is living and breathing.  The challenge to project managers, however, is to articulate that shifts in the natural ebb and flow of an engagement can (and normally do) affect timelines and budgets. It’s essential that we help capitalize on this flexibility within reason so clients can best walk the line between personal opinions and the almost limitless design and development opportunities for users.

With thorough research and planning, a high degree of transparency in our work and daily communications internally and externally, and a commitment to understanding the history and goal behind each project, we are setting the stage to truly enjoy the final result and this flexible, creative process.

The editor of Bon Appétit magazine announced this week that the new issue of the magazine features a refresh of its logo, which has gone untouched for seventeen years. As a publication with a substantial history, not to mention a growing circulation of over 1.3 million and a successful website on Epicurious.com, this is a daring and frequently detrimental step for the brand. However, in this case, they’ve done a nice job at creating a sophisticated yet approachable image by combining a nicely-done custom type project with a well-executed style strategy.

They don’t let me write much about design around here, being a strategist and everything, but since I’m a fool for typography, Thanny was gracious enough to let me gush over one of the well-done rebrandings among the many, many, many, many missteps — be careful, that last one may haunt you for a while. I’ve also been paying attention to food and wine magazines lately, so this definitely caught my eye.

Before, then after:

Bon Appétit employed the well-known type designer Matthew Carter to design a custom typeface for the new logo, a smart choice for a brand currently sporting a logotype. Many custom typefaces for brands end up trying for distinction and uniqueness, with a spin to a certain character here or there. Carter, instead, appears to have made some well-reasoned modifications to a classic.

To my eye, the new typeface is based on/inspired by John Baskerville’s namesake type (which is in turn based on the work of John Caslon) and its very popular variation Mrs Eaves. These typefaces are known for their sophistication, while still being approachable and widely usable. Both of these reflect Bon Appétit, but it appears that Carter went for a slightly more youthful slant with the modification, with a heavy stroke and a significant reduction in the stroke’s modulation — that is, the variance between the thickest parts of the stroke and the thinnest. He also seems to have increased the x-height, which is essentially the “tall-ness” of lowercase letters compared with capital letters.

Both of these adjustments a call-out to the modern, geometric, modulation-less typefaces we see almost everywhere in pop culture. Helvetica, perhaps the most ubiquitous typeface on the planet, as a very consistent stroke width and a relatively tall x-height. Helvetica is considered a lot of things, but most would agree that it can be youthful and sporty.

This is all not to mention that the “o” and accent-aigu in the logotype will be changed with each issue, so color is a key component, but no specific color is a key component. It’s like a Hypercolor shirt except actually attractive.

In the end, many could have combined the properties of Baskerville and Helvetica and yielded an ugly Frankenfont, but Matthew Carter instead yielded a very nice logotype that is youthful and hip, while still having a classic sophistication. And Bon Appétit was smart enough to run with it.

In August of 2005, Seth called me and asked if we’d help build Squidoo, which we were proud to do.  More than two years after the beta launch, the site continues to grow, and now has over 300,000 pages of user-generated content, with 1,000 more being added every day.  In last week’s SquidUpdate, Seth noted that Squidoo gets nearly 6 million unique visitors per month, and roughly 12 million unique visits.  Raising money for charity was one of original goals of the site, and they’ve done that to the tune of more than $100,000.

My favorite line from the post:

“And here’s a neat tidbit: We’re profitable. We haven’t raised any VC money, and now we shouldn’t ever have to.”

By not raising venture capital, he goes on to say, Squidoo can remain attentive to their users instead of worrying about "meeting quarterly earnings targets."  It’s also forced them to run lean and stay focused.  Squidoo pulled together enough funding early-on to hire a small dedicated team and some outside experts (like Viget) to quickly launch the business.  The focus was always to get to a point of profitablity so that the business could sustain itself—not to just grow for the sake of growth.

Seth’s approach is different than a lot entrepreneurs take in the web space, especially given the renewed excitement about funding web start-ups.  Venture capital is sometimes necessary, but for many web-bases businesses, it’s just not needed. 

Raising VC can often help businesses compete more effectively in a competitive space.  When Squidoo got started, there was no real competition, and they’re now “three to five times bigger” than any others.   Google’s announcement of Knol, as Seth points out, is a sincere form of flattery (though Mike thinks Knol is more Wikipedia than Squidoo).  Will Google’s participation in the space really be a boost for everyone, including Squidoo?  Or, will there be a sense in the long-run be that had Squidoo raised VC, they could be been better positioned to compete with the likes of Knol?

Only time will tell.  In the meantime, it’s refreshing to see (and be a part of) a business that’s bucking two trends in the online world: growing without VC, and turning a profit in a relatively short period of time with user-generated content.  Congrats to Seth and the team.

Trying to navigate the sensitive communication involved in keeping a project within scope in the early stages of your relationship with a client can be tricky.  When a client begins to ask for bells and whistles beyond the original discussions, but doesn’t want to compromise on budget or timeline, it’s essential that project managers be comfortable pushing back.

Being honest early in the relationship that some seemingly “simple” changes can dramatically affect the bottom line or the launch date will set the stage to promote effective communication. Just as we—a dynamic, full-service web consulting company (and a fabulous one, at that)—are accountable for the quality and deliverables of our work, the client must be responsible for making informed choices.  She can’t do that if, instead of openly mentioning the impact of those decisions, we quietly scramble to try and accommodate her requests.  Keeping mum until the critical final stages can lead to the client *understandably* wondering why the project is late and over budget.

On the flipside, allowing for some flexibility whenever possible shows the client that her wishes are being weighed realistically.  Committing to five small changes might push the limits of the budget, but their effect on the overall relationship with the client could be priceless—particularly if that flexibility and nimble reaction leads to future work.

Learning to balance this desire to please with the realistic constraints of money and time is a challenge project managers wrestle with each day. But our long-term relationships with clients—and their ongoing commitment to our company—is dependent upon us demonstrating the utmost integrity and honesty during a site build, especially when we have to say “no.”

It often comes as a shock to me; but, there are times when I can’t use the web to find out what I need to know. Sometimes I learn my way around using environmental cues.  And, sometimes, those cues have been placed there by some very thoughtful people.

Last week, I attended the IDEA Conference in NYC. This was a single-track, two-day conference organized by the Information Architecture Institute on the topic of information design and experience. While most of the attendees were web folk, the presenters were often information designers working in a more physical space.  They were creative problem-solvers working across media to make sense of a system or provide an innovative service or experience. They helped patients find their way to and around a city hospital, analyzed the New York Taxicab system, planned and implemented a city services helpline, and conceived of ways for people to share and experience oral histories.

Each presenter described discovery and problem-solving methods that apply equally as well to both virtual and physical spaces. There was assessment through interviews, observation, and audience grouping.  Interaction models mapped out how different users might make their way through a system.  Branding and signs served the same reassuring, location-marking purpose in the physical world as they do online.

None of this is groundbreaking news—we’ve always leveraged physical metaphors to help people make sense of online spaces (sites, pages, visits), and of course information and experience design pre-date the web.  It was helpful, though, to take a step back and reexamine the approaches that we use in designing web sites and online experiences from that broader, physical context.  And to remind me that while web sites are powerful tools and while I may forget at times that the world doesn’t exist entirely online, the sites we build are usually only one part of a total experience.