Apple Finds Its Own Way

Last week, Apple previewed its new map service, due to supplant Google Maps on the upcoming version of the iOS mobile operating system. By all accounts, the new system looks to be everything you'd expect from Apple: a simple yet meticulously buttoned-up user experience that has every opportunity to be a game changer. Based on what little we've seen, there's a lot to be excited about.

How Brand Strategy Leads to More Effective Website Design

If you're a business or nonprofit engaging in a website redesign, you've probably prioritized a list of specific things you'd like addressed–from a dated design that's gotten embarrassing to making it easier for people to find things, or a content management system that actually works for you, not against you (something we've recently given some advice on).

Getting Your Nonprofit Started on Pinterest

If you’re a nonprofit looking to use imagery to help drive the emotional content of your brand, there’s a whole lot to learn about how to effectively use Pinterest. With a majority demographic of women 25-44, many of whom are in charge of household buying decisions, Pinterest stands apart from the other male 18-24 dominated social media sites. Make this large female audience work for your nonprofit by thinking of creative ways your content can engage this demographic.

Labeling for Good: Using Information Design for Social Change

The core promise of the information age isn’t more data—it's more useful data. Perhaps its fitting that the era’s prodigal company, Google reflects this ideal so audaciously in its mission: “organizing the world’s information.” But there's another organization—one far more archaic, with domestic revenues 250 times greater than those of Google—that has a far greater capacity to impact our lives with more useful information. And it has only just begun to wield its influence.

Responsive Design Planning: More Than a Line Item

Responsive design, as a whole, represents pretty incredible potential: your website, instantly repurposed to the ever-growing myriad of mobile devices and operating systems, without substantive changes to the back-end. Sounds great, right? And it's absolutely possible. However, there's a misconception about what "responsive design" entails, as if it's a single approach that instantly customizes website experiences for any mobile device.

Invest in Partners, Not Products

This morning I opened my kitchen cabinet to retrieve a coffee mug, and the entire cabinet collapsed into the sink. I must say the crash livened me up faster than the coffee would have.

Three Ways to Future-Proof Your Content Management System

Wait, is that even possible? No software lasts forever. Technology changes quickly, and more importantly, so do businesses priorities. However, there are are things you can do to extend the life of a new Content Management System. Here are our top three.

5 Ways Brand Design Systems Create Business Value

For nonprofits or businesses considering a rebranding, a big question for those not familiar with this process is how to quantify the value vs the investment. One way to ensure branding efforts build sustainable business value it is to approach branding as a systems-based approach to design for your brand. What this means, in short, is building a scalable framework, or Design System for executing design across every communications channel.

Five Things to Consider as You Dive Into Responsive Web Design

Anyone who is involved with building websites these days has probably heard the term "responsive web design." Responsive web design (RWD) is a term coined by Ethan Marcotte in his A List Apart article that refers to using various techniques and technologies to serve different visual presentations of a website to various devices.

What this really means to most of us right now is: we can use RWD to create mobile versions of our websites.

Maximizing Design Firm Relationships by Setting Appropriate Success Metrics

Over the past few weeks I’ve discussed ways to maximize design firm relationships by collaborating with your designer during the budgeting process and planning together for stakeholder input. In this third and final installment, we’ll look at how to determine and measure appropriate metrics for success on a website redesign project.