Tools of the Trade

Information Architecture has always been an important part of website design; if a website is too difficult to navigate, users are unlikely to stick around. It is the IA’s job to think like a user and structure the website accordingly. IAs sometimes operate as graphic designers and often are responsible for SEO (search engine optimization), thus contributing to a rather unwieldy job description. But until relatively recently, the job of Information Architect has remained relatively stable. As the saying goes, however, the only thing that remains constant is change.

I recently bought a house, and as the fleeting satisfaction of home ownership wears away, I realize that it's a lot of work. I've got to furnish it, keep it clean, and keep it functioning, or it becomes more of a burden than an American dream. The same can be said for your website.

I feel like the majority of clients are very excited about the idea of their new Drupal website until they realize that this robust content management system actually requires content management. It pains me to see sites out there that have been poorly managed or just outright neglected.

As the resident Lionel Hutz here at Digett, I occasionally get asked about trademark and copyright issues — or, to be specific, the use of the symbols representing those concepts in design and copy elements. What I've found is that the questions remain the same from party to party, so I thought it might be helpful to cover some basic ground on the why, when, and how of using trademark and copyright symbols.

In A Guide to Stock Photography, Part 1, which I'll rename The Easy Part, I talked about where to find good stock photography. It becomes a little more difficult when it comes time to choose that perfect photo for your website. So what makes a good stock photo? How do you know which photo to choose? Perhaps I can shed some light.

If you wander into the camera store and ask the guy behind the counter which is the best camera, he's likely to say (well, he should say), "It depends what you're using for." And that's the same answer you'll likely get when asking about TVs, computers, cars—and now stock photography. Choosing the right photo depends on what you're using it for, which brings me to my first, and most important, point.

Today I imported a small sample of one of Digett’s subscriber lists housed at CampaignMonitor into Flowtown for the first time. Flowtown is a brand-spanking-new social media mining tool that takes my company’s email subscriber lists and tells me way more than I thought possible about my subscribers. The results are pretty stunning—almost scary, really.

Now that I have been here for more than a month, I have had a solid opportunity to really dive into the inner workings of Drupal. Coming from a background where I worked with object-oriented programming and the MVC design pattern (model, view, controller), it has been a little overwhelming to get a grasp on exactly how Drupal is organized.

I am used to a very clear separation of concerns that the MVC design pattern affords when using popular frameworks such as CodeIgniter and CakePHP. While there is a tool named Movico, which is essentially an MVC approach for structuring a Drupal module, I have yet to fully wrap my brain around how it interacts with Drupal.

This week, we had the privilege of taking a tour of Rancho Cortez, a real Texas dude ranch. Our tour guide and owner, Mary Cortez, started the afternoon with a tasty Tex-Mex lunch, and we had time to visit, meander around, and have a look for ourselves before the "official" tour started.

There is something special about being outdoors and away from the city sights and sounds—oh, and did I mention ... no cell service. The ranch is a great place to get away, and I will be returning with my family for an evening under the stars real soon. Thankfully, getting there will much easier than it was earlier this week.

The Digett team was discussing a recent project the other day, and the talk turned 'round to the style guide we were creating for the client. Now, if you've ever been in charge of maintaining or using a corporate style guide, you know they tend to inspire a mix of derision and fear.

I should know. In a previous job, I was responsible for maintaining the company's style guide—a 67-page, brightly highlighted, barely organized beast of a Word document that boasted poorly implemented in-text links as its most-cutting-edge feature.

Photography plays an important role in any website. It's a powerful and dynamic tool that can be used to communicate your brand personality or simply sell a product. Choosing the right imagery for your website can be a tedious task, but getting it right makes all the difference.

Before we get into specifics about what to look for in a stock photo, let's talk a little bit about where to look.

Choosing the right tool for a project can sometimes be easy. For example, when driving a nail, the obvious choice would be a hammer, or when splitting some wood, a saw would be the best tool in the box. Sometimes we know the tools we need but don't have them at our disposal, like the time my father-in-law asked me to help him paint a room. What he failed to mention was he only had two small four-inch brushes—not a great choice for such a big project.