Momentary Lapse of Reason: A Quick Warning

The proliferation and ease of publishing content in the public domain throughout the web should also be considered too – a momentary lapse of tweeting can lead to some serious offence, such as Jimmy Carrs recent lack of judgement in making “car crash jokes” around the same time as a tragic event on the M5 near Taunton. The result of your own lack of judgement could be potential loss of business or even something more serious events such as investigation from the police as two seventeen year old boys found out recently when they added racially charged comments to their Twitter feed and were subject to legal action.

The examples given are fairly extreme but with the power of the web, and ease of access to it in the western world, comes responsibility to ensure that what you publish is in line with your own strict [or conciously liberal] policies on what is appropriate within the law and within your public image.

An Example: Simcoemedia Design Consultancy

Over the last 10 years Simcoemedia has built up a solid reputation and brand as a creative multimedia agency which both reinforces company values to existing clients and attracts new work. Much of the work in establishing this has been built up online through the use of the following media:

Portfolio or bloging websites

Simcoemedia runs several independent websites containing design portfolio items, design articles, audio-soundtracks and film reviews. The content on these sites are all original and generated by Peter Simcoe as part of ongoing creative output in one form or another. They are particularly valuable in that the direction, management and contribution to Simcoemedia branding are completely unique – there are no other companies with vested interests in sharing any revenue or search listings. On the downside, they take time to establish, optimise for SEO and populate with appropriate content and links before they are noticed by search engines as having any importance. Here is a list of these sites:

• Simcoemedia Design Consultancy – design portfolio items
• Design-Design – design articles for business and academia
• Audio-Echo – audio porfolio with shopping cart and film reviews
• Simcoe-Shop – photographic portfolio with shopping cart

Stock Websites

For creative people, uploading audio, video and images to stock websites to sell to the public [they may be other designers, video producers or publishers] provides another channel of exposure for your work. Being part of a large online shop in one form or another does group you with the rest of the creatives and community so it is harder to stand out amongst the crowd but with larger numbers of people involved comes larger budgets and more investment in advertising with a greater reach. iStockphoto has a worldwide reputation with creative networks such as The Envato Network gaining ground in popularity. As a contributing artist to these global network websites I am able to have a profile page with links to my other portfolios that provide SEO value through the ability to add a profile page and link to pages with a good page rank [and even if theres a no-follow tag disallowing 'link juice'*, external links are still important], increase in my digital footprint and provide reassurance to potential buyers by the fact that I have passed the rigorous standards of websites such as iStockphoto.com.

* Link Juice, in simple terms, is the value search engines place upon the recommendation or linking of an external site to another – eg if Microsoft or Apple were to directly link to my website without the addition of a ‘no follow’ tag, then search engines would think that I must be an important site because I ve been linked to by a very important site and will increase my Page Rank [importance on the web] and therefore my search engine rankings.

• Simcoemedia on iStockphoto.com
• Simcoemedia on AudioJungle.net
• Simcoemedia on Photodune.net

Social Media and Other sites

As we get closer to social media in our discussion regarding digital footprint, the lines between professional and non-professional activity can more easily be crossed and therefore more caution is urged. Just because something is freely available and can publish any thoughts you may have on any subject does not mean it should be used. I have a pretty strict policy on social media use – ie do not allow anything to be published that you would not be happy for your clients to read or view. The list of social media below is in order of priority and preference I place on it along with a brief summary of its use:

• Simcoemedia YouTube Channel – video portfolio
• Simcoemedia Twitter Account – design related tweets
• LinkedIn – online resume and updated business related news
• Simcoemedia Google + Page – interesting photos and basic company updates
• Simcoemedia Facebook Account – linked to twitter with less formal design commentary

Digital Footprint Diagram

Below is a diagram of Simcoemedia’s digital footprint – you can also download the Simcoemedia Digital Footprint Diagram in PDF format. Larger circles indicate priority in time and content whereas smaller circles are considered to be of lower priority. Twitter is linked to many of the sites and can be seen on the footer of Simcoemedia, Design-Design, Audio-Echo as well as being fed into Facebook, Linked In and other sites – you can see Twitter’s main stream as a dotted line connecting many of the sites together. RSS feeds are broadcast from WordPress based websites and are fed into sites such as Linked In – titles also appear in the footers of all Simcoemedia WordPress based sites.

Simcoemedia uses many different sites for different purposes and goals. Some sites require updates and effort put into creating content more than others – others remain static for longer. Design-Design, the blog you are reading is updated once each month at least and new articles require detailed attention and significant time to produce. Simcoemedia Design Consultancy website is updated when certain projects are completed that add to the overall portfolio breadth and depth – not all projects make it to the porfolio as some skills, design styles or methods are already covered.

Related posts:

1. Twittering on about stuff! Latest Tweets from the Simcoemedia Network. These tweets are designed...
2. What is an RSS Feed? Using RSS feeds can save you significant time in collecting...
3. A Brief Introduction to Design-Design "You need to tell the client what he wants and...

• The ability to promote your group or network across the globe and encourage people from beyond your physical community to become involved
• To create interactive experiences where members can login and share information such as video, images and relevant articles
• To use online calendars and planning tools to organise events and meetings with the ability to present media from the events
• To allow online payment via Paypal or other web technologies for products and services related to your network
• To allow members to post information about themselves, their motives and interests, enabling others to establish effective links or connections with people and their projects or activities
• Deliver news and information to your group immediately
• Provide an internal communication system separate from the users own personal email system should it be beneficial to keep more personal details private or distinct from professional details

Success or Failure

Should you choose to start your own community you will need to consider a variety of issues from your available time to the quality of information flowing through the online space for your users. The success of a community or network is significantly influenced by the following factors:

• Your reach to the relevant groups or people who may wish to become involved. Do you have access to people on the web such as bulletin boards, forums or even a large and keen Twitter following, or in the physical world such as printed adverts, noticeboards where your information can be posted and taken notice of? If the answer is no, how will your message be read or even found? Word of mouth? Email? Getting enthusiastic responses via blog posts, responses, retweets or recommendations is the key to kickstarting your community.
• Do you have a reputation that encourages people to act upon your recommendation? Or do you know someone who has a good reputation in your activity area who would be willing to put their name to your endeavours? If you want people to join a community, this can be a significant pull towards establishing the group. A reputation is not vital but does provide support in your message to the world.
• Once you have overcome the first hurdle of establishing the interest of a few, or even many interested parties, have you or other contributors the time, inspiration and resources to consistently create quality interesting content for your network? Do you have a policy related to the regularity and style of your contributions whether it is through video, written blog items or even audio?
• Are you, or others in your community able to monitor the quality of the information put onto the site. How will you deal with the inevitable abuse of the system and spamming?
• Can your website sustain a reliable, effective service should there be a sudden explosion in readers or contributions? Consult your ISP or your IT service to work out the capacity of your webserver and assess how much data and bandwidth you have available.

 Example – Drawing Research Network

As part of my work for the Open University, in 2003 I set up a website for the drawing community – The Drawing Research Network otherwise known as the DRN. The most recent version of the site was upgraded from static HTML to WordPress back in 2009 with social network plugins such as Mingle as with the traditional blogging features allowing users to create their own visible profiles and Twitter style timelines as well as upload articles with images to the site for viewing by other members. During July 2011 management responsibility of the website was given Loughborough School of the Arts who have funded an administrator [Pete Simcoe] to ensure the quality of the articles is high both in content and formatting and the content is as useful as possible to a worldwide community of academics, artists, designers and other people with a passion and interest in this subject.

As of August 2011 there are around 210 listed members with many others reading and referring to the site. Below is a summary of some of the functionality of the site in video format, designed to demonstrate some of the capability to new users. Some of the functionality has been slightly altered, in that you now need an invite similar to Google Plus to become part of the group with reasons given below the video:

Benefits of WordPress

The main benefits of using the WordPress system on the Drawing Research Network are the fact that WordPress is designed for this sort of group activity – a series of bloggers can contribute to a continual stream of online discussion. It is also an online software system that is free and has a worldwide support network as well as many custom designed templates. The template for the DRN can be seen at Themeforest.net where for $35 much of the programming and layout is complete – it is down to the administrator or IT support unit to customise and style the blog as required.

As previously mentioned, a variety of plugins provide additional functionality for the blog including the ability to pull photos from the Drawing Research’s Flickr account.

Spamming Hazards

The main problem with most blogs is that unless steps are taken to prevent abuse, they are open to spamming, abusive comments and other unpleasantness. The Drawing Research Network is no exception. However, an effort has been made to reduce the number of spam comments and timewasters by using the following:

• Askimet  Anti-Spam system available to WordPress users which reduces comment spam
• SI CAPTCHA Anti-Spam plugin creating a barrier to spam-bots by using keyboard input
• Secure Invites plugin meaning registration can only occur via an invite from another user

It has been an uphill struggle to resolve the spamming issue on this and other sites and whilst Invite Only websites have their limitations, the individual users of the DRN now have the ability to invite up to 10 other users which does create a kind of vetting process with shared responsibility in only allowing people with a genuine interest in drawing and drawing research onto the site.

Real Names and Photos

Recently there was outrage at Google’s decision to remove users on their new Google+ account that had not used their real names and one thing the DRN team have tried to encourage is the creation of realistic profiles. By this I am referring to the input of full names and legitimate email addresses along with a photo or example of artwork – the theory being that this firstly enables the detection of spam-bots or fake users more easily and secondly encourages responsibility and accountability on the site. If people are not happy putting their details online then they still have access to the main articles, the gallery and any downloads associated with these. It is also useful to note that the members list cannot be accessed by anyone other than the registered members themselves which provides additional security for users.

Related posts:

1. Contributing Constructively Why spend your time contributing when you could be earning...
2. What is WordPress? Wordpress was originally designed as a free blogging system for...
3. Twittering on about stuff! Latest Tweets from the Simcoemedia Network. These tweets are designed...

…..a term for a live direct or indirect view of a physical real-world environment whose elements are augmented by virtual computer-generated imagery. It is related to a more general concept called mediated reality  in which a view of reality is modified (possibly even diminished rather than augmented) by a computer. As a result, the technology functions by enhancing one’s current perception of reality.  – Wikipedia

I have recently been asked to look into creating an example of Augmented Reality to promote the Design School at Loughborough University. Specifically the Industrial Design and Product Design courses. The promotional item brief was that a marker would be sent out to potential students on a sheet of A5 card and when the user clicks the link on the website and places the card in front of a web camera, elements will appear to rise from the card and give the impression of appearing in the real world. Here are a couple of excellent examples of AR that have inspired the research undertaken:

The advantage that Augmented Reality has is that it is new and novel enough to get people interested in viewing promotional material that features the technology but is accessible enough through the use of Adobe’s Flash Player, which is loaded onto around 95% of computers, for many people to view it. So in a way, now is the time to explore and take advantage of the buzz surrounding this novel concept.

There are a variety of companies involved in the production of Augmented Reality products and they do vary in cost. For example, FLAR Toolkit is freely available for programming your own creations – it does a reasonable job of optimising your PC or Mac to support Augmented Reality through the use of Adobe Flash Player.

However, if you are looking for a more bespoke solution with dedicated programming and development and do not want to use basic Flash open source programming, I recently got a quote from AR specialists Total Immersion for an academic promotional item that would have cost £17,000.

So there are some differences in terms of expenditure….but ensuring that the majority have the correct player to allow your creation to work may simply come down to a cost / distribution calculation that can quickly be made!

Gaming Experience

Particularly relevant is the release of Playstation’s Move and Microsoft Xbox’s Kinect technologies. These will, in their own way, promote the AR cause through examples such as EyePet, where the user can interact with a 3D animal that appears in the same room as you or Sports Champions where the user can hold and manipulate sports equipments with great accuracy [ie it maps the movement of the user perfectly] and Start the Party is the closest example of Augmented Reality gaming with the user appearing on the screen with the other interactive elements [similar to EyePet].

Lets take Sony’s Sports Champions as an example. Whilst it does lack the polish and style of other Sony releases and plays like a series of minigames that were used as a demo for the Move…. so does the price tag. At £25.00 on release, this title provides the user with an interesting immersive experience in Frisbee, Table Tennis, Archery, Bocce, Beach Volleyball and Melee. The most flexible and natural experience is the table tennis where I would estimate 70% accuracy to real life. There are some glitches that detract from gameplay but overall its an enjoyable experience way, way superior to any Wii game due to the complex data transmitted from the Move controllers to the software. It really does allow you to get involved with the action.

Mobile Experience

Augmented Reality Apps on mobile phones use similar technologies to the PS3 Move in that the hardware must detect the orientation and direction of the user and then apply appropriate data [usually graphics] to the viewport. Mashable.com have provided a series of examples of mobile phone apps that provide the user with additional information in their viewport [often on Android or iPhone based hardware] ranging from viewing the nearest tube station in London to understanding the approximate location and direction of people tweeting nearby.

Mobile phones do lack the hardware power that larger desktop PCs and Macs have but are able to handle some basic AR features that provide information or entertainment to their users.

Related posts:

1. 3D Lenticular Technology Lenticular printing has been around for many years but with...
2. Avatar James Cameron's new film Avatar was made using tools available...
3. What is a QR Code? Quick Response codes are quite common throughout Japan and many...

Quality

The quality varied depending upon which product you ordered – the t-shirts were excellent quality with crisp edges and flat, solid colour – even on black t-shirts [though I haven t yet washed them a number of times to see how the colour will handle detergent]. The cups were pretty good considering that they were single custom printed items [though sharp edges were a little more blurred than I expected them to be]. However, the clocks were fairly mediocre to poor due to the cheap plastic used and poor design style [the printed element of the large clock I purchased was bubbled due to heat or moisture.]

Customer Services

The second point to make is that the level of customer service is pretty good. There were two or three products out of the 12 ordered that were either broken [eg cups] or were not to expected standard [I could not access the "bubbled" area of the clock to flatten the raised areas]. When customer services were contacted they readily provided replacement items in the case of the broken mugs or a refund in the case of the clock after I supplied images of the problem.

Wasting Resources

The third and most important point is that the whole process generated a huge amount of packaging and waste which, although the process was alot of fun and the results were pretty good in the case of the cups and the t-shirts, was quite a shock to me and a disappointment. As a designer I need to be aware and concerned by waste and in this case it was something worth thinking about. The problem is that it would be near impossible to provide Cafepress services without the incredible amount of packaging and processing.

Many of the products were created in the Czech Republic then delivered to the UK and the cups, for example, were made in China – which again, takes incredible amounts of energy in terms of shipping transportation.

I was keen to explore alternatives to this process and in certain cases, products may be more efficiently produced in terms of time, packaging and energy waste by purchasing locally. For example, KallKwik in my home town of Chester, create custom designed cups for approximately the same price and the covered area of the cup is larger than Cafepress’s.

Related posts:

1. Why bother calibrating? Calibrating screens to represent the colours you will see at...
2. Finepix Real3D printing With the renewed interest in 3D viewing technology and the...
3. Guide to good print Print designers take their company's cashflow into their own hands...

I recently created a short news item for the Drawing Research Network called 6 Digital Drawing Experiments. This was essentially a collection of some of the research I had done into drawing and online experiments. When I say research, I mean the kind of informal searching for new and interesting design related websites I find by subscribing to design related RSS feeds through Google Reader and other paths and other related sites this may lead me to – I regularly scour the web for new and inspiring methods of digital drawing to learn from.

Why give free advice?

Why did I volunteer to freely spend this time providing others with content? Well, its simple and can be explained in 3 points that apply to blogs, forums or simply commenting upon someone elses work:

Reference. There is nothing like getting your head around a topic and clarifying your thoughts by writing them down – especially when there is potentially a large readership should the web community decide it is of value. The article is written both for my own benefit and the benefit of others interested in this area too.

Status. Do people rate what I have written? Well, maybe they want to see more of the same quality and may click on my own sites to see what else I do in the field of design – therefore this is an investment in potential future clients as well as impressing current clients who want to see that you are actively keeping up with what is going on in the world.

Community. Are there others out there who want to form collaborations, swap ideas or share similar information? By contributing to relevant blogs you can help connect with others.

What guidelines should I apply to my contributions?

Quality. Only create articles that you know are accurate, informative and contain a reasonable level of detail on the subject you are describing – ask yourself “What do I expect my readers to gain from this article? What insight or new information am I bringing to them? Could I assist presentation by using video or images or should the text be the only medium to convey the message. This sounds like common sense but there are many blogs out there full of very bland uninformative articles. Simplicity is good – over simplifying the content is not good.

Quantity. Establish an approximate and suitable typical interval between your articles. I typically leave around 2-3 weeks between each article on this blog as I feel it is healthy to stop and think about design objectively at these intervals. I learn and I hopefully help people to gain insight from my experiences and knowledge.

Objectivity. Having a personal agenda, opinion and direction is good but watch what you say online as this can be misinterpreted or simply not understood – at worst you could gain a bad reputation or simply be ignored altogether. I always assume I am talking to one of my clients meaning that my focus is upon helping them to understand a design related concept, acting professionally and ultimately gaining their respect.

Where to start?

The best way to START contributing is to STOP. Stop and look around at the way others are contributing and the types of contributions they are making to online conversation. This is useful for gaining an idea of what readers find valuable, the conventions for writing for different audiences and for forums or Twitter rather than blogs [or other typical web technologies] and the typical style of content. Once you feel comfortable and passionate about contributing then go ahead. If you don t feel like writing a whole article you may feel inspired to write a short response in a comments box on the site.

Related posts:

1. Design Bubble Assessing your ability as a designer is one of the...
2. Creating A Social Network There are so many opportunities to connect and create networks...
3. A Brief Introduction to Design-Design "You need to tell the client what he wants and...

Simcoemedia: I love playing with my new giant rotating tag-cloud. I’m happy when its tag-cloudy http://www.design-design.co.uk/the-cloud/

Simcoemedia: The Drawing Research Network is officially live and we need to keep up the momentum on new members http://drawing-research-network.org.uk

Simcoemedia: Here’s a useful piece of free web-based software for creating a wiki – http://www.tiddlywiki.com/

Simcoemedia: It’s been two years since I got this little gem from Havana in Cuba – http://bit.ly/cCmYyf – definitely a favourite.

Simcoemedia: [ThemeForest] Dany’s Blossomsoft WP theme looks great for a wide range of design and corporates. Thanks for letting me know about that one.

Related posts:

1. Design Tweets This Week! Latest Tweets from the Simcoemedia Network. These tweets are designed...
2. Creating A Social Network There are so many opportunities to connect and create networks...
3. To Twit or Not to Twit? Twitter. Is it a useful business tool, an effective example...

Does it have any use for business users? Well, I am as skeptical as anyone that Twitter has any use at all in the business world….however, I am currently experimenting with the social networking site to see if I can generate any additional interest in my design blog [here] or my portfolio website at www.simcoe.co.uk.

Three Simple Rules

My recommendation, if you want to use Twitter for business, is to follow these three simple rules:

• Have something of use to say to your followers. Make it relevant, interesting and professional and preferably relevant to some quality research or finding. As a business professional it is important to find out the facts and figures about your industry on a daily basis, note important events in the diary such as trade shows, read quality news or watch relevant documentaries. If you’re serious in business then finding something you’ve discovered that is of value to your listeners, even just once everyday,  should be no problem at all.
• Only Retweet [publish someone elses Tweet to your own readers] if you think that it is absolutely necessary that your audience knows about it. We live in a generation where people express their creativity by collecting and displaying other people’s creative expertise as a montage eg MySpace. Your audience needs to trust that they are not just getting a random retweet plucked from the general steady stream of drivel because you’ve got nothing to say.
• Keep it professional. We’re not all interested in Steven Fry’s infinitely detailed details. We don’t want to hear about the great curry you had last night or how you’re now suffering the consequences. Quality, facts, informed opinion and valuable expression are the key to success as far as I can tell. I measure this by the way people I trust seem to be using the system and what I have gained professionally from this.

Useful Links

Below are some useful links for Twitter users:

• http://listorious.com/tags – is a great way to search for Twitter users based upon keywords or tags. If you are interested in designing or photography, simply follow the relevant tags to find users with similar interests. Maybe they have something useful to share? Maybe not.

• http://www.tweetdeck.com/ – here you can download a desktop based tool called Tweetdeck

< Home >

Related posts:

1. Design Tips for Success Recommendations on a variety of design related activities including use...
2. Creating A Social Network There are so many opportunities to connect and create networks...
3. Your Digital Footprint Having a significant digital footprint of quality content is not...

Related posts:

1. Design Tweets This Week! Latest Tweets from the Simcoemedia Network. These tweets are designed...
2. Avatar James Cameron's new film Avatar was made using tools available...
3. Design Bubble Assessing your ability as a designer is one of the...

iGoogle as a web browser homepage – every time my browser opens or I use the home button the Simcoemedia Google page is shown. To create your account simply login / create a Google account then edit the settings for displaying your content by ADDING items. It is easy to set up and provides an informative and constantly updated dashboard for your business.

Xmarks – a great FREE plugin for Firefox or Internet Explorer web browsers. User’s bookmarks will automatically synchronise between all computers running the Xmarks plugin and logged into the same account. This is particularly useful if you have more than one computer for your browsing and general business – you may have an office and home machine or a main workstation and a netbook that can synchronise to avoid constant updating between browsers.

YouSendIt – is a useful program designed to help you send large files without blocking up someones email account or needing to set up tricky FTP sites. Its simple and you can send files up to 100Mb without signing inl. Paying customers can send up to 2Gb per upload with masses of FTP space and plenty of happy customers who can easily access their emails [ie you have not filled their inbox with your data!] and the file you’ve sent them!

FreeMind – another FREE download that is great for formalising your spider diagrams, mind maps, brain-dumps [or whatever you like to call them] for presentation or submission purposes. Once the initial learning curve is overcome then creating diagrams is relatively straight forward, with a variety of options for highlighting, adjusting text, creating lists and nodes and other techniques for communicating your lateral thinking. Diagrams can be exported to PDF and various bitmap formats such as JPEG, BMP etc.

Skype – theres not too much you cannot do with Skype these days and I find it most useful when sharing my design work on screen whilst talking to my client on Skype at the same time. It is FREE to use and Skype to Skype calls cost nothing – which is particularly relevant when you consider that any phone with Skype, such as many of the 3 phones, can make and receive these calls for FREE also. It is also a great replacement for a landline at around £4 / month for any UK landline – but only if you have a speedy connection to the internet otherwise this system can create embarrassing lags in those business conversations when there is high traffic volume.

Quicktime – if you have some digital video input as raw video via Firewire and just need a quick edit and professionally compressed look to your final output then you could do worse than spend the £25 Quicktime are demanding from you for a license to access Quicktime Pro. One of the best features of Quicktime Pro is the excellent H.264 Codec that really shrinks your video size down but maintains high quality output. If nothing else, you should invest in this piece of software for that Codec alone. Files are easily accessed from a PC or Mac with Quicktime installed.

Google Reader – Another part of the Google suite of free online products which basically collects the latest news from all of your favourite sites without you needing to visit those sites to check out the headlines. Personally, I keep up to date with the world of design through online RSS feeds grouped together in Reader, grouped into an easy to read format and constantly updated. This can save alot of surf time and effort to get the news you really want to read.

OpenOffice – Most people know about Open Office now, but in case you do not – it is a free suite of office programs very similar and compatible with Microsoft’s Word, Excel, Access and Powerpoint products. There are occassionally a few compatibility or inconsistency issues but generally this makes a great alternative to shelling out £400 for the Microsoft products.

Acrobat.com – Adobe have created some excellent design software such as Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign. They have also created a website where the user has access to a variety of media production related tools including PDF conversion for those without Acrobat Standard or Professional, file sharing where a massive 5Gb file can be uploaded, ConnectNow for screensharing and professional online meetings and Buzzword, a document writer. PDF conversion requires payment to Adobe but other services are FREE.

CamStudio – is a FREE screen capture tool. With this free download you can record your on a computer screen then output a file containing video to a compressed file for delivery over the network. To put it simply, this is a great tool for creating a series of software training videos for your business! Beware though – lengthy screen captures from your PC will create large files. You might want to consider paying for a YouSendIt.com account if you want to create and send this sort of data.

Related posts:

1. YouTube Video Editor Recently I have been experimenting with the YouTube video editor...
2. Design Tips for Success Recommendations on a variety of design related activities including use...
3. Adobe AIR and Kuler Adobe have created their AIR framework allowing developers to utilise...