1. Website Design
Identifying the Why and What.
Tuesday, December 6, 11
2. Here’s the agenda for the next 91 minutes.
Stop blending in.
Who am I.
Why are you here?
What is a brand and why should you care?
Who’s your audience?
Design 101
Development basics
Social commerce
Maintenance considerations.
Questions.
Tuesday, December 6, 11
3. This is where
my story starts.
Tuesday, December 6, 11
4. Actually lets back up.
Born & Raised in Wilmington.
Started drawing before I could talk. Or so it seemed.
Spent my youth building models and drawing houses.
Found a passion for design.
Couldn’t hack it at Pre-Calculus. Scrapped a career in Architecture.
Went to school at night, landed a my first big gig at 17 with AOL Time Warner.
Proud Graduate of Brandywine High School.
Went to College. Worked in Printing for $11/hr. Left for Advertising.
Started teaching.
Adopted some dogs. Bought a House.
Sold my soul to direct mail.
Lost my job.
Started a Company.
Love every minute of it.
Tuesday, December 6, 11
5. Why are you here?
You’re tired of lame websites.
Your website resembles an Old Christmas Sweater from Goodwill.
You want to know the ins and outs of The Grid.
You want to be a rockstar.
Tuesday, December 6, 11
6. What is a brand?
A brand is not a logo, not
an identity, not a product.
A brand is a person’s gut
feeling about a product,
service, or organization.
Tuesday, December 6, 11
13. Is your brand “smashable”?
The term "smashable" dates back to 1915, when the Coca-Cola
company asked a designer in Terre Haute, Indiana, to design a
bottle that consumers could still recognize as a Coke bottle, even if
someone flung it against a brick wall and it shattered into a hundred
pieces. Coke is a smashable brand. So are Guinness, Ferrari, Harley-
Davidson and, of course, Apple (take a sledgehammer to an iPad
and you'll know what I mean). Which suggests that the logo as we
once knew and loved it--from Citibank's Scowling Umbrella (I don't
know what else to call it), to Nike's Swoosh, to Starbucks's Whoever-
The-Heck-She-Is--needs to be re-considered if it's going to play
any role in future brand-building.
- Martin Lindstrom via @FastCompany
Tuesday, December 6, 11
18. A great brand tells a story.
And luckily we all make great stories.
Marina Willer of Wolff Olins London declared, “It’s not about consistency, it’s
about creating stories that make sense.” Stories are the way we connect with
people and create relationships. If we think of brands as people or personalities,
they need to be magical storytellers. As humans, we thrive on all of the
emotional connections we have. We get passionate about them. It’s the stories
we tell and hear that trigger those connections.
Tuesday, December 6, 11
19. Crafting your story.
In 5 steps.
01 | Be Real & Don’t Lie.
02 | Write down what has made an impact on you, and why it’s important.
03 | Go back to those 5 things you LOVE to do. What are they?
04 | Be Clear & Concise. A story has a beginning, a middle and an end.
05 | Leave out the sales copy, and focus on you. We’ll get to what you’ve done soon enough.
Tuesday, December 6, 11