This past weekend marks another year when companies pay boocoos of money for spots to advertise during the Super Bowl, but it was also the first year the NFL has offered free, live-streaming of the game online or via mobile phone.

Live Streaming

I only watched a small portion of the game, but I did give the live-streaming a go. Although the quality wasn’t up to par with watching the game on a big screen, the live-streaming interface had lots to offer (besides being legal and free). There were multiple camera angles to choose from, a “Twitter Battle” poll that displayed the hype of which team was being rooted for, in-game Q&A via Twitter, sideline tweets, and of course—the ads.

The Ads

In all, there were roughly 60 Super Bowl commercials for products, services, auto dealers, & TV/movie promotions. Although I feel like the Super Bowl commercials are loosing their creativity, some still retain a bit of humor or focus. You can watch all the Super Bowl 46 commercials here.

Other Super Bowl tid-bits:

1. It’s likely only the instant-purchase products notice a direct increase in sales due to Super Bowl advertising—namely Doritos, Coke, Pepsi, & Budweiser (versus auto industry ads, or service-related spots).

2. It seems the Super Bowl will be nixing the custom host stadium logos and going with a standard logo that will only get updated roman numerals. Semi-unrelated—commenters note the awkwardness that Super Bowl 50 would read “Super Bowl L”.

3. The highest Tweets per second #SuperBowl peak came at the end of the game: 12,233. 2nd highest was during Madonna’s performance: 10,245. Via Twitter.

Your Thoughts

So, did you watch the game? Were you happy with the outcome? What do you think of live-streaming being offered? And, what was your favorite Super Bowl commercial this year?

She made a physical sitemap or flowchart of their website so she could picture the hierarchy and flow of the website. This sitemap allowed her to move things around easily and make “big picture” changes before touching (pun not intended) the actual website. This also helped her wrap her head around some of the decisions that were made before she was brought on board and to focus on some of the hidden pages on the website that have direct links to them such as their product pages.

This is much easier to visual than normal sitemaps with only boxes & lines. It also helps you ensure your prospective buyers and brand community can easily find things because you’re on the adventure with them.

If you’re making big changes in your company and to your website, this might be a great place to start.

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One of my many tasks here at the Planet is to come up with creative ways for our team to interact, have fun and stay healthy. Recently, while searching for some imaginative ideas, I ran across this wonderful article by Andrew Tarvin called “101 Ways to Create Humor at Work”.

Along with take a nap at work and dance in the elevator, here are a few more of my favs:

• Be Hularious: Hold a hula-hoop contest.
• Be Inspired: Start off each day by watching an inspirational video.
• Be a Storyteller: Pick a story from your weekend to share with others.
• Be Happy for 60 Minutes: Organize a happy hour with your co-workers.
• Be Original: Brainstorm your own unique way of bringing humor to work.

Bringing humor into the work place just might be one of the best investments you can make for yourself and your employees. Research shows that happy people are healthier people and laughter creates some mighty powerful brain-altering chemicals. In fact, if you were to buy all the chemicals created by a good laugh they would carry a pretty hefty price tag. And yet you can create these chemicals for yourself and your co-workers at no cost by simply engaging in laughter.

The chemicals produced by laughter have extraordinary positive healing effects on your body and mind.  They boost your immune system, improve your outlook on life and diminish symptoms of depression. Researchers have found that your state of mind has everything to do with the functioning of your immune system. By engaging in laughter, you can boost both your mind and your body.

But what if you can’t find anything to laugh about? Here are some ideas I’m working on: I posted a crossword puzzle on the refrigerator. Now when we take a coffee break everyone gathers around to figure out the clues. I’ve implemented spontaneous 15-minute “fun break” at least once a week – our first “fun break” we played a game I created. I call it the “Treasure Hunt Word Search”. Here are the rules:

• Pick out a word that is 10 or more letters.
• Draw the letters on paper and cut them out individually.
• Hide the letters around the office (outside or inside).
• Tell everyone how many letters they have to find.
• Give them 15 minutes to find all the letters and unscramble the Word.

Read my blog post next month to find how Design the Planet continues to make our workplace healthier and happier. In the meantime, visit our Facebook page to see pictures of our latest venture into creative play and health through laughter and, while you’re there, post some of your own ideas for generating laughter at work.

So come on everyone, join in. Find ways everyday to get laughter into your life and work environment, even if it means being a little weird, it will mean a wealth of health.

So, how can you earn a high search engine ranking?  There’s an entire profession devoted to determining the factors that a search engine uses to rank pages, but there are two main factors that everyone should consider: “votes” and “on-page content”.

The content on your web page is a major factor used to rank web pages. So have really good content! Here are some tips to make sure your web page’s content will rank well:

• Your site’s structure should make sense, even to a machine.  If your page has sections, make sure each page is in the correct section. If your page has event listings, make sure the listings are in the “events” section.
• Your pages should link to each other in a way that makes sense.  If you run a restaurant website and you’re home page talks about pizza, link to your pizza menu using this text.  Don’t link to your content using phrases like “click here for the menu”.
• Content on your website is easy to find.
• For local businesses: Include your phone number and address on each page.  This will help you rank better for users who are in the city that you serve.

In the next post in this series, we’ll cover what “votes” are and how you use them to improve your search engine rankings.

Two measures of adjustments used in typography are kerning and leading. These two aspects of typography are particularly important because their value can offer the greatest amount of customization to a group of text in order to achieve a desired look and feel.

Kerning is the process of adjusting the space between characters in a font, usually to achieve a visually pleasing result. Kerning differs from tracking which is the uniform adjustment of spacing applied over a range of characters. Very often a designer will take advantage of kerning to exploit the individual shape of a letter to create interesting visual relationships between other letters in a group.

Tighter kerning or tracking can compliment the overall shape of the word, forcing the viewer to see the word as a whole shape rather than individual letters. Tighter kerning can also help illustrate interesting negative spaces between letters, and other spacial relationships which can become a design element in itself.

Loose tracking gives a sense of airiness and openness. It brings more attention to the individual letter instead of the overall shape of the word. Loose tracking can also express boldness and expansiveness, commanding a large area to communicate an idea.

Leading refers to the distance between the baselines (bottom) of successive lines of type. The word comes from lead strips that were put between set lines. When type was set by hand in printing presses, slugs or strips of lead of appropriate thicknesses were inserted between lines of type to add vertical space, to fill available space on the page.

Closer leading fits more text on the page, but decreases legibility. Looser leading spreads text out to fill a page and makes the document easier to read. Leading can also be negative, in which case the lines of text are so close that they overlap or touch, creating a desired design.

There is rarely a time when a designer uses a software’s default values as the finished text. Creative use of kerning and leading can result in a variety of emotions and drama in type design. Kerning and leading are just a part of what develops into an overall type treatment that will successfully brand a business. When type treatments are consistent across a business’ branding, a visual continuity is achieved throughout products and services, providing the desired effect of the type to all aspects of branding.

Here are some inspiring resources and examples:

www.typophile.com
www.ilovetypography.com
www.smashingmagazine.com/tag/typography

#3 Curlz

Curlz is a font you see on invitations for events that are supposed to be fun and exciting, but its overuse has caused it to look silly and amateur.

#2 Papyrus

With its rough edges and antique look, you’ll notice Papyrus used in the massage and spa industry, for (Mediterranean) restaurants and menus, representing jewelry shops, and on organic food packaging. Papyrus has become so commonplace that it’s a poor choice for any company wanting to stand out.

#1 Comic Sans

Originally designed as imitation comic book lettering, Comic Sans is one of the most overused fonts created—there are even sites dedicated to banning the font. Comic Sans is childish, immature and never taken seriously.

The fonts listed above should never be used to represent your brand, but the list goes on… Click here for a full listing of fonts to avoid »

Why does it matter what fonts I use?
Choosing an unsuitable font makes your brand:

• convey the wrong message
• look unprofessional
• illegible and unreadable
• look too generic
• confusing and unmemorable

What if I can’t find the perfect font?
Hire a design firm, because:

• design firms have tens—if not hundreds—of thousands of fonts at their disposal
• designers are aware of trends and fonts that may soon look dated
• if a perfect font can’t be found, a custom font or type treatment can be created
• design firms work hard to make sure your brand is unique and conveys the proper message

So, whether you’re flowing content into your website or typing up a document to be used in-house, refrain from using the fonts listed above and you’ll find yourself a few steps closer to a more professional, memorable brand.

We enjoyed having Florida visit us and look forward to hearing about their visit to New Orleans.

The team enjoyed a rainy day lunch at Fresco Café and Pizzeria Uptown near Tulane & Loyola University.

1. Your online presence, captured in a single QR code
There’s more and more talk of using QR codes these days. This short video shows a great way to put QR codes to use.

2. The Fold Exists but Does it Matter?
What do you think of “the fold” when it comes to websites? Are you a designer or strictly a web user?

3. iClip lite
A super handy widget that allows multiple clipboards for all your copy/paste needs. Especially useful when flowing content from a client or storing various links and images to reference throughout a project.

4. Five Copywriting Errors That Can Ruin A Company’s Website
A great article that discusses ways to improve your website and blog by focusing on quality content.

Some favorite tips:
• Set a “word budget”
• “A well-written category-level product page talks a bit about features, a little more about benefits and a great deal more about the experience.”
• Highlight your lead sentence
• Add some meta data
• Create a call to action

5. How to Make WordPress Easier for Clients By Removing Unnecessary Menu Options
This article explains ways to make WordPress more efficient for you and your clients by removing extraneous menu items.

6. A Graphic Design Primer, Part 1: The Elements of a Design
Even if you’re a pro at design, it’s necessary to re-review the basics from time-to-time. This refresher course contains lots of great examples to browse as well.

Noteworthy Resources:

7. Letter Count
Simple, but useful. Great for pre-tweeting and also includes character limits for various online tools, e.g., Google AdSense. The Word Counter is great for practicing your word budget too.

8. Convert Case
Ever get content from a client that’s in ALL CAPS? You can thank us later.

What interesting links/resources have you run across recently that you’d like to share?

Lets start with your image to the outside world:

• A poorly conceived/executed logo (1.) will not connect with your prospects; (2.) can deliver the wrong message about who-you-are and what-you-do; (3.) give the idea that you have poor quality standards; (4.) may be too generic to be memorable; (5.) is hard to read on business cards; (6.) will confuse people about what you do
• A logo that hasn’t been updated in years (1.) will tell your customers you are too cheap to keep your image fresh; (2.) may no-longer represent the company and its values; (3) will project a lack of interest in your own business and brand value; (4) looks boring and not fun to work with

Now, let’s consider, more importantly, the image to your employees:

An old logo that hasn’t been updated will tell employees  (1.) “We don’t care about the future of the company;” (2.) “We are cheap and don’t understand the intrinsic value of our Brand;” (3.) “We don’t understand what the current Brand represents or where it is headed;” (4.) “We fear or are against change or improvement.”

A poorly conceived/executed logo tells your employees (1.) we do not connect with our employees; (2.) delivers the wrong message on who-the-company-is and what-the-company-does; (3.) gives the idea that we have poor quality standards; (4.) steers potential applicants away from applying by having them think, “If they don’t invest in their image, they probably won’t invest in me either.”

Next Printing Cost:

I’ll have to preface this with some basic info – a professionally developed logo is successful in black and white, one color – possibly two color. When contrasted with some poorly planned logos that are full-color for no good reason:

• Printing cost for full-color, all of the time, will normally double or triple any printing job’s cost (Example: business cards for a two-color logo can run about $100, but the cost can easily jump to $200+ for full color on the same paper stock)

Imagine printing letterhead, envelopes, and business cards for an office of 10 people. If you have professional designed stationery with a two-color logo, your cost may be $2,000 depending on paper stock and quantities. For similar paper stock and quantities, using a logo that is full color, you will easily spend $5,000. So, you can see that anything you saved on the logo redesign is eaten away by poor planning and execution.

Another problem with an unprofessional logo, we have seen this more times than I like to admit, is when the logo is created in a non-scalable format. They had a friend put something together in a desktop publishing program and they only have one file format and it isn’t scalable. Each time the logo is used on different media such as on letterhead, then billboards or shirts, the company they contract with has to re-make the logo, OR turn it into a two or one color, OR (the worse) stretch the logo to fit the size so the final print/production is warped, fuzzy or pixelated.

We have encountered several poorly conceived, badly executed logos that are not helping the companies they are supposed to represent. So, if you are concerned about how much a good or great logo will cost you, it is nothing compared to what a BAD LOGO will cost you.

Think about what big prospects have walked away from your company because your brand looks old, confusing, or poor quality. How much did that logo really cost you now?