Collaborating on the WordCamp Milwaukee 2012 website

I recently joined a networking group for web developers who build custom WordPress websites and volunteered to help design the website and brand for this years WordCamp Milwaukee. Although there are several WordCamps across the country this is the first time one has been held in Milwaukee. The idea is to spotlight local talent and talk about everything WordPress.


WordCamp Milwaukee was a two day event in early June. Thanks to several volunteers the event was an incredible success. I was excited to contribute by developing the look and feel for the site while working with a couple of serious PHP gurus on the backend of the site. It was a very successful collaboration.

Updating custom WordPress project...

Over the last decade or so sustainability has become extremely fascinating to me. Working with Barb Basaj at SunSpec Energy Solutions, a home performance consultant and solar site assessor, was extremely rewarding. I had the opportunity to work with a small business offering several valuable services that help our environment and create energy independence.

After some careful consideration I've decided it's time to bring my own brand into line and update it with some minor changes. The first change is to align my business name with my URL CarlDesigns.com. The goal is to highlight the individual service my clients experience working with an independent designer vs a large firm. Instead of using my full name I've switched to my first name only because the I'm on a first name basis with all of my clients.

There are a couple other reasons for making this change... first, it shortens up the name making it easier to remember and second it retains my first name which allows me to do business without having to use a "doing business as" (DBA) designation.

I've started to experiment with my logo. Primarily to remove one of the graphic representations of the letter "C" while retaining aspects of its present appearance.

Second round of logo refresh

Recent custom WordPress website

Voice Over Nation is a training program for aspiring voice over artists. Not only do they show you the ropes they get you started with a promo disc. The owners are two fun guys with years of experience in the industry and love what they do.

The logo inside the brand

There are far too many people and professionals in the industry that still haven't made the distinction between a logo and the brand. The overall brand strategy encompasses not only the logo but every element such as marketing, advertising, public relations, employee training, etc... Without a well developed brand strategy all of these pieces are floating separating occasionally bumping into one another. 

A well thought out brand strategy is what connects them and imbeds the DNA of a brand throughout every aspect of an organization. A strong brand is similar to a set of Russian dolls—each one stands securely on its own yet has the same characteristics as the others and fit perfectly one inside another. A logo is only one doll inspired by the core purpose of the organization which is magnified from layer to layer.

Is it time for a logo Makeover?

How do you know if it's time to give your logo a makeover?

Start by evaluating what works and what doesn't. Your logo may only need a few small changes or may need to be redesigned from the ground up. Remember your logo is not about what you like or dislike but what appeals to your market. It's important to start this process by being honest with yourself.

The good news is this is an excellent opportunity to reevaluate your brand and how your logo fits within the scheme of your goals. Does your logo project the essence of your brand? Has your vision and mission changed over the years? Has your market changed? It's difficult to deliver on your brand promise if one or all of these elements have changed.

Find out what it is about your logo that still works. What elements of your present logo does your market respond to? Is it an image, logotype, colors, your tagline? Ask your existing customers what they like about your logo and what they would change.

Many logos simply need the application of a reductive approach—removing and simplifying the mark. Take Starbucks as an example. As they've grown over the years their mark has become highly recognizable allowing them the freedom of removing their name from the logo/mark. I wouldn't recommend this for most small businesses because few small businesses have the brand recognition of Starbucks. However, you can see that each time Starbucks refreshed their logo a reductive process was implemented—simplifying the mark to it's bare essence and increasing its visual recognition.

One of the most consistent mistakes I see in logo design is font choice. So many logos are designed with trendy fonts that come and go in just a few years. Can you imaging being a large corporation and spending millions of dollars on a new logo only to have to update it a year or two later? It just doesn't happen.

This is one area where I recommend small businesses think like a large corporation and use a traditional font as the foundation of your logo design. One exception to the rule is restaurants and nightclubs. Successful restaurants tend to change very quickly depending on the trends. But for most small businesses it just doesn't make sense.

If you do decide to make changes to your company's logo you will need to update your entire identity system (everything your logo is applied to). Even if you only change your logo's color(s) you may need to adjust the style, look and feel, and coloring of other brand elements such as your photograph or graphic elements (other than your logo).

One last important point is to remember—your logo is not a work of art but a communications tool. If your logo does not communicate what your business provides, either product or service, you're loosing potential buyers.

The Curse of Knowledge...

Made to Stick is a great book about crafting ideas and sharing them with people who can make a difference. We all have ideas but most never take off. This book shares the stories of those who made their ideas stick.

I was especially drawn to the chapter on "the curse of knowledge". It's stuck with me and I thought I'd share an excerpt with you from the Made to Stick web site—try it for yourself.
The following is an excerpt from Made to Stick web site: http://www.madetostick.com/excerpts/

Tappers and Listeners 

In 1990, Elizabeth Newton earned a Ph.D. in psychology at Stanford by studying a simple game in

which she assigned people to one of two roles: "tappers" or "listeners." Tappers received a list of twenty-five well-known songs, such as "Happy Birthday to You" and "The StarSpangled Banner." Each tapper was asked to pick a song and tap out the rhythm to a listener (by knocking on a table). The listener's job was to guess the song, based on the rhythm being tapped. (By the way, this experiment is fun to try at home if there's a good "listener" candidate nearby.)

The listener's job in this game is quite difficult. Over the course of Newton's experiment, 120 songs were tapped out. Listeners guessed only 2.5 percent of the songs: 3 out of 120.

But here's what made the result worthy of a dissertation in psychology. Before the listeners guessed the name of the song, Newton asked the tappers to predict the odds that the listeners would guess correctly. They predicted that the odds were 50 percent. The tappers got their message across 1 time in 40, but they thought they were getting their message across 1 time in 2. Why?

When a tapper taps, she is hearing the song in her head. Go ahead and try it for yourself — tap out "The Star-Spangled Banner." It's impossible to avoid hearing the tune in your head. Meanwhile, the listeners can't hear that tune — all they can hear is a bunch of disconnected taps, like a kind of bizarre Morse Code.

In the experiment, tappers are flabbergasted at how hard the listeners seem to be working to pick up the tune. Isn't the song obvious? The tappers' expressions, when a listener guesses "Happy Birthday to You" for "The Star-Spangled Banner," are priceless: How could you be so stupid?

It's hard to be a tapper. The problem is that tappers have been given knowledge (the song title) that makes it impossible for them to imagine what it's like to lack that knowledge. When they're tapping, they can't imagine what it's like for the listeners to hear isolated taps rather than a song. This is the Curse of Knowledge. Once we know something, we find it hard to imagine what it was like not to know it. Our knowledge has "cursed" us. And it becomes difficult for us to share our knowledge with others, because we can't readily re-create our listeners' state of mind.

The tapper/listener experiment is reenacted every day across the world. The tappers and listeners are CEOs and frontline employees, teachers and students, politicians and voters, marketers and customers, writers and readers. All of these Groups rely on ongoing communication, but, like the tappers and listeners, they suffer from enormous information imbalances. When a CEO discusses "unlocking shareholder value," there is a tune playing in her head that the employees can't hear.

It's a hard problem to avoid — a CEO might have thirty years of daily immersion in the logic and conventions of business. Reversing the process is as impossible as un-ringing a bell. You can't unlearn what you already know. There are, in fact, only two ways to beat the Curse of Knowledge reliably. The first is not to learn anything. The second is to take your ideas and transform them.

This book will teach you how to transform your ideas to beat the Curse of Knowledge. The six principles presented earlier are your best weapons. They can be used as a kind of checklist. Let's take the CEO who announces to her staff that they must strive to "maximize shareholder value."

Is this idea simple? Yes, in the sense that it's short, but it lacks the useful simplicity of a proverb. Is it unexpected? No. Concrete? Not at all. Credible? Only in the sense that it's coming from the mouth of the CEO. Emotional? Um, no. A story? No.

Contrast the "maximize shareholder value" idea with John F. Kennedy's famous 1961 call to "put a man on the moon and return him safely by the end of the decade." Simple? Yes. Unexpected? Yes. Concrete? Amazingly so. Credible? The goal seemed like science fiction, but the source was credible. Emotional? Yes. Story? In miniature.

Had John F. Kennedy been a CEO, he would have said, "Our mission is to become the international leader in the space industry through maximum team-centered innovation and strategically targeted aerospace initiatives." Fortunately, JFK was more intuitive than a modern-day CEO; he knew that opaque, abstract missions don't captivate and inspire people. The moon mission was a classic case of a communicator's dodging the Curse of Knowledge. It was a brilliant and beautiful idea — a single idea that motivated the actions of millions of people for a decade.