On Militant Geek On UT Tech/Biz On Adversational
Matthew Reinbold is Creative Principal for Vox Pop Design. BloomBurst is his blog on growing organic software, nurturing microbusiness, and running virtual companies. More...
The time since my election as Salt Lake ColdFusion User Group manager has gone incredibly fast. Elected in April, 2005, I’ve since helped host some incredible, in-person, talks (Sean Corfield, Charlie Arehart, Gert Franz), put on a killer local conference (2008’s RIA Dev Shed), and continued the proud service to local developers since the group’s founding in 1999. Helping evangelize ColdFusion as leader for nearly half of its lifetime could only be described a labor of love.
However, the time has come for me to step down as manager. Internally, the Adobe User Group program is going through some challenges. Simultaneously, I find the success of my own company, Vox Pop Design, requiring an increasingly larger amount of my time. Further, after more than four years it is time for someone with a fresh perspective to take things to a new, reinvigorated, level.
Certainly, this does not signal a disillusionment with CFML. I remain convinced that CFML is the best choice for Rapid Application Development. The emergence of OpenBD and Railo gives ColdFusion developers incredible new options. Finally, ColdFusion’s continued vital role in Flex and the newly announced ColdFusion services mean that the next leader is guaranteed to have lots of exciting topics to cover.
There is no scheduled meeting for the month of July. On August 12th I’ll hold nominations for both assistant manager and manager (manager will be first as to allow those interested in being manager but not receiving enough votes to re-apply for assistant manager). I’ll ask for those interested to speak up, give a paragraph or two as to why they want the position and what they hope to accomplish, and then we’ll do paper ballots to determine a winner.
Again, it has been a privilege being your ColdFusion User Group Leader. You have taught me so much and I can’t wait to see where the next manager is able to take things!
Quick update for those that might have been interested in the progression of the Utah Social Media Awards logo. In the end, it was deemed that we needed something simple – anywhoo, latest update for your viewing enjoyment.
The next Salt Lake ColdFusion User’s Group (SLCFUG) Meeting, to be held June 10th, looks to be a doozy. Live, via Adobe Connect, we’ll have Sean Corfield speaking on Behavior Driven Development.
Behavior Driven Development (or BDD) is an extension of current testing models. It seeks to:
In addition to explaining why BDD is useful Sean will also be discussing the how through CFSpec, a BDD framework for ColdFusion.
Sean is currently the CTO of Railo, an open-source CFML server. Formerly a Senior Architect at Adobe, Sean is a frequent conference and user group lecturer. Anyone can follow his simultaneous exploits in the worlds of code and Can-Can on twitter.
Things, as usual, get underway the second Wednesday of the month at 4:30pm. Once again we’re graciously hosted by the folks as MasterControl.com. For driving directions and more info please see the SLCFUG website.
It’s always a good day when the delivery guy shows up with a package from Amazon.com. In the latest corrugated wonder we have:
While I always love a good read I’m, in particular, interested in the intersection between all three. Email scammers are Sith social marketers, utilizing the power of networks and observations on people’s motivations for personal gain. They operate outside of whuffie, or the invisible social capital each one of us accrues or spends by our daily, public actions. Freed from the need to maintain ‘nice guy’ personas or brand building shenanigans, they are highly innovative in a way I’d expect Rushkoff didn’t intend.
If code is poetry, then design is a pop song; when done right its catchy, powerful, and destined to rattle about your head long after the first impression has past. However, that also means that everyone has an opinion, thinks they could do it better, and are accustomed to way too much autotune.
As I’ve blogged about previously (here and here) I’m on the Utah Social Social Media Awards planning committee. As such, I was tasked with coming up with a logo for the awards itself.
Brainstorming, regardless of design, is fun. The Salt Lake Social Media Club, who is presenting the awards, already have a very clean, iconic logo (shown below) done by the effervescent Jantzie :
The straightest path from empty workspace to finished logo would be parrot the existing word bubble, contort a Utah-shaped word bubble around the words ‘Utah Social Media Awards’ and call it a day, as below:
However, there’s some serious problems here. The biggest of which is that not one, but two tired tropes are being rolled together. It’s like the Voltron of Cliches. For example, throwing the Utah shape at anything associated with the state is common almost to the point of being hackneyed – a five minute Google search turned up the following:
(It’s an issue with any agreed upon state icon – South Dakota, for example, swims in Rushmore heads. )
And that’s nothing compared with the overuse of word bubbles to represent social media, conversation, or the fading Web 2.0 term in general:
The bubble was called out for being tired in 2007 and things have only worsened since then. I’ve even resorted to the bubble for previous projects, but in my defense, I was a naive grasshopper in early 2007:
Yet, the tired usage of the state – even those combined with word bubbles – continues. A recent logo shows Utah having the same geographic heft as, say, Australia, is a case in point:
So, what to do? Using some kind of laptop silhouette is probably a dead end, as social media is increasingly relevant on other platforms, like mobile devices. What about playing on the idea of communities, of like clusters of people? After some time in photoshop and appending some throwaway text for context I arrived at this:
Yes, there’s a subtle state in there to provide context to the ‘community’ but its not a straight-up outline from Rand-McNally. And one dot stands out to fulfill the idea of the awards – acknowledging those that stand out from the crowd.
After some feedback regarding size, color, and clarity – along with a desire to more closely align with the local Social Media Club chapter, I arrived at this:
Sample USMA Logo - Pass 2
While fulfilling the feedback there are new problems. One, to simplify the state dots to jive with the bubbles it was necessary to strip the gradient shadowing – it was problematic for vectorizing and re-purposing for tasks like silk-screening anyway. But the process makes the spheres flat and two dimensional; they no longer quite resemble people heads. There is also a large amount of clutter, or noise. Whereas before approximately 110 dots didn’t seem to be that big of deal here, even flattened, there’s still a lot going on.
On today’s Vox Pop PowWow, a weekly conference call I have with other creators, it was suggested that cleaning out the bleed through between the dots might help. Another trip to photoshop results in:
So, with all that work and laborious philosophical posturing what will the final verdict be? My guess is that we’ll probably go with:
Why? After trying to avoid the obvious I have to conclude that the reason word bubbles and state outlines are used so often is that they work. What’s more? They work really well. They’re easy to grasp. They have clean lines. They’re easily re-purposed into a variety of different formats.
It’s tremendously easily to over think design. Just look at what happened to Pepsi. What’s hard is stepping outside oneself and scrapping several hours worth of work on a concept that just didn’t quite work.