Avoiding Unnecessary Complexities

Since first watching the TED talk by Roman Mars entitled, “Why city flags may be the worst designed thing you’ve never noticed” I’ve been on a mission to avoid unnecessary complexities – not only in my work, but also in my daily life. As humans, we tend to overcomplicate things time-and-time again. Such is the case with these poorly designed flags. In order to elude this path and avoid complications, I often remind myself of the phrase, “Keep it simple, stupid.”

Coined by the U.S. Navy in 1960, this phrase known by the acronym “KISS” was used as a design principle stating that most systems work best if they are kept simple, rather than made complicated – making simplicity an essential goal to achieving great design. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the word Simple is defined as: Not hard to understand or do; having few parts; not complex or fancy; not special or unusual. If it were up to me, this definition would be revised to subtract the idea of simple meaning not fancy, and not special or unusual. If something has simplistic qualities, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s boring or not special. What it boils down to is effectiveness. In order to be effective and accomplish success through simplicity I look for three key factors.

Does it have deep meaning or reasoning?
Does it accomplish the predetermined goal?
Is it relevant, yet interesting?

To avoid the association of simple meaning boring, the third one is key. Often times, the most simple designs are the most interesting which is a direct contradiction of simple being associated with not unusual. And in most instances, creating a simple design can be a major challenge.

“Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.”

— Steve Jobs

Going back to the TED talk, the most successfully designed flags, the ones that are flown proudly through their cities streets happen to be the most simple, yet they are also the ones with the most meaning and by far the most interesting. In order to create these rare beauties, it requires much thought and strategy. In his talk, Roman shares five principles of successful flag design according to the North American VexillologicalI(the study of flags) Association. As he mentions, these five principles can be applied when designing just about anything.

Keep it simple
Use meaningful symbolism
Use two to three basic colors
No lettering or seals of any kind
Be distinctive

From left to right: Denver, Colorado; New Orleans, Louisiana; Ocean City, Maryland; Mesa, Arizona; — From left to right: Denver, Colorado; New Orleans, Louisiana; Ocean City, Maryland; Mesa, Arizona.

While the study of flag design may not sound all that appealing to everyone, I encourage you to watch the the talk, as you will not only walk away curious about your own cities flag, but also feel inspired and entertained by all that Roman has to say. While I agree with these five principles as a way to avoid unnecessary complexities, especially in the art of flag design, what it all comes down to is the top item on that list and understanding that simplicity is essential to achieving great design. Should you find yourself treading the waters of complexity, just think of the U.S. Navy and, “Keep it simple, stupid”.

Jacob Tyler | San Diego’s Best Branding Agency

Microsites and Landing Pages: A Primer

Just about every business has a website – or at least should. But a website is not the only venue through which you can market your business on the web. The rise of online marketing and its various tactics have given birth to new forms of web engagement – including the microsite and landing page. Generally, both are an addendum to – or an extension of – an existing website, but each serve a particular function in guiding people along the buyer journey. Let’s take a look at the basics:

The Microsite:

What is it? A microsite is a lot like it sounds – a small, bare bones version of a traditional website. Comprised of no more than a few pages, microsites are built around a singular message (i.e., a new campaign, product or service offering).

What is its purpose? Microsites help to develop brand awareness around a particular product or service. By focusing on a simple and clear message, microsites cut through the clutter of a traditional website and allow potential customers to learn about a product or service in a quick, painless and easy to digest manner.

The Landing Page:

What is it? A simple, single page or form – usually hosted on an existing website – intended to drive a specific action.

What is its purpose? The landing page is singularly focused and intended to spur action (i.e. – download information, sign up for a free trial, subscribe to newsletter, etc.) and move a potential customer from awareness to consideration and eventually, purchase.

The Bottom Line:

Microsites and Landing Pages are great vehicles to enhance your marketing efforts and help drive sales. In some cases, they can even be utilized in place of a traditional website. Microsites and landing pages offer similar benefits, and determining the right solution for your efforts is entirely dependent on your needs.

Benefits of microsites and landing pages include:

• Quick deployment (3-4 weeks vs. 3-4 months for a traditional site)

• Can be used as a short-term solution for specific goals and programs

• Promotes a specific call to action (CTA)

• Build brand awareness organically

• Easy to measure campaign engagement

• Simple navigation

• Allows for direct interaction with a specific promotion or campaign

• Great medium to tell a brand story

Want more info on this topic? Fill out the form to the right and let’s chat!

Digital Advertising in San Diego by Jacob Tyler

Instagram’s Latest Updates Could Help Brands Reach Consumers

Visuals are a powerful way to promote your brand. The right image can capture the soul of a brand and communicate it in an instant. Instagram – the largest image-sharing site in the world – boasts 70 million images and video uploads every day. That’s a lot of users – and a big potential audience for your brand. However, reaching the right audience via Instagram has been a bit tricky – until now.

The photo and video sharing social media powerhouse recently announced two big changes that look to be a boon to brands utilizing the app. Here’s what you need to know:

The Upgraded “Explore” Feature: Spurred in part by the explosion of users posting to Instagram, the company has updated its Explore feature to deliver trending topics in real time. Whether it’s images from the scene of a breaking news story or a nationwide event like #FathersDay, users will be provided with easy access to relevant content. Likewise, brands can gain exposure by posting content relevant to the latest trends and topics. Instagram has also added specific collections curated by an in-house team of editors that include categories like “ancient ruins” and “extreme athletes.”

All New Search: Instagram has improved its search algorithm to make finding people, places and events much easier. The update allows user to search people, places and tags simultaneously. With enough savvy, brands can utilize the search features to make themselves more discoverable to users.

To learn more about the all-new Instagram, check out the company’s blog. If you would like to discuss how your brand could utilize visual media to gain exposure, fill out the form to the right and let’s talk!

Branding by Jacob Tyler

17 Quotes on Design Philosophy From Apple’s Sir Jony Ive

Recently, Apple announced it was “promoting” its lead designer, Jony Ive. The promotion is little more than a title change, as Ive has led Apple’s world-changing product design since joining the company in 1996. “Sir” Jony Ive (he’s been knighted by the Queen of England) is well known across the globe for his innovative designs that made Apple the world’s biggest company and changed the way we interact with technology.

As designers, we draw inspiration from a variety of sources – the word around us, the innovative products and services of our clients and the work of great designers past and present. Ive is certainly one of those greats. The following collection of quotes from Apple’s creative maestro offer an interesting look into the philosophy that drives Apple’s world-changing designs.

“Simplicity is not the absence of clutter, that’s a consequence of simplicity. Simplicity is somehow essentially describing the purpose and place of an object and product. The absence of clutter is just a clutter-free product. That’s not simple.”

“There’s no learning without trying lots of ideas and failing lots of times.”

“Different’ and ‘new’ is relatively easy. Doing something that’s genuinely better is very hard.”

“We shouldn’t be afraid to fail- if we are not failing we are not pushing. 80% of the stuff in the studio is not going to work. If something is not good enough, stop doing it.”

“There is beauty when something works and it works intuitively.”

“If something is not good enough, stop doing it.”

“If you are truly innovating, you don’t have a prototype you can refer to.”

“What we make testifies who we are. People can sense care and can sense carelessness. This relates to respect for each other and carelessness is personally offensive.”

“Apple’s goal isn’t to make money. Our goal is to design and develop and bring to market good products.”

“True simplicity is, well, you just keep on going and going until you get to the point where you go, ‘Yeah, well, of course.’ Where there’s no rational alternative.”

“What I love about the creative process, and this may sound naive, but it is this idea that one day there is no idea, and no solution, but the next day there is an idea. I find that incredibly exciting and conceptually actually remarkable.”

“A small change at the beginning of the design process defines an entirely different product at the end.”

“When something exceeds your ability to understand how it works, it sort of becomes magical.”

“Designing and developing anything of consequence is incredibly challenging.”

“Making the solution seem so completely inevitable and obvious, so uncontrived and natural – it’s so hard!”

“It’s a very strange thing for a designer to say, but one of the things that really irritates me in products is when I’m aware of designers wagging their tails in my face.”

“The best ideas start as conversations.”

San Diego Digital Marketing Agency | Jacob Tyler

Are You Ready for Mobilegeddon?

In April, Google officially rolled out its “mobile-friendly” search ranking update. In short, this means that Google will now boost the rankings of what it considers to be “mobile-friendly” pages – and penalize pages that it does not – on its mobile search. The update is intended to reflect the rise of Internet access through mobile devices, which now constitute more than half of all Google searches. The update is expected to negatively affect many websites – popular industry blog TechCrunch found that 44 percent of Fortune 500 companies failed Google’s mobile-friendly test – and could impact revenues for those websites who do not meet the new mobile-friendly standards.

Let’s take a look at the basics of the new search update and what it means for your website.

What will change?

The mobile-friendly update will impact web page search rankings based on accessibility and usability on mobile devices.
The change affects only search ranking on mobile devices.
The update applies to individual pages, not entire websites.

What makes a website mobile-friendly?

According to Google’s blog, the following basic criteria will be used to determine “mobile friendliness” in search results:

Websites that avoid software that is not common on mobile devices – like Flash.
Websites that use text that is readable without zooming.
Websites that size content to the screen so users don’t have to scroll horizontally or zoom.
Websites that place links far enough apart so that the correct one can be easily tapped.

Is my website mobile-friendly?

If your website features responsive design or adaptive design, or has been configured specifically for use on mobile devices, it may not be affected by the new search algorithm. Older, more “static” websites, however, will likely suffer a loss of ranking under the new search rules.

To determine if your website is mobile-friendly, simply paste your URL into Google’s quick and easy mobile-friendly test.

How can I optimize my website for mobile?

Google recommends responsive web design as the best way to ensure sites remain relevant across all platforms. According to Google’s blog, responsive design:

Makes it easier for users to share and link to your content with a single URL.
Helps Google’s algorithms accurately assign indexing properties to the page rather than needing to signal the existence of corresponding desktop/mobile pages.
Requires less engineering time to maintain multiple pages for the same content.
Reduces the possibility of the common mistakes that affect mobile sites.
Requires no redirection for users to have a device-optimized view, which reduces load time.
Saves resources when Googlebot crawls your site.

In a nutshell –

The new mobile search ranking is an undeniable shakeup of the status quo, but should eventually optimize the search experience for both consumers and businesses. If your website lost rank status on April 21, it can regain that status once it is optimized and becomes mobile-friendly, as Google will reclassify the newly updated site.

If you would like to learn more about how to optimize your website for mobile, fill out the form to the right and let’s chat!

Jacob Tyler | San Diego’s Best Web Design Agency

How Design Consistency Builds Brand Recognition.

There are many factors that go into creating a widely recognized brand. Without design consistency however, this can never be achieved. On a recent trip to visit family in Cincinnati, Ohio, my then two-and-a-half-year-old son, Teigan, crafted a perfect case study on the matter.

A few days into our trip, my father-in-law came home with a new car. Not just any car, a white, 2015 Porsche Boxster S. Being one of the most stylized car brands in the world, the new Porsche quickly became one of Teigan’s favorite rides. What I thought was simple excitement of something new showing up, and the fascination of seeing a car with, “no-roof” as he proclaimed, turned out to be much more than that. Little did we know, Teigan was building brand recognition and becoming a fan of the Porsche brand.

A week or so had gone by since the new car arrived, and my wife and I had taken the kids to visit the local Aquarium. Just as any major attraction, we arrived to a packed parking lot, filled with cars of all makes, sizes, and colors. While pushing the kids through the lot in their stroller, my son yells out, “daddy look, this car same like Tim’s.” Yes, he calls both of his Grandpa’s by their first names. As I started to look around for what caught his eye, I initially looked for a white car, maybe a two-door sports car, or a convertible. Something with what I would classify as obvious similarities to the white Porsche Boxster. After seeing no cars with any of these qualities, I asked Teigan to point out the car that sparked his interest. To my surprise he points directly at a dark blue Porsche Panamera. For anyone not familiar with the Porsche lineup, the Panamera is considered a full-size, four-door luxury sedan. A completely different class then Tim’s white convertible roadster. Being caught off guard to my son’s brand recognition, I had to clarify if there was something to this or if it was just a random coincidence. I asked him why the car looked like Grandpa Tim’s. His answer, “same logo daddy.” Wow, a two-year-old with a small but growing vocabulary was already speaking a visual language and experiencing brand recognition through of the Porsche logo.

Considering the car’s were complete opposite in size, color and class, I figured the my son’s recognition of Porsche rested solely with the logo. Sure, I can distinguish the design consistency across the Porsche lineup, but could a toddler? Back home in San Diego, I was out on an evening run with Teigan in-tow when he shouts yet again, “daddy look, this car same like Tim’s.” Seeing his little finger pointing towards the road and the car that was flying by us, I couldn’t believe what I saw. Not a Boxster, not a Panamera, but a Porsche Cayenne, their SUV! Keep in mind the Cayenne was zooming by at about 50mph, so clearly it was not the Porsche logo that caught his eye, but the Porsche styling. I was stunned, and immediately sent a text to Grandpa Tim sharing the news that Teigan was officially a Porsche enthusiast.

Without design consistency across the Porsche brand, the Boxster, Panamera, and Cayenne would have been just any old cars to Teigan. But because of the unique, highly stylized design qualities that Porsche carriers across their model line up, Teigan was able to build a strong brand recognition and a particular liking to Porsche. What started with an interest in a single model, the Boxster S, lead to his appreciation of the Porsche logo, and ultimately to his attraction and understanding of the visual qualities across the Porsche lineup. Thus creating brand recognition based solely on design consistency alone.

So, what does this mean to brands and designers looking to create a widely recognized brand? It’s rather simple. Create a style, a look-and-feel, and apply it with strict guidelines across all touch points. And if a toddler can distinguish your products as part of the same family, there’s no doubt your target audience will as well.

Jacob Tyler | San Diego Advertising Agency

Designing Our Life Experiences

Have you ever really thought about how design influences your everyday actions? Most of the time, we’re unaware of the subtle visual queues that guide our daily lives. Whether it’s strategically placed road signs on the freeway, color-coded packaging or the product flow of a supermarket, design is all around us, influencing our thoughts and behaviors. In many cases, a simple design can make a huge logistical difference. Take, for instance, University of Phoenix stadium in Glendale, Arizona – host of this year’s Super Bowl. The stadium has five main sections of seating around the perimeter. Instead of using three-digit numbers like most stadiums, University of Phoenix Stadium uses the numbers 1-5. Outside of each section, a 30-foot high corresponding number directs visitors to their section. Once inside, visitors are guided to their seats in a similarly linear fashion. It’s an easy design that that dramatically improves game day logistics.

Package design influences behavior too – like the nutrition labels on our food. As any aspiring dieter knows, the standard US nutrition label can be more than a bit confusing. As people become increasingly aware of their food choices, nutrition labels have become a point of contention for many nutritionists and doctors. But according to psychologists Peter Helfer and Thomas Shultz of McGill University in Montreal, there may be a better way to label our food. In a recent issue of the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, they argue that a simple one-number label called “NuVal” might be a better way to go. In their study, the pair compared the traditional nutrition label with two alternatives: a “traffic light” style design and the new, single-summary “NuVal” design. Both the traffic light and NuVal designs outperformed traditional labeling. The study, which you can read more about here, is an interesting look into the way design influences our choices.

As we move further into the digital age, the concentration on intuitive, behavior-altering design has moved to the forefront. Mobile devices are a prime example of design in action. Steve Jobs famously believed that simple, gorgeous design was the basis of success for Apple’s products. He insisted that the inside of the iPhone – which the consumer would never see – be as visually effective as the outside, believing that whole design would drive ingenuity. Today, the design of that first iPhone – a short seven years ago – has not only influenced our behavior (who knew what a “swipe” was a decade ago?) but has bled into all of our digital designs, including responsive website design. As we increasingly blend our digital experience with our organic experience, digital design will be at the vanguard of creating designs that influence, simplify and guide our actions and decisions. For brands, design will guide how consumers interact with – and make decisions about – their products and services. Whether it’s a website, packaging or a brand’s physical location, design has an enormous impact on the success of its operation. Think about how your brand utilizes design. Are you guiding customers along their journey from prospect to evangelist? Fill out the form to the right, let’s talk.

Web Design by Jacob Tyler in San Diego

What’s Old is New: Miller Lite Goes Back to the Future With Re-Rebrand

Miller Lite, once America’s most popular lite beer, is going back to the future. Miller has redesigned – or rather recycled – its can design from the mid-70s in an effort to attract Millennial drinkers (ages 21-30) who prefer a “vintage” feel in their products of choice. The meteoric rise in sales of what was mostly a forgotten artifact beer – Pabst Blue Ribbon – amongst the hipster set proved a hypothesis that image has as much to do with taste as well, taste. In fact, Miller conducted taste tests with its new/old can, and found that people actually thought the beer tasted better than the “old” Miller Lite. The beer’s recipe, it should be noted, has not changed.

The can first launched as a part of a promotion with the movie Anchorman 2, set in 1979. Reception was so positive that Miller made the can permanent. Though the company remains behind Bud Light and Coors Light in light beer sales, the results have shown promise.

With the recent surge of craft and microbrew beer carving out a significant portion of the beer market, the large-scale, traditional breweries, like Miller and Budweiser, have had to get creative with new products and brands to stay relevant. Miller Lite’s re-brand is a great example of this. The new can design won’t make Miller into a microbrew, but it can create the kind of nostalgia that masks what many Millennials view as a mass-produced, “corporate” brand.

Miller’s marketing history, dating back to 1973, is an interesting study in in the life of a brand. Selling essentially the same product for 40 years, Miller has sold their beer in a variety of different ways using a variety of techniques. In the following article, Ian Crouch of the New Yorker takes a look at Miller’s past, present – and past again: http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/miller-tyme.

Rebranding by Jacob Tyler in San Diego

Rebranding NASA

In the following article, Fast Company contributor Susan Karlin details NASA’s rebirth by rebranding. Just a few short years ago; America’s space program seemed in tatters. In 2011, NASA was preparing for the final flight of its Space Shuttle program to little fanfare. Despite 30 years of incredible advancements in space exploration, public interest had waned. Perhaps because the shuttle itself, once a futuristic-looking space vehicle, hadn’t changed its exterior design in 30 years and now looked less modern than every car on the roads of America. Perhaps because the Shuttle missions had become – as far as the general public was concerned – little more than a shipping operation for the International Space Station.

As NASA’s funding dwindled, new competition from the private sector – including companies like Space-X – began to command more attention. After 30 years and five Space Shuttles (two of which, Challenger and Columbia, ended in tragedy) NASA seemed like yesterday’s news. Of course, the folks at NASA weren’t sitting around in an empty warehouse, wondering what to do next. A decades-in-the-making plan to eventually send a manned space flight to Mars was taking shape, and soon, the public would start to take interest in the famed agency once again. But it wasn’t just the mission to Mars or the recent landing of a probe on an asteroid that piqued the public’s interest. NASA conducted a conscious rebranding of itself, utilizing emerging media technology – including a robust social media campaign – to connect people to the adventure of space exploration in a way never seen before.

Astronauts tweet from the International Space Station. NASA scientists sit on panels at San Diego’s own Comic-Con. The agency has even redesigned their mission control room to look more futuristic and “Sci-Fi.” NASA’s rebranding is an amazing success story, and you can read about it in-depth in Karlin’s fantastic article here.