Branding the Lab

We finally fell in love with a brand and a theme for Inspiredology. The past 2 versions featured a lot of paper/grunge textures and polar bears. It never really had a solid brand, this time around we really sat on some ideas until we came up with the Science/Design lab theme. We agreed that our tag line “Design inspiration lab”, really worked and we decided to keep our logo simple and legible.

Illustrating the Lab

I hope we can all agree that our design lab wouldn’t be a lab without the awesome illustration done by fellow Canadian Mathieu Beaulieu. We knew we wanted something to blow people away, and in working with our design lab brand, we were fortunate to work with Mathieu on the illustration. He did an outstanding job recreating Andrew and myself, not only that but he really set the mood and environment of the lab. We will have a post on how he came up with the illustration in the next few weeks, so be sure to subscribe to our feed to stay updated.

Designing the Lab

Everything was designed based on our lab illustration – we decided on a colour scheme and once the illustration was completed – we worked our way down the site. We didn’t want to change the layout from the old site, so we kept the 2 column layout with the sidebar on the right.

We think it’s easier to scan through the posts with updated typography, post details and more obvious buttons. We added a more custom share menu that is located at the top and bottom of the posts. Our author section has more details and hopefully gives more attention to our authors. We currently have 37 authors and we are constantly looking for more.

What’s New

New Menu

We have reorganized our categories to better suit our site topics, we put the category navigation at the very top of the site so it’s super easy to navigate with the Suckerfish on roids menu.

Design Newz

We also partnered with Design Newz to feature more community content in the Design Newz Widget. This sparked the conversation on whether we would offer a community news section this time around. The thought was that it would just be recycled content that is submitted to Design Newz, DesignBump and other aggregation sites.

New Comment Area

The comment area has been redesigned as well, we wanted to have more discussions on Inspiredology so we completely revamped the comments, separating comments from trackbacks, alternating styles, author styles and added a comment sidebar that would display related posts and a twitter feed. Trackbacks are hidden in a show/hide toggle switch. We really hope the comment area is more inviting and that we can have some good discussions.

Experimenting with CSS3

It wouldn’t be a lab if we didn’t experiment with new chemicals, equations, languages. We do suggest viewing Inspiredology in a CSS3 compatible browser to get the full experience. We thought it would be a good time to experiment with CSS3 as we hope the design is here to stay and CSS3 will only be getting more accessible.

Getting Help

With the new design, we wanted to create something really special, and we knew it would be better if we brought more people to help us create the new environment. We made it a part of the project to collaborate with other designers and developers. As you already know Mathieu did our awesome illustration, we also had the privilege to work with Gilbert Pellegrom, and Matt French. Without the help of these 3 talented people, The Lab wouldn’t be what it is today, so please help us thank them.

Why did this take so long?

Some of you might remember us talking about this in December 09. Our original plan was to launch on our second birthday, obviously that didn’t happen.

For a few reasons, I had recently brought Andrew on to help with posting, and daily tasks to help run Inspiredology. Not only that but we started working on a few new projects that we wanted to introduce. One being Projekt19 which we launched a few months ago. With the launch of that site we have been crazy busy with client work, collaborations and of course posting on Inspiredology. Not only that but this time we wanted to really take our time, and figure out the blog and how we wanted to move forward with it.

Inspiredology through the years

Inspiredology is 2.5+ years old and this will be the third design. I designed the first theme in one night, and it was my first wordpress site, as you can tell by my design I was much younger back then, still learning and experimenting. After the first year – I started to treat the blog more seriously, with the second design, it was much more structured, organized had more user friendly posts and ability to read other posts.

With version 3 I feel that we have finally found a brand/theme for our blog. The layout hasn’t changed much from V2, as we are introducing a whole new design, but we didn’t want you to feel lost with the content. Content is king and we didn’t want to mess with the way you read/scan the content.

Looking ahead

We will be adding some awesome new features in the next coming weeks, that didn’t make the initial launch date. We will also be looking for feedback from you on bugs, browser issues, and new ideas you might have.

We would like to thank everyone that has helped Inspiredology be the blog it is today, please help spread the word, tweet, digg, bump,  anything that you can do to help spread the word of our new design would be greatly appreciated.

In the next week or so we will be posting some really good content, and possibly our best giveaway ever, so subscribe to our feed to stay updated.

Post any feedback you have in our comments, we want to hear what you have to think.

What’s the Deal?

Today, we would like to officially announce the launch of our new company and website.

Projekt19 is a very personal project that we have been working on for over a year. We started the idea because we wanted to change the brand of ourselves. We were independent freelance designers branded as Chad Mueller and Andrew Dertinger. It only made sense that if we teamed up and forged our skills under Projekt19 we would offer more value to our customers. Not only that but Projekt19 will also be the home of creative projects and ventures similar to Inspiredology.

Company Goals

Client Work

• Website Design
• Custom Blog Design
• Logo Design and Business Card Design
• Social Media Strategies
• View more services

Creative Projects

This is the exciting part of the company, we will be creating some fun new project collaborations with top notch designers and internet entrepreneurs. We’re very excited about some of the new things on the way, and we hope to include all of you in the process, so stay tuned!

Projekt19 Wallpapers

We have created some simple Projekt19 Wallpapers for you to sexify your desktop, iPhone and the iPad. Download them here.

Help Spread the Word!

• Check us out at: www.projekt19.com
• The Projekt19 Blog: http://projekt19.com/blog/
• Follow Us on Twitter: @projekt19

Thank You

We also want to thank everyone who has helped us get to this launching point for Projekt19. It has been a long time coming and we really appreciate all the support we have received from our online community, friends and family.

Redesign

The Inspiredology redesign was delayed, our original deadline was for March. We have our main illustration elements finished, thanks to Mathieu Beaulieu – you will see his incredible work very soon. We are also working with Matt French on our mock-up and design of the new theme. We are brainstorming on how much we want to change, and what we want to keep on the original site.

This time around we are looking to create a blog that has a good sense of it’s brand, and target market. We hope this design is going to stick it through and help build us a great brand.

Guest Writers

Yet again, I bring up the ongoing request for Guest Writers. Inspiredology is always looking for guest writers – as most blogs, content is king, and we want content. We have had about 25 guest writers in the past, and we are always looking for more. In the future we are looking at giving more exposure to guest writers, we can’t provide monetary values, but we want to give as much exposure to our writers as we can. We are proud of our writers, and we are here to help give everybody a chance to get their name out there.

Advertisers

You may have noticed that our advertising spaces have changed quite a bit over the past few months. We have had a few advertisers drop their spots, and we have been filing them with more event-oriented ads. Like most blogs – advertising helps pay the bills (hosting, maintenance, time) so we are looking at new ways to help advertisers get the most value for their placements.

Events & Networking

My biggest goal for this year was to start attending more events and start networking more. Thanks to Andrew for getting us involved in local events like TwestivalTO, WordCampTO, FITC and hopefully NXNE coming up this summer. The events have given us a chance to meet some great people, and meet some of our readers. So if you know of any events, let us know we would love to help promote it and possible attend the event.

Super Secret Projekt

We have been working on our new company website. It’s our design company site which will showcase our design work, and services. Not only that – but it will be home to all our creative projects like Inspiredology. We are working on collaborations with some great designers and bloggers to put out more fun projects. We will be post more information on this in the near future.

What’s next

This week, we will have our final recap of FITC, and in the next coming weeks, be sure to subscribe to our feed and follow us on twitter chadMueller, dertmobile. We will be posting site updates and posting about our super secret projekts coming up.

*Before you comment that we spelled Projekt wrong (there I go I did it again). In the next week or two you will find out why we spelled it that way. Very exciting time right now – can’t wait to unleash our new projekts to you guys.

Twestival Toronto will join hundreds of cities around the world in using social media for social good. We cordially invite you to an exciting new event on March 25, after raising $16,000 with the help of over 700 Torontonians last year.

Join your community offline to rally behind the important cause of education for @Concern. This is an issue that involves many different elements: hunger, water, teacher training, building of schools, etc. Organized 100% by volunteers, we ensure 100% of all tickets and sponsorships go directly to projects. Tweet. Meet. Give.

The Event is taking place at Tryst Nightclub ( @trystnightclub )

This will be the first local event that Chad and I will have the pleasure of being a part of in the Toronto Social Media scene and we are very excited to become involved in the great community here.

We will both be tweeting from the event so be sure to follow us ( @dertmobile , @chadmueller ) to jump into the conversation!

Not From Toronto? No Problem!

Visit the Concern.org website to see if there is a Twestival event taking place near you, or for more information about the great cause.

The Sophomore Season

Looking back on last years birthday post, I wanted to compare the stats and see how much Inspiredology has grown. We didn’t reach some of the goals we wanted to but we surpassed the majority of them. This year Inspiredology has expanded in followers, daily visitors and new niche groups.

Bringing Andrew on board this year has really helped me in organizing the blog better and has also helped push out more content. Last year we had 96 posts, since then we have posted 156 new articles… WOW that is awesome. We can’t take all the credit though, this year Inspiredology also opened it’s doors to guest authors as well. And this is something we are going to be encouraging in 2010, we want to keep Inspiredology dynamic, and we want other opinions on here.

I believe the blog world is becoming over saturated with more and more blogs being created each day. I think some people should think about guest posting instead of starting their own blog. Every large blog is looking for guest authors and some guest authors become more popular by writing in different communities.

Not only did we have more content, but we have more of an active community with over 3000 comments this year – a huge plus compared to our first year of 1000. I must applaud all of you for that.

Inspiredology by the Numbers

156 Posts

3213 Approved Comments

945,694 Visits

1,637,004 Pageviews

78% Bounce Rate

1:28 Average time on site

3316 Subscribers

1710 Followers (chadMueller and dertMobile combined)

208 Countries

Most Popular Posts

31 National Geographic Photos

Cool Business Cards

Alfred Hitchcock Vanity Fair Photoshoot

42 Twitter Backgrounds

Inspiredology 2010

Enough about the past let’s talk about the future, yes Inspiredology will be getting another face-lift. This will be the third design of the site, and we are really taking our time and making sure this one really sticks. We haven’t really created the blog layout we really wanted yet, so we are working around the clock on this one. We are also working with a very talented illustrator Mathieu Beaulieu on the new site. So follow me on twitter as I will be tweeting some screens for you as we move forward.

Take the Survey!

For helping us out, we would like to offer you a chance to win a set of 50 cards from Squizcards.com. You should remember we just did a giveaway with SquizCards.com recently. So head over here, fill out the survey and you will be automatically entered into the draw.

If you could also help spread the word in any way you can, we would greatly appreciate it.

RT “I helped influence the design of Inspiredology, You can too – http://href.in/2i69vk“

For those of you who are not familiar with Concept Feedback let me give you a quick rundown of what it’s all about.
I think I speak for a large majority of the Inspiredology community in saying that I constantly come up with GREAT website ideas, design concepts and start up ideas. But I wonder, are these ideas actually great, or have i somehow convinced myself into thinking they’re great? Well wonder no more thanks to Concept Feedback. Once joining the site (for free) the site offers you a platform to pitch and showcase your new idea or design to the community of designers and creative minds to help you work out a final result, or in some unfortunate cases ditch a project (for the best of course).

And now for all you visual people out there, here is a bit of the process:

The Concept

Here you can see how the pitch is launched. You give the community your basic info about the project.

Imagine Great Concept Idea Here

The Feedback

The community then comes and offers their opinions and rates your concept.

You then have a chance to comeback and reply to their comment, to have a bit of a conversation.

I would definitely recommend that you go visit the site! Go ahead and post that concept you have been thinking about for months, or rate and help other designers out there on their projects. Designers united we stand …well that might be a bit much, none-the-less check the site out! www.conceptfeedback.com

We are looking for some bloggers to help take Inspiredology to the next level. Inspiredology has had a great 2009 thus far, we have a steady growth of visitors and subscribers.

We are looking for bloggers who enjoy the Inspiredology community, being creative and love the web. We are open to publishing some posts that haven’t been explored yet ie: tutorials, development, photography.

We are looking for long term contributors that will lead in to huge exposure for yourself.

If you have fun creating quality and creative posts, this might be for you.

If you are interested, please email me at muellerchad[at]gmail.com. If you have been looking to get into the blog industry, this is your first step.

These are the problems ProofHQ claims to solve for designers and clients by enabling web-based design collaboration, proofing and approval. Like lots of online apps ProofHQ says that it saves designers time, reduces costs and increase margins. In the current economy that could be a real benefit if it works, so let’s take a look.

Creating a proof

Using a simple web interface, a new proof is uploaded and can be assigned to a specific client and workspace. Permitted file formats include PDF, PSD, JPG, BMP, PNG, TIFF, DOC, PPT and XLS.

Clients are entered by email address, and are emailed with a custom message and a personal link to the proof. Sure beats emailing large files or sending download links – which raises another feature of ProofHQ. ProofHQ can be used to simply send large files without creating a proof. Just about any file type is permitted, including ZIP. A great way to send print-ready artwork to the print shop, or even send code to developers.

Design feedback

This is where things really get interesting. Clients receive an email and open the proof with just one click.  Clients don’t need any native apps as everything happens in the browser. Once the proof is opened clients can start adding comments, asking questions and marking-up the proof. The drawing tools are very easy to use, although I would have like to see a simple text tool and some more shapes. I really appreciated being able to put a URL in the comments and link to other web pages. Attaching a file to a comment would be useful though.

In the example below, a comment has been added asking whether the can be lightened in a specific area. This comment was created by using the box tool to draw a box around the area and a comment was entered. On the example you’ll notice two other comments – one indicated with an arrow, and the other indicated with another box. Comments are displayed by clicking on the mark-up (in this case a box or arrow), or on one of the comments listed in the sidebar on the left (hidden in this screenshot).

Design collaboration

Comments that have been added to a proof can be seen by everyone with access to the proof. It’s easy to respond to someone else’s comments, creating a threaded discussion which is anchored to a particular feature of the design. This quickly removes ambiguity between different reviewers and the designer. For me this is one of the most powerful uses of ProofHQ, as all team members can see exactly what everyone else has said and join in the discussion.

At the end of the discussion the proof owner can set an “action” for the comment, such as “ignore” or “please make change”. I didn’t quite figure out how I would use this feature as I work directly with my clients, but I guessed that it is used when the process in managed by a project manager who needs to let a designer know what to do with each comment.

Designers can print out a To Do list of comments which shows clearly each comment thread. This is a fairly simple feature, but one that I personally found most useful. It would also have been helpful to have a view of each page showing all comments as well.

Versions

In the real world very few design jobs get approved without at least one revision and ProofHQ seems to understand that well.  New versions of the proof can be created, which then starts another round of discussion. Reviewers can easily move between versions for comparison and can even compare two versions side-by-side to check visually that change requests have been implemented. Once reviewers are satisfied, they approve the proof which informs the designer their client has approved the modifications and the project can proceed.

Integration

Another recently added feature, and one I find particularly useful for collaborating publicly on redesigns, is embedding proofs in blogs and wikis. Using simple embed code (as easy as embedding a YouTube video), a proof is embedded on a static website, blog post or wiki page. This allows public viewers to zoom, pan, view existing comments and move from page to page. Such a facility is incredibly handy for facilitating public review of upcoming website redesigns, such as the much publicized Facebook profile redesign. For websites and social networks striving to harness public trust and collate feedback, embedding ProofHQ proofs and calling for comments is an efficient way to present versions, collect feedback and demonstrate transparency – all in one place. Neat.

ProofHQ uses the embed code to integrate with Basecamp, but I don’t use Basecamp so couldn’t test this. It would be nice to see integration with some other project management tools, as Basecamp is not the only project management app out there.

Getting super efficient

Dubbed the ‘Uploadr‘, ProofHQ’s desktop uploader for Mac and PC can be used to efficiently upload files up to a ginormous 75MB. Using a simple interface, designers can drag a new proof onto the Uploadr, enter the usual proof details and the proof uploads in the background, allowing designers to continue on with their work. Once uploaded, reviewers will be automatically notified by email. Sweet huh?

ProofHQ and the project cycle

So ProofHQ does seem to deliver hat it promises. I was quickly able to improve feedback, version control and approval with my clients and even used ProofHQ as a sales tool when I pitched to new clients.

The biggest challenge is probably getting clients to use something new. My tech savvy clients loved ProofHQ from the first time they used it. They said that the app was dead easy to use. One less technical client needed a five-minute run through first. Having said that, the investment of those five minutes saved a whole round of revisions on that project and probably saved me and the client about two hours the same day.

Pricing Plans

ProofHQ offers a 14 day trial on all plans.  There is a free plan with some functions restricted and then paid plans that increase in price based on the number of proofs that you use each month.  There are unlimited workspaces and reviewers, which is cool for me as I often have over twenty active projects open at one time.

One concern that I had is that this is yet another monthly subscription and the cost mounts up. However, this is one app where I could directly link time savings to use, so it was easy to justify.

What do you do?

Many designers are still using email to manage their proofing process. How do you currently do it? Email? FTP? Online? Please let us know in the comments.

Review Written By Andy Howard

Andy Howard is a designer, digital strategist and UX consultant based in Australia, currently traveling and working around the world.

Scion Presents: the Freshly Squeezed Web Design Challenge

In its mission to advocate community outreach and foster creativity in the younger generation, SCION now joins forces with Cut & Paste in the FRESHLY SQUEEZED Web Design Challenge (“Contest”). The website design competition will benefit J.U.i.C.E., a nonprofit weekly after-school program that allows the underprivileged youth of Los Angeles to express themselves artistically through dance, music, visual arts, and MC skills workshops.

So please head on over - be creative and submit something. The deadline is May 8th, so we only have 1 week today. I have compiled a few designs sitting in the gallery already – so if you think you can do better.. then step up to the challenge.