Communiqué

Tough question. Two answers this morning.

First up is Joshua Porter, a web designer who happens to be here in our home town of Newburyport:

... as a web designer, there is no analog to “look at this logo and see how it stands for a company”. That’s relatively easy for graphic designers because we can quickly appreciate the way a logo graphically depicts some attribute of the company: “solid, blue, Big Blue, trustworthy”. Even if we don’t like the company or if its never done anything good for us, we can make this judgment of the design of the logo.

But in web design, we can’t pass such sophisticated judgment on a design without having an actual experience with the web application itself. Without actually experiencing the value first-hand, we can’t look at a web site and say “hey, that web site is well designed because it represents the company well”. This is the primary disconnect when talking about judging great web design. You’ve got to experience it in a real way to know if it is great.

Read the full discussion in his blog: Do Canonical Web Designs Exist?

Second is one of A List Apart's two articles this month, by Jeffrey Zeldman. Again I'll excerpt waht I consider to be a key section:

Web design is not book design, it is not poster design, it is not illustration, and the highest achievements of those disciplines are not what web design aims for. Although websites can be delivery systems for games and videos, and although those delivery systems can be lovely to look at, such sites are exemplars of game design and video storytelling, not of web design. So what is web design?

Web design is the creation of digital environments that facilitate and encourage human activity; reflect or adapt to individual voices and content; and change gracefully over time while always retaining their identity.

Read Zeldman's article Understanding Web Design at ALA.

So... Good web design isn't static. It is the experience of using a design — which is really a system — that reveals whether it is good.

Hello. Glad you could make it!

This will be a small rundown on the process we went through to make the ad we put together super-fast for the big MITX event!

Now, before we get down to the dirty goodness - one note: Karin Klapak, if you're reading this - "I'm Sorry". I know I promised I wouldnt put you up on the web, but - meh, there's 2 floors between us and I can always escape through a window.

That said, Our LOVELY Karin and the almighty Nick allowed me to pose them in our new "mock" cologne ad. We wanted to do something really quick without compromising originality - something hot for the people. So we knew we had no time - thus we quickly put up a black sheet, used a couple available desk lamps and OFF WE WENT. Here's a few snapshots and notes on what I went through!


We had these two hot potatoes get dressed into somethin' sexy. Next thing you know - BAM! Poses on a chair! awweessommmeee. I took two of Karin and merged them into the same photo.



So then things went freaky and everyone turned black and white. odd....Anyways, then I blacked out some tough to crop areas (like the fantastic aura around Karins head).



Here i transformed our duo down to a smaller size and then did that really annoying and overly used "shadow/highlights" manipulation that you see in way to many fashion shots today......moving on.



In this step I masked out the background, aaannndd there they are... just......floating there.



This is step 5 and its awesome. I created hardly-noticeable highlights around there bodies with the airbrush (move along to step 6).



Ha. Just kidding...



Here I took a texture of concrete I had and transformed it in relation to the photos perspective.



Added a little mood lighting.....kinky, yes.



Another photo was taken of some stage lighting, then converted to black/white. I then blended the two backgrounds.



OK the tough part. We took photos of cologne bottles and added in some iMarc-Green lighting.....buttt its not done yet!



...a little LUMINANCE glowwww....



...andd a little highlight additions to Nick and Karin, followed by some bottle reflections on the ground. Anndd thheeennnn.......



...some text! We finalize our photo with some light dodging and burning. Once completed, grab yourself a damn Corona cuz this job iz DUN.

A Little Bigger For ya...

Thanks, see you again soon! ;)

Radiohead, having finally gotten free of its record label contract, has done an interesting experiment in music distribution. They've forgone the traditional distribution channels -- which now includes the iTunes Store, by the way -- in favor of selling their music directly on their web site.

And when I say sell, I don't mean they set a price. They let fans download the album and choose their own price, paying as much or as little as they think it's worth.

On average, this is amount is $2.26.

Gosh, how can a band make a living at $2.26 per album?

Potentially pretty well.

In the US, artists make about $1.00 per physical CD sold -- that's right, a buck. Even less for download formats such as the iTunes Store. The other 90% is split between the retailer and the record label.

Selling directly, at a fifth to a sixth of the retail price of a CD, Radiohead is realizing over twice the revenue per album.


No wonder the music industry is so terrified of digital distribution.

Response to a help request I sent regarding an order i placed:

"The customer service team has received your email and a new ticket has been created. Your ticket ID is BDM-92077-567. You will receive a reply to your email within 5-7 days."

Cool. Talk to you next week, jerks.

iMarc went to the MITX Awards last night. It was an awesome time, despite having to sit next to Dan.

Following the show attendees were invited to an after-party at 711 Bistro & Lounge, a very cool Lounge/Sushi Bar on Boylston st.

The bar was consistently backed up, and it took about a half hour of leaning on it to get a drink, so I found myself shoulder-to-shoulder with other nerds-in-suits for the better part of the evening.

At one point I started commiserating about the queue with a guy next to me, and it evolved into one of those "I'm [name], I work for [company], and I do [work]". He was an Art Director, which involved lots of managing a team of twenty, and all the excitement involved in that. I found it pretty interesting, because here I generally work within a team of three: project manager (the insightful Dave Tufts), graphic designer (the gifted Christian Keyes) and developer (the happy-to-be-employed Patrick McPhail); our process wouldn't work with 17 other people. After all, you can only fit so much beer in the fridge.

So I grilled him a for a few minutes on his responsibilities at work, just narrowly avoiding insinuating that he delegated all of the real work to his employees while taking all the credit for himself, which I'm sure is not the case. Probably.

When he turned the tables and asked what I did, I went a little overboard and told him everything that I do:

“Oh, I'm a developer, I build websites.”

He laughed (gaily) because to him it was a meaningless answer; I mean gosh, almost everyone at the bar built websites in some capacity.

Well, I'm not a javascript interface designer, a CSS implementation specialist, a PSQL database architect or a back-end PHP programmer; I'm all those things, and so are the rest of the developers at iMarc.

We're iMarc, we build websites

We were asked to make a 90 second video for the rock star themed 2007 MITX Awards.

Last night at the show, our video had its premiere in front of some of the industries biggest talent and most powerful corporations. Here's what we came up with:

Following last week's grading of Democratic presidential candidates' websites, here's a report card on the Republican candidates' websites.

Again, I'll cut right to the chase...

The Winners

Ron Paul & Rudy Giuliani had the highest ranking websites, followed by Fred Thumpson, Mike Huckabee, and Duncan Hunter.

In the report card for Democratic candidates, the winner was Joe Biden with 4 points. Ron Paul and Rudy Giuliani tied to lead Republicans with 8 points. Ron Paul is the only candidate in either party who implements valid HTML on his homepage.

And now for the details...

Read More

Not many internet companies have been in business since November, 1997. iMarc has not only been in business for ten years, but we've grown steadily throughout.

We're old. We're wise. We're stable.

Like those embarrassing photos from your awkward teenage years, we're happy to share embarrassing old versions of our website. Yes, in 1997 and 1998 we were really into neon green.

Check out our portfolio or choose us for you next project

iMarc just remodeled our bathrooms. New toilets, new sinks, wainscoting, lights – we went all out. One feature we added was a coat hanger on the door to hang your coat, bag, or purse while you do your thing. In our purple bathroom the coat hanger seems to stick out about 10 inches.

Fine photography courtesy of Christian Keyes

After bumping my head on this shiny coat hanger for the third time, I decided to poll other office workers. The results were astounding!

In general, web programmers/developers bump their heads, while designers and marketing folks don't. In the results below, highlighted names are developers.

What could explain this? Why do developers bump their heads?