Becoming a team player, and getting used to working under different circumstances, I have learned how to value design at the full business level. I don’t subscribe to top down, or bottom up. If each person involved is not being heard, then the experience suffers.

In business, how often does everyone work together to make their work careers the most enjoyable for themselves?

In business, how often does everyone work together to make their workplace the most enjoyable place for everyone?

In business, how often does everyone work together on their careers to create the most memorable lives for each other?

You see what I did there? How do we layer our actions to create the best experience, and where is the balance? Every case is different, and deserves unique treatment.

Why are these words sounding so outdated: strategy, branding, messaging, communication, integrated marketing, programming? I think it is because these are the advertising words that have just begun to work as a language, and since they are not perfect, people keep evolving them, leaving the failed version behind, only to be reborn or mashed up later as another buzzword.

The word I made up, detasign combines details, data, sign, and design. I don’t know what it means, but it captures a few things that might evolve into a stratunication.

This year I have mostly been customizing WordPress. With so much theme customizing over the past few years, it is certainly a little bit more difficult to get projects where I am creating the design from scratch. I am hoping to get ahead a bit, and actually create some themes from design is casual. Count on the themes from design is casual to incorporate some of the latest technology and create new, uninterrupted experiences. Experiences to hang out with the other experiences not comfortable being left behind, settling for generic.

Some business do not budget for advertising. This is unfortunate, because that is where some of the website dollars come from. Innovative research, pushing the limits, all good Samaritan things to do for free, but would benefit anyone who invests.

The web breaks down into what I consider to be three main areas, which relate to other areas within the bigger strategy – relating to experience.

First, the web is many people and computers, and a site is your online presence, a nice looking and functioning site for your organized information.

Second, the web ranks your site amongst many others.

Third, the web likes to change to accommodate more business, building and visiting each others sites more often to the point where the flow of data is automated and invisible.

The experiences that satisfy these three things together really require constant investment. There must be a way to measure satisfaction by breaking free of the web norms. You will notice I did not say a website needs to have a navigation bar, or a site map, or any other generic element in it’s design, this is where we can break free, reinvent, and begin to fulfill the prerequisites toward a website.

In no particular order of importance: the award winning, the bragging, the profit making, the competing at the highest level, the disciplining, the saving of the environment, the nailing it. There is an endless supply of enjoyment, and too many people these days are finding too little of it. design is casual is here to help all of us find more of it.

communication is great, now here is a word to put toward a generation of ideas. comgendea.

Designed by what amounts to the entire staff of creative, critical, journalistic, and mostly video game and comic book fanatics, ourselves, along with the 4CR community. I came in during the rough cut, going through a few iterations of how to best cater to this community of discerning video gamers and bande dessinée appreciators. Over three years in the making, I helped in strategy, web design, css, html, WordPress theming, plugin customizing, and a few other things.

We really went all out, including some ajax, jquery ui, and social treats like open id and forum integration to satisfy the need for a clean simple, fun place to get a fix. Catch the latest news and releases. Purchase new games through the website’s own Amazon store, read and view videos of honest reviews and opinions, inside jokes, all while interacting with other members, voting on your favorite articles and increasing your own status to win prizes by uploading news stories and contributing comments. This website has it all and it has been fun to get into this community and I will be contributing and continue working with them on the next phase.

Below is a screenshot of the previous version. It was loved, I’m glad the redesign will accomodate the next exciting generation of 4 Color Rebellion.

Been checking out this image, Citadel, on CG Society, pretty cool. I like the fantasy mixed with realism. I especially like it as a still image, like I can just hang out here by the inn and wonder what all the people in the castle are doing.

Overall – When someone invests themselves in something, and spends a long time working with real resources, that is real.

How can you tell?

If you can tell an object, or product, or event took a while to design well, and seems there is no way to be further designed to make life better for both those creating it and experiencing it, including the big picture, then it is real. If someone uses real materials, they most likely understand the importance of balance and harmony related to those resources. Experience design incorporates all of these factors.

On the contrary, If it appears temporary, or like someone did not want to care enough about their customers. If the idea was to quickly get attention, or bring something to market without thinking through how to communicate, and maintain a good reputation, and earn return customers, then this is fake. I once heard someone say, “Nobody cares”, well this is an attitude and leads toward a very artificial world indeed.

Now, I would like to present a complexity:

Someone may spend a considerable amount of time working, by hand, so to speak, laboriously rationalizing a trend, to form the concept that a culture sometimes appreciates a rather artificial aesthetic over a genuine one, or more accurately, will overlook a misperceived faker solution, in favor of a misperceived real one. When someone recognizes the previously less dominant solution to be equally powerful, then there is potential to differentiate, simply by innovating by way of developing the newly recognized potential. There are times, for example, in much of contemporary thought, that have brought us to the conclusion it is not natural to hold two terms, in this case, fake and real, as signifiers of perceived value.

Where I am going with all this, is that we need to recognize a trick. I find it rather repulsive these days, to forget pondering the questions of is it real, is it fake, am I confortable with the intentions of a production? It is very discouraging to my heart if someone skips ahead to, “It doesn’t matter, no one can tell the difference.” Another reckless approach, “Let’s just do like what they did, it seems like a good model to follow.”

Pour cold water, about one press full, into a pot and bring to a boil.

Next, get a grinder and get good at grinding the grounds to the fineness of beach sand (not too fine, like dust, and not too coarse, like gravel) – pour into press container, it’s nice to get a little peak in the center once you go pro. This is where it is nice to smell the fresh grounds. mmmm that’s a refresher, and something you can’t always experience in the coffee shop as a customer.

Water should be boiling nicely for a few minutes, get past the nervous boil. Let water set for a little rest for 30 seconds. Pour water in a thin stream over grounds and wisk with a wooden spoon for a bit, then put on the press filter for three minutes. While you’re waiting, prepare your sweetenings and pull your creams out of the refridgerator. Finally, press down and ideally you will get some resistance of about 20 lbs of pressure. If not, your grounds were too coarse or too fine – too easy is too coarse, too hard to press = too fine of grounds.

Now that the coffee is ready to pour, this is where you doctor it up your own way. I like real raw honey on a spoon in the cup, pouring a nice steady slow stream, lifting the press a little further up from the cup, letting the steam flow. Then I stir in some organic heavy whipping cream.

This is fairly strong coffee, and if you love coffee, a great way to taste the full flavor of the coffee and the roast.

Enjoy the heightened experience while the coffee lasts. It is worth it to have fresh coffee while working on a creative project, catching up on news online, or updating your status. Pastries go well if you have prepared them in advance, or, amazingly, have a cup while making pastries, what a great strategy to have your coffee enhanced even more the next time around!

Let me know what you do to make your favorite coffee, and how do you enjoy it?

Hey, how many people specialize in marketing, financing, designing, developing, sales, customer support, and administration? How many people believe we all need to work together?

luxury enhancements contributing to an enjoyable morning – healthy organic materials in bed and sheets, laying comfortably for an extra amount of time, a strong immune system (no discomfort), bedroom feng shui, organic coffee complete with grinder and french press waiting in the kitchen, pjs and slippers near bedside.

A few potential discomforts – construction outside, non pleasant alarm clock, forced to get to work/go to class feeling.

Some varying effects – pets licking face, children needing attention, birds singing/crowing, presence of other people/privacy. Some people love to wake up for these reasons, some dont mind every now and then, and some dread, depending on the day.

Some factors that go into creating a waking experience – emotions, relationships, dreams, ritual, healing, rest, anticipation, shelter, space, responsibilities, discipline, temperature, materials.

essence sleeping – shelter, floor, mat, dream.
essence waking – cast away the mat, rise.

If things all work out, what is the best way of awakening into the day?

Her with layers, exposing some skin, determined but soft eyes, flowing hair, wearing a little jewelry, not shut up, but quietly contemplating, singing, casually conversing.

Perhaps an occasional cigarette, coffee, and gilato. Not surrounding a poem.

designer jeans, or wearing a dress, all fit, and nice shoes. Understanding, creating a poem.

maybe a frilly here and there. That’s it.

The world of web is as exciting as ever. Looks like adobe and apple are close to the fairly easy creation of an app on any platform and viewable on any device. An example would be creating with the flash platform for the flash player or air, iphone app, android app. This will be a fairly significant achievement, and will speed up the digital world a bit as these apps are easier to build and more and more people will be using them as india and china gets on the internet through their devices.

If anyone would like to experiment with this, let me know.

In the process of finishing work on a video game review website that incorporates a fair amount of community features. Lots of skinning and customizing themes and plugins.