I spent 45 minutes interviewing someone who does work for one of my clients last week-someone key to the marketing and sales of the client's product. I reminded me that, instead of talking to folks up and down the process only occasionally, that I should be doing it on a regular basis. It's too easy to make assumptions about the nuance of marketing--to speculate instead of certify.

My new years resolution, as usual, is to talk less and listen more.

I wish you a happy, prosperous 2015.

Chuck

I am enthralled with the design of MailOnline, the world's most popular online newspaper website. It was designed by London based creative agency Brand42 for Associated Newspapers Ltd, is part of the Daily Mail, and is said to have generated revenues over 90 million dollars in 2014.

The Design Business Association (UK) annually presents the Design Effectiveness Awards using commercial data as a key judging criteria. MailOnline was the recipient of its top prize in 2013, the Gold, Grand Prix Award.

Below is a look at the site and insights from a case study published as part of the Design Effectiveness Awards. Clearly, key to the sites effectiveness are the long-form headlines and lead-ins, the bullet point summaries that precede each article, and the abundant illustrations and images.

Those mechanics, of course, are just supporting players to the real star of MailOnline, the tremendous amount of fascinating information written and aggregated by the newspaper's staff and its contributors.

Here's an article about the website from the DBA Design Effectiveness Awards, ...

Here > http://www.effectivedesign.org.uk/winners/2013/grand-prix/mailonline-website-redesign

A sample article...

Here > http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2890480/Would-ride-MIT-s-handmade-wooden-rollercoaster-Students-build-ride-incoming-freshmen-parents-relief-aren-t-allowed-loop.html

The Mail Online US Home page...

Here > http://www.dailymail.co.uk/ushome/index.html

The By the Numbers page-Mail Online website statistics...

Here > http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/stats/index.html

MailOnline: Designing a global success (2.9MB PDF)...

Here > http://www.effectivedesign.org.uk/sites/default/files/3.1.5%20MailOnline.pdf

The folks who designed the site are Brand42...

Here > http://brand42.co.uk/

That's part of what writer Oliver Burkeman lays out in this brilliant little piece about the creative process. He says, we should never, "take other people's facades as reliable evidence of what's going on within."

Nobody Knows What The Hell They Are Doing by Oliver Burkeman...

Here > http://99u.com/articles/32985/nobody-knows-what-the-hell-they-are-doing

Burkeman's blog is filled with equally interesting insights...

Here > http://www.oliverburkeman.com/

Burkeman's latest book is The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking...

Here > http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0865478015/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0865478015&linkCode=as2&tag=ideabookcomju-20&linkId=WZ4FRQG3R7FYFC6S

Back in the olden days (1970s), if you wanted to remove (for example) a telephone wire from a photograph of a building, you'd send a print of the photograph to a photo retoucher who would physically paint over the wire using an airbrush-exactly reproducing the background the wire was covering. By that I mean, if the wire was against the sky, they would reproduce the sky along the path of the wire, as if the wire were not there. Today, I use the Airbrush tool in Photoshop, but back then, we'd pay a specialist to airbrush the photograph.

What got me thinking back on airbrushing was an article from the Daily Mail about another photo retouching device (I have not heard of) called the Adams Retouching Machine.

And that got me thinking about some of the great airbrush artists, the one I most remember is Charlie White III (I've included a link to an example of his work below).

The article about the Adams Retouching Machine...

Here > http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2809555/The-Photoshop-1940s-70-year-old-vibrating-machine-retouched-negatives-using-pencil-airbrush.html

An example of old school airbrush art is the 1974 poster create by Charlie White III for Levi's...

Here > http://s3.amazonaws.com/static.modcult.org/mc/images/originals_2297-levis.jpeg

Charlie White's website...

Here > http://charliewhite3.com/bio/

The Airbrush Museum...

Here > http://www.airbrushmuseum.com/

Why discuss movies and visual effects on a blog that is primarily about graphic design? Because graphic design is about storytelling--and movies do storytelling in a way that people pay to see. To that end, here's a look at WIRED's Top 10 Special FX of 2014 via fxguide.com, a blog that covers the production, post, and visual effects industry...

WIRED's Top 10 Special FX of 2014...

Here > http://www.fxguide.com/quicktakes/the-top-10-effects-of-2014/

The fxguide.com home page...

Here > http://www.fxguide.com/

Watch how designer and neurobiologist Eleanor Lutz shows and tells how the human body works.

Thanks to Wendy Kalman for pointing us to it.

Example 1: A User's Guide To the Human Body: The Muscle Edition...

Here > http://tabletopwhale.com/2014/08/12/a-users-guide-to-muscles.html

Example 2: 3 Different Ways To Breathe...

Here > http://tabletopwhale.com/2014/10/24/3-different-ways-to-breathe.html

Example 3: How To Build a Human...

Here > http://tabletopwhale.com/2014/12/16/how-to-build-a-human.html

Tabletop Whale's guide to making GIFs...

Here > http://tabletopwhale.com/2014/11/03/how-to-make-an-animated-infographic.html

The idea is simple. Modifying a well-designed template is far easier than starting from scratch. My InDesign Ideabook includes 315 researched, designed, and meticulously formatted documents in a clean, simple style that it easy to build on.

The Ideabook lets you breeze through time-consuming document setup and get right to the important stuff. Instead of spending 15 minutes to create a simple layout, you'll spend 15 seconds. For complex projects-books, newsletters, catalogs, reports-you'll save HOURS.

"If you need to create winning design and your time is important to you, there is no better investment than Chuck Green's Idea Book. I write copy and create marketing materials for small business, and Chuck's world class layouts have me up and running in minutes instead of hours. I can't recommend this book enough!" Kory Basaraba, Copywriter and Consultant, Calgary, Alberta, Canada

For Adobe InDesign

Here > http://www.ideabook.com/the_indesign_ideabook_59.html

For QuarkXPress

Here > http://www.ideabook.com/quarkxpress_templates.html

I NEVER sounded like this in art school. 

Well, probably a little. Thanks to Von Glitschka for pointing us to it.

Here > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8RW7_dsW5Y

PhotoShelter is a platform for marketing photography. But I think graphic designers will find some interesting ideas here as well. They are both, after all, about marketing visual ideas.

Take a look at these three guides: to Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. I think you'll find some smart thinking that applies to both fields.

The Photographer's Guide to Twitter...

Here > http://www.photoshelter.com/resources/photographers-guide-to-twitter/

The Photographer's Guide to Facebook...

Here > http://www.photoshelter.com/resources/photographers-guide-to-facebook/

The Photographer's Guide to Instagram...

Here > http://www.photoshelter.com/resources/photographers-guide-to-instagram/

There's more where that came from. Check out PhotoShelter's other resources...

Here > http://www.photoshelter.com/resources

Or are these ads actually pretty wonderful. I remember reading about someone saying that the reader should look at an ad an ask themselves, "What's going on here?" I love to see more modern equivalents of this type of storytelling.

Example 1...

Here > https://www.flickr.com/photos/totallymystified/8505601427/sizes/l

Example 2...

Here > https://www.flickr.com/photos/totallymystified/14638655865/sizes/l/

Example 3...

Here > https://www.flickr.com/photos/totallymystified/8351937249/sizes/l

Thanks to TotallyMystified for posting this HUGE collection of vintage ads and illustrations of Flickr...