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It’s the last day of the year. Actually the last day of the decade. This post is a bit different than what you normally see on 10e20 (and definitely a lot shorter) but please bear with me :)
What do you want to accomplish in 2010? What will you change in 2010 and beyond? What are the changes that you want to see in our industry?
As 2009 rolls out and the new year comes in, we will see new ideas being born and some old ones leaving us. This is the circle of design life. What will be trendy in the new year? Why should it matter? 2010 doesn’t mean that all new trends in design will pop up; rather, it just might be that the current trends will slowly evolve. Here are some of my design predictions for the coming year.
From the entire crew at 10e20, we want to wish all of our colleagues, clients, blog readers, fans and friends a happy, healthy and safe holiday.
When do you stop creating and send your work out to face the public? Deadlines can be a motivating factor most of the time, but you can’t perpetuate the design process forever — sometimes you just have to trust that its wings are strong enough to fly. When working on a project like a new tool, a program, design, etc, you have to have a finish date or you’ll just keep tweaking and reshaping and second-guessing until infinity because there will always be new technologies, conventions or new opinions that shake the ground you built on.
Everyone can offer a coupon code or free shipping, but what about singling out certain groups of customers, such as your oldest members or your spendiest clientele? How can you reward your most loyal customers to make them feel as if they’re in a special group that sets them apart from everyone else? Here are some suggestions:
Maybe most recognizable from “The Man Show,” Adam Carolla recently set up a podcast (warning: can be explicit) in 2009 when his job as a radio personality was terminated in the spring due to a station format change. Before breaking into radio, Adam was a carpenter/boxing instructor, a blue collar worker. Over the span of around 10 months, Adam’s podcast has become a huge hit and has inked deals with CBS Radio and created his own network.
In the age of social media madness, you’ve probably been scrambling to sign up for various social networking profiles and have built a blog or forum for your website. You’re creating content, responding to your users and engaging with them, which is a huge part of what social media marketing is all about. But what about the community aspect? How engaged are your users with each other? Have you fostered an environment where people come to your site and want to come back again and again so they can not only interact with you and your brand, but with everyone else?
In wrapping up 2009, it’s good to assess our sites and projects by seeing what needs updating or revisions, like that copyright at the bottom of the page or those old holiday deals that need to be changed out. By thinking of your site or design as a living/changing thing, you can build on the story you have already created and demonstrate to your users that you have a good attention to detail.
Brand managers need to empower their brand loyalists with the right destinations, experience, tools and content in social media. When brands neglect to participate in social media, they miss a major opportunity for awareness and ultimately sales. The more touch points and positive experiences that you provide your loyalists, the greater the opportunity for positive word of mouth and content to spread about your brand.
I’ve come up with a lot of content and link bait ideas for clients in the past few years. Most of the time they’re excited about the ideas, but every once in a while I’ll run into a client who is nervous or doubtful about the content I’m proposing. Most of the time they’re unsure of how appropriate the tone of the piece is, and it can often be difficult to let go of an idea that you know will do well virally. Other times they’re worried that their CMS can’t handle something as substantive as an infographic or other complex piece of content. Below I’ve outlined some suggestions on how to get your client on board with your content suggestions. Trust me, it’s much better to have your client on your side when it comes to content — if you can’t convince your client that a piece will do well, you’ll almost certainly run into roadblocks and failure down the road.
