We have brought you just the tool to measure and monitor brand engagement: for the first time ever, ENGAGEMENTdb ranks the world’s most valuable brands based on how they leverage social media to interact with customers.

Razorfish’s “digital outlook report 2009″ – http://www.razorfish.com/img/content/2009DOR.pdf

The following report contains statements that are forwardlooking, including expectations and predictions regarding future industry trends and developments. Actual results may differ materially from our expectations or projections. This report also contains opinions, estimates, and forwardlooking statements by industry leaders. Such statements are the personal opinions of the individuals quoted and should not be attributed to any other entity or individual. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance upon forward-looking statements, which speak only as to the date of this document. Except as required by law, neither Razorfish, LLC nor any of its affiliated entities undertake any obligation to update any forwardlooking or other statements in this document, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

© Razorfish, LLC. All rights reserved.

Razorfish’s “Fluent – The Social Influence Marketing Report” – http://fluent.razorfish.com/publication/?m=6540&l=1

I’m excited to announce the launch of Fluent, the Social Influence Marketing report from Razorfish. This is the first report of its kind which understands who and what influences consumers at different points in the marketing funnel.

The insights in this report are built on three pillars – a survey with 1,000 North American consumers, six months worth of real conversational data to frame the introduction of a new social index and the experiences of Razorfish Social Media Leads across the world who advise marketers in industry leading companies everyday.

The survey and conversational driven research also busts three myths about Social Influence Marketing.

1. That companies have figured out how to build their brands in social media. They haven’t. For example, six out of 10 consumers don’t bother to seek out opinions of brands via social media.

2. That television is dead. It isn’t. Consumers view TV ads as more trustworthy than ads on social networks. Marketers need to do more in the social realm, but they need to do it in a way that builds trust first. Brands don’t have the trust today.

3. That you cannot measure in the social web. Not only do campaign specific metrics matter and can be measured but we believe a SIM Score for the social web is extremely important. Think of it as the blood pressure for the brand in the social web. In the report, we introduce this index and show the SIM Scores of 5-6 brands in 4 industries. We also compare the online numbers to offline share of voice data to demonstrate how those two worlds are blurring.

Read Fluent, the Social Influence Marketing report and come back to the blog to share your thoughts, comments and criticisms. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be delving into the insights more deeply over here. And if you like the report, please tell others about it!

Why Craigslist Is Such a Mess
How Would You Redesign Craigslist? Suggest Your Own Makeover and Vote on Reader Contributions

The craigslist team isn’t interested in updating the site, so Wired asked leading designers to give it a user-interface lift.
Craigslist Today

Visitors arriving at craigslist are confronted by a confusing homepage cluttered with links most people will never click on. Overall, the user interface is in dire need of an organizing principle that guides you to the details you seek while filtering out extraneous information.

It’s hard to know even where to begin: Should you start your career search under Jobs or Gigs? The right side of the screen is devoted to an exhaustive list of cities and countries, although most users care about only the one they live in. Once you dive into a section, navigation requires more backtracking than a hedgerow maze. Locations aren’t sorted in sufficient detail, images aren’t available until you click through to a listing, and items can’t be flagged for side-by-side comparison. And that’s just the desktop version. On a mobile browser, craigslist is an interminable roll of links rendered in eye-crossingly minuscule text.

The NYTimes.com team retained craigslist’s basic look and feel while making the site work more like an app. Since search is the most important feature, design director Khoi Vinh and his colleagues gave this function more real estate and placed it at the top of the page. They moved the all-important Post to Classifieds link to the right side of the page and increased its visibility by bumping up the type size. They made room for white space and eliminated the gray backgrounds, which they thought weighed down the site. “It feels more open, more nimble,” Vinh says.

In the design created by Vinh and his team, the listings themselves don’t stand alone but are framed by navigational aids that let you jump immediately to other parts of the site. Buttons up top lead to the major sections (the current one always appears front and center in light gray). On the right side, the My Craigslist sidebar shows the ads you’ve viewed most recently and the sections you browse most often, transforming Craig’s list into your list. The calendar, fixed at the bottom right, is available on every page.

“Craigslist is working,” says SimpleScott, former design director of BarackObama.com—why fix what isn’t broken? Instead, he focused on making the site easier on the eyes. On the front page, he aligned rows and columns in a uniform grid so they’re clearer at a glance. Links you’ve already visited leap out in blue so you can retrace your steps easily. Displaying the site on a mobile browser, however, presents bigger challenges. SimpleScott met them by dividing the pages into a series of screens. A hierarchical menu makes it easy to navigate without accidentally clicking the wrong link. A map page lets you browse listings by location. Ads and photos each get their own screens. Buttons along the bottom make common functions available at all times.

“Craigslist is frustrating and claustrophobic,” Matt Willey says. His layout has a contemporary look, a Web 2.0 feel, and plenty of breathing room. He eliminated long lists in favor of two pulldown menus: one that lets you jump to various sections and another that sorts listings by price or date. His design displays images in the category pages, so you don’t have to click through to the individual listings to see them. Thumbnails load rapidly and blow up to full size with a mouseclick. A button called Add to Watchlist marks favorites, while the Share button emails listings to friends or posts them to social networks.

Think the current homepage lacks personality? “We decided to do something about the cult of Craig,” Lisa Strausfeld says. She and Luke Hayman highlighted the contradiction between Newmark’s interest in grassroots democracy and the reality that the site is, well, his list. The arrangement of words is essentially random; this design won’t win awards for ease of use. Numbers from the calendar outline Newmark’s head and glasses; longer text strings form facial features. Newmark is always in the background—this version brings him to the forefront.

Find the original post at – http://www.wired.com/entertainment/theweb/magazine/17-09/ff_craigslist_makeover

Studio management rarely gets a credit once graphic design is talked over, but for many studios it might just make the divergence between succeeder and loser. And so what can you act to ascertain you are acting at maximum efficiency? Allow me provides you ten top tips.

The function of the studio manager is crucial to the efficient running of a design business. But usually it’s only the big design companies that can afford to pay for such services. Yet all studios – even small ones – need management. This means that most designers have to do their own,
just as they have to do their own book-keeping, IT consultancy and print buying. But by investing in a good studio manager, designers could growth efficiency and productivity, make the working day more pleasurable for everyone and, last not least, encourage profitability . The fundamental to acquiring the most out of studio management is to remember that as a designer you’re in the service sector. Don’t think of studio management as an irksome in-house overhead. Think of it as key factor in the way you look after your clients. Viewed like this, studio management (and project management) becomes a way of boosting your income. So it pays to employ someone in this role, and it pays to employ someone good. But what exactly is the role of the studio manager?

1. WHAT DOES A STUDIO MANAGER DO?

Put simply, a studio manager in a small design studio (ten to 20 people) deals with all non-design matters, leaving designers free to design. A good studio manager might be required to change light bulbs one day and negotiate fees with the studio’s biggest client the next. Studio management used to be about keeping materials such as pens and layout pads in stock, and dealing with printers. Today, a studio manager needs many skills: IT knowledge; the ability to co-ordinate multimedia projects; the know-how to monitor work; basic financial skills and experience commissioning and controlling external suppliers. It also helps if they’re likeable individuals.

Find the rest at the original posting – http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1191675/how_to_run_your_own_graphic_design.html?cat=55

Sources To Download High-Quality Free Photoshop PSD Stuff

Creativity means a lot in any kind of presentation. Whether it’s a logo, banner, advertisement or a complete design; being able to inject creativity into it not only helps in floating the message around, it also leaves solid impression on the viewer. Good design is not easy thing to emerge, or it is often a very challenging job to discover creative designs. However, there are few ways by which you can improve your designing skills. One of them is analyzing others work and find the inspiration behind every details. Infect, it’s even easier if you can able to use others creative work in your design with proper permission and guidelines. In this presentation, we present to you the best sources to download Photoshop PSD files and resources for igniting your creativity.

Find the rest at the original posting – http://www.instantshift.com/2009/06/23/40-sources-to-download-high-quality-free-photoshop-psd-stuff/

Two months ago i created a showcase of flash e-commerce sites, which was very much liked by my blog readers. Now i have collected 25 beautiful and creative photography sites.

I hope you will like these sites too. If you are a photographer and you think your site is more creative don’t hesitate to tell us about it by adding comments. I may add those sites in round two.
1. CirilJazbec

Find the rest at the original posting – http://pelfusion.com/showcases/25-beautiful-and-creative-photography-sites/

For designers nothing can be more handy than effective and time saving tools supporting their creative process. Of cause dependent on the specific needs free web-based tools can significantly help you accomplish tasks such as color selecting, color palette, creating own and unique fonts, editing images, and testing typography.

In this article tripwire magazine presents 30 essential Tools that hopefully will be useful for most Designers.

Original posting – http://www.tripwiremagazine.com/tools/design/30-essential-tools-for-web-designers.html

tutsplus.com compiled a list of 30 exceptional web page designs for your inspiration. Most of these are relatively new; so they’ll hopefully give you some ideas for your next project! Enjoy!

Original posting – http://net.tutsplus.com/articles/web-roundups/30-exceptional-web-designs-for-the-web/

An effective web design is one in which your users are able to find information quickly and in a logical fashion.

Do they visit the content you want them to visit? Are they looking in the right places of your web page? Are you able to keep your user’s attention, or do they just leave quickly?

It’s not just about the content either. If your design loads slowly – or if moving from one section to another takes a long time – it affects the user’s experience.

These things can be the make-or-break factors between a user clicking on a link to find more information, or the back button to find it elsewhere.

Some things to consider:

* Are important information being seen by the user?
* Are the navigation and action items intuitive?
* Is the user being directed to sections in a logical manner?
* Does the web page load quickly enough to not turn away the user?

If you’re interested in analyzing and optimizing your page layout – here’s some extremely useful tools that you can use to help.

Original posting – http://sixrevisions.com/tools/useful_web_analytics_tools/