Here’s a link to a blog post from leading graphic designer I follow:

Chinese Proverbs for Designers

While Mr. Airey has added commentary to these for a designer’s point of view, I was struck by how relevant these are, still, to other industries and disciplines. My favorite is “Customers are jade; merchandise is grass.”

Far too often when designing client websites, I run into the challenge of trying to help our clients avoid the challenge of “looking” like everyone else. The messages across the industry generally do not vary tremendously from the “top quality”, “great service”, “great people” and “guarantees” which everyone tries to use as their differentiators. My challenge is to try to harness the power of the key value words and show that visually through imagery.  I usually try to keep a finger on the pulse of what some of the larger national staffing agencies  may be doing to try and set themselves apart from the pack.

Below is an example of images from across numerous top national staffing agencies.

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It starts off innocently enough.  The client calls and requests something.  “Of course we can do that for you, Mr. Client.  We’ll try to get that back to you by Friday.”  The call ends and the project begins.  Oops – we forgot to ask all the people involved if they can meet that deadline. The problem is that Staff A is off on vacation, Staff B and C are fully booked since they have to cover Staff A’s work.  And, Staff D cannot do the work required without assistance.

No problem.  We’ll just call Mr. Client and let him know that it will be Monday instead.  And here’s where the bottom falls out. 

What you said is not the same as what was heard.

 What was said: “We’ll try to get that back to you by Friday.”
What Mr. Client heard: “It will be done Friday.”

What was said: “Sorry, we cannot have this to you until Monday. Our staff is fully booked.”
What Mr. Client heard: “You aren’t as important as our other clients so we’re pushing your project back and missing our deadline.”

A better way…

1. Don’t make promises.
   It can’t always be done, but often the client doesn’t need to know when it will be delivered.  Sometimes, it is good enough to ensure that it will be done the right way as soon as possible and you will take full responsibility.  Taking the burden off the client may be all that is needed.“Mr. Client, I will take care of this for you and get back to you as soon as it is complete.”
2. Don’t make promises that other people have to live up to.
   If you aren’t the only person required to deliver on a promise, don’t make the promise. When you constantly have to pull in favors from your teammates to meet the promises you’ve made, you lose credibility with those teammates really quickly. “Mr. Client, I’ll get this added to our production schedule and drop you an email with our anticipated delivery date.”
3. Ask when it is needed.
   Often we assume what the client needs or wants.  Do you know what they say about people who assume?  It makes an “ass” out of “u” and “me”.  Instead, try asking.“Mr. Client, it usually takes us one week to turnaround this type of work.  Will that be okay?” or “When do you need this completed?”

Under Promise – Over Deliver

Sure, sure.  You’ve heard that so many times before but it works well.  Let’s play our scenario again:

What was said: “Mr. Client, is there is a specific deadline that you would like to meet. Wednesday should be fine but before I can promise that I’ll need to check on our production schedule.”

What Mr. Client heard: “It will be done Wednesday.”

On Monday, the project is delivered. 

What Mr. Client thinks “That project went even better than I expected!”

Excellent Customer Service =
Clear Communication + Managed Expectations

Ever since the release of the iPhone, and more recently the iPad, there have been many discussions about how both of these products do not support flash.

Bummer right? Not really! There are a lot of other options to make your website interactive and engaging without using flash. Below are a few examples of websites we’ve created at Haley Marketing that use JavaScript instead of flash. And the best part is they work great on these devices!

All Medical Personnel

Winston Resources

For more information on JavaScript and website design, please contact me at lac@haleymarketing.com.

Press sheet for Bayside Solutions' pocket folder

The colors look great — much better than my phone’s camera can accurately record, and we’re looking forward to the finished product next week. So, thanks to Susannah and everyone at Sterling Sommer, and to Bayside Solutions for the opportunity to develop these new materials.

And if you’re looking to update your print collateral, or any other branding for your staffing agency, please consider Haley Marketing as a provider to develop a solution for you.

Yes, this is probably WAY off-topic, but there are enough fans of the show in our office that maybe some of our readers will appreciate it, too. Besides, with TV’s longest-running mystery wrapping up in the next few weeks, I’d like to take one last chance at annoying those who don’t watch “Lost.”

Here goes.

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
— Arthur C. Clarke

The island is a prison for “The Man in Black” and Jacob is his guardian. Both are from a distant future — the island was sent far back in history to isolate The Man in Black both in time and space to contain whatever menace he represents. He is an artificial intelligence comprised of nearly microscopic nanobots, which allow him to take human form and appear as a cloud of smoke which also emits flashes of light and electricity. He is able to assume the forms of people known to humans after scanning their memories. The island’s electromagnetic core is a power source which keeps him activated and also isolated. If he travels too far from the power source, he deactivates. The ash circles and sonic fences have some property which prevents him from crossing. His programming prevents him from breaking the rules which Jacob is there to enforce. Jacob may be a similar construct, following his own programming. By touching various candidates, Jacob may also be injecting them with nanobots which guide them to the island. They may also allow the candidates to adopt the same capabilities through a biomechanical conversion. The nanobots in Richard Alpert regenerate his body and have kept him alive all these years without aging. Candidates can’t kill themselves since the nanobots can interfere with suicide attempts — defusing bombs, rendering bullets inert, etc. This may also explain why some of the island’s inhabitants were believed to be infected by The Man in Black and would gradually lose their identity and humanity — they are overcome with nanobots which replace the human identity.

The gateway in the island, activated by the wheel below the Orchid station, transports people to a desert in Tunisia — another isolated location where The Man in Black would soon run out of power before reaching civilization. He may also have been developed as a weapon and the island isn’t so much a prison as it is a storage facility used to contain him until he’s needed.

The Man in Black has spent the last few hundred, if not thousands, of years working out loopholes in his programming which will allow him to leave the island. Jacob, knowing this and the limitations in both of their programming, has spent the time searching for a human suitable to the task of guarding The Man in Black and keeping him on the island.

Desmond Thume may be a third type of human/android hybrid who retains an immunity to intense electromagnetic radiation. If Desmond isn’t entirely human, this may be why Charles Widmore didn’t want his daughter Penny to get involved with Desmond. And why Widmore and Eloise Hawking believe he isn’t ready for whatever they have in mind for him in the sideways timeline.

For me, this adds up in a neat and tidy way. However, given the very convoluted and bewildering twists of this story, the conclusion will probably be chaotic and messy and completely different.

And in a few weeks when it’s all over, we’ll need to find something else to discuss Wednesday mornings.

I was tinkering around the interweb this morning and came across a very useful post regarding Google searches and additional search tools which can be used to refine and improve your results. Some of these are probably familiar, but it’s always nice to have a refresher on this stuff. Plus, there were a couple of tips and functions I wasn’t aware of and they are pretty useful:

Ten Simple Google Search Tricks at webworkerdaily.com.

Google offers Basic and Advanced search help, but the examples given in this article explain them a little better. Google does have a nice “Help Center” page with a lot of these tools collected handily in one place.

We’ve all been there…
You receive an email that is a bunch of boxes with red x’s. This is because the email contains images. The images don’t show up until you right-click and then download the files. If you don’t do this the email doesn’t make any sense because all of the important information is on the images. The sad part is most people never bother downloading the images, or have images blocked altogether.

This is a perfect example of email marketing gone wrong. So how can you make sure images aren’t getting in the way of your message, without sacrificing design for those recipients that download the images?

First…
Do not build an email made entirely out of images! This is a guarantee that your message will not get across to your recipients.

Second…
Make sure your email works with AND without the images. It is true that images make an email more visually appealing, but you should always make sure your email makes sense without the fancy design.

Third…
Use alt-tags on all the images in your email. An alt-tag is a text description of an image. If the image doesn’t show up, then the alt-tag text will display in place of the image.

Last but not least…
Always include a link to view the email as a webpage. That way, if a person is having a problem viewing the email, you’ve given them another way to read your message. The link is best placed towards the top of the email.

For more tips on email newsletters, see my previous post on email buildout standards.

There are some cool new tools for designers and web developers on the way.  The biggest is probably the release of Adobe’s Creative Suite 5 — the next versions of everything we use in our creative work. Here’s a link to an article previewing a very cool new Photoshop tool for image editing. It contains a video demonstrating the effect and it really is flat out amazing. The video starts out slow, but the good stuff starts about halfway through:

http://www.webmonkey.com/2010/03/adobes-magical-content-aware-fill-bends-pixels-to-your-will/

Also, here’s a link to a new script-based image gallery. Previously, this sort of thing required Flash development. But javascripting and jquery have made a lot of these things easier to create and faster to load. First, here’s a link describing the gallery, followed by a link to the gallery itself.  Again, amazing stuff, and the creative staff at Haley Marketing can’t wait to start using them.

http://www.webmonkey.com/2010/03/beautiful-websites-former-apple-designers-amazing-photo-gallery/

http://www.mikematas.com/#g9/Hrz/photos/dhobi_ghat_girl

Masiello eBook sample pages

Two for One Collateral Materials

The above sample images are from a brochure and eBook project recently completed for Masiello Employment Services. The advantage to this project is the client receives both a printed brochure for handing out and an electronic version in .pdf format which is suitable for emailing or making available for download from your staffing website. Haley Marketing typically designs this type of brochure for print quality standards — whether it’s actually printed or not. That way, even if our clients initially require only the eBook, we have the print-ready artwork ready to go if they decide to order printed versions. Once the print-ready artwork is approved, it’s a fairly simple process to add in the navigation buttons and other programmable features for the eBook version. These include links to your website, contact forms and email addresses. Adobe Acrobat even allows for the inclusion of SEO keywords to the .pdf file.

If you’d like more information on Haley Marketing’s brochure and eBook solutions, or would like to see more samples of these items, please email us at info@haleymarketing.com.