Barack Obama and Responsive Design
There is little doubt that the 2008 Obama campaign was the most sophisticated digital operation in the history of politics. It is not really close. Given how high the bar has been set, there was a lot of hype surrounding the November release of the 2012 version www.barackobama.com, which features a responsive design. Responsive designs...
Just Say No to Splash Pages on WhiteHouse.gov
As most of you know, splash pages are those annoying introductory pages that ask you for your email address before letting you access the actual website you are trying to visit. Having worked in digital for ten years, I can make two definitive statements about splash pages: They work. A well executed email splash page...
Happy Birthday, Drupal
On January 15, 2001, University of Antwerp student Dries Buytaert released the first version of Drupal to the open source community. Dries had originally developed Drupal as a news site and message board that University of Antwerp students could use for discussion and content sharing. Drupal has grown into the most popular open source Content...
Five Inspirational Digital Campaigns
I’m happy to say we’ve been pretty slammed here at the Brick Factory, so there hasn’t been much time for blogging lately. But I did want to quickly share some cool digital campaigns I’ve come across the last few weeks that inspired me (or more accurately, that I want to rip off in some way). ...
Steve Jobs Meets Paul Rand
The Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson features a great anecdote about Paul Rand, the legendary designer who created logos for IBM, Enron, UPS, and ABC, among others. Jobs hired Rand to design the logo for the first company he started after leaving Apple, NeXt. Rand, who was in his 70s at the time and...
Big hopes, smaller size: Why The Cincy Enquirer is going tabloid
For newspapers, rolling the dice doesn’t always involve paywalls. Take the The Cincinnati Enquirer and The Columbus Dispatch, both of which recently announced plans to switch their printing formats from the classic broadsheet to a new, compact style that is more akin to a tabloid, but with sections similar to a traditional paper.
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Alex Steinweiss, Originator of Artistic Album Covers, Dies at 94
Mr. Steinweiss, an art director and graphic designer, adorned plain covers for 78 r.p.m. discs and designed the packaging for long-playing records.
Adventures in User Interface Design
Tweet We’re big believers in the importance of usability at The Bivings Group. Online, usability is branding. If your site is hard to use, visitors will lose patience and take their eyeballs elsewhere. It is just common sense really. Inevitably, usability is about the details. It isn’t one big thing, but tens or hundreds of...
Three Things I Love About Jerry Seinfeld’s New Website
Comedian Jerry Seinfeld recently launched a new website that brings together highlights of his 35-year stand-up career. I love the site, and I’m not really even a fan of his stand-up. Here is a breakdown of what I love about it. 1. The Approach The site posts three videos a day, chosen by Seinfeld himself. ...
