Around the Office is a weekly group blog that shows what the OnlineFriendly.biz team and Kobayashi Online have found interesting, funny, poignant, or otherwise notable over the past week.
If you want to know some of the many issues Eva considers when designing a logo, check out this recent post about how designing logos with social media marketing in mind. According to “12 Ways Your Logo Impacts Social Media Marketing”, designers need to make sure the logo translates well to a square thumbnail, can be consistent across platforms (like Facebook and Twitter), and that it’s not too visually complicated so that it can be resized. If designed well, a social-media-compliant logo can make your business seem more professional, reliable and trustworthy, communicate your story, and make clients happy to be associated with you.
We wrote about user experience (or UX) this week on Online Friendly, and the Kobayashi Online team has been on the lookout for some great examples of businesses incorporating online and offline touch points into all customer interactions. It’s interesting to note that organizations are able to build touch points into experiences that could cause disappointment to make that experience positive. If a visitor lands on your site on a page that doesn’t exist, a good “Error 404” page can help engage a visitor, and direct them back to your home page. This also happens in real life, which Brent discovered, when visiting a local burger shop that was closed. Chances are, he’ll be back.
Online community activism has been around for a while, but it seems to be growing in force as the Web and the real world becomes more intertwined. Daveed was among more than 45 thousand people have pledged their name to an online petition against closing local Toronto Public Library branches, and privatizing some or all of the library’s operations. The number of participants in this and other petitions suggest that social media is helping citizens band together for social causes within the city. We’ll have to see if the library petition will actually impact government actions.
Given the increasing number and variety of screens that need to be filled, David finds it no surprise that great Web design is more important than ever. This is one of the reasons he’s looking forward to this year’s .net Awards, organised by .net magazine. Public voting is open until September 30, and finalists will be chosen by an expert panel of judges. Good luck to all participants!