But, no matter how I tried–I couldn’t escape the Prometheus hype. How could I? The prequel marketing machine opened the hatch early and often. Months before the scheduled film opening, video teasers made the rounds on the interwebs. The first was the “TEDTalk from the future” by Weyland Industries CEO Peter Weyland. (Fans will remember that Weyland Industries was responsible for the voyage to doom in the first place.)

The TED video is accompanied by the Weyland Industries microsite–complete with a mission database, investor information, and full product sections with videos and technical specs of their latest product: the David 8 Robot. Can you say creepy?

Of course, this microsite pales in comparison to the actual Prometheus website with forums that fans can’t get enough of. Right now, there are over 50,000 forum posts. There are also thousands of replies to fan questions and comments. The site also features film trailers and the latest news with high-definition photos and videos.

Fans keep “unearthing” more of these microsites with hidden user names and passwords. One example was found on the Weyland Industries Investor Timeline. The URL /eridu/ was on the Timeline and a fan unlocked it by investigating the word “Eridu.” Turns out it’s an ancient Sumerian city that is known today as “abu shahrain”–so that was the secret password. Pretty crazy? Reminds me of a decoder ring I found in a box of Lucky Charms once…

But, the real marketing hero has got to be their social media presence–especially their Facebook engagement. Over 190,000 people have liked their page and close to 20,000 are talking about them right now. How did they do that? Well, they’ve been stirring the pot… leaking new trailers, photos, and videos slowly but surely… live streaming Q&A’s with director Ridley Scott… featuring Friday Fan Art. There are also a steady stream of questions posed to fans like:

• What’s your favorite movie starring cast member Charlize Theron?
• If you could ask Ridley Scott one question, it would be…?
• What was your favorite line from Peter Weyland’s speech at the 2023 TED conference?

Now I’m guessing you don’t have the same marketing budget as the folks promoting this flick. Still, there are a few tricks that can bring ‘life form’ to your marketing.

Activate your community

Here’s the thing: Ridley Scott is a big deal. He directed Alien over 35-years ago and left the sci-fi community in waiting. Then, rumors bubble up that he’s working on a prequel to Alien. How does he reply? Sort of. Kinda. Maybe. No. Then, a Twitter and Facebook account are created called Prometheus Project. The trailer hits with that familiar stark lettering and wide-shot visuals that conjure questions that have been waiting dormant inside the sci-fi fan’s mind for over 3 decades.

Most brands have a following, though not as possessed as Prometheus fans. It’s a matter of understanding why they connect with you in the first place and delivering on those same images and messages to reignite them. When in doubt, ask your community what they’d like more or less of.

Build anticipation

Wouldn’t it have been easier to launch their website fully loaded with all of their videos and photo galleries? Um, yeah but they teased out this content over the course of weeks and months–even hiding it in some cases for fans to discover their way to it. Some of their posts even hint that if so many people like an update–they’ll release new goodies the next day. For Prometheus fans, the mystery and intrigue both in when updates trickle out as well as the nature of the imagery and clips themselves, tap into why they fell in love with the film oh so long ago.

Showcase your fans

This campaign is putting fans in the spotlight whether it be their artwork for would-be posters, their questions about the upcoming film, or any feedback on the campaign. What’s interesting is that this feedback is not based on a contest or a giveaway but on long-term engagement.

Take em’ behind the scenes

Not only does this project celebrate its fans–it celebrates its crew with updates on their birthdays and spotlights of fan tributes. Each instance tells another piece of the story about the people behind the project. The team also shares interviews about the “making of the movie” without spoiling the film. They even share the backstory of how they worked with TED to create a talk from the future.

Make it real

There are so many offshoots of this story that have been built out in their marketing campaign. Instead of print ads to promote the movie itself, they took out a full-page Wall Street Journal ad featuring Weyland Industries’ David 8 Robot. They built a fully functional website as if Weyland Industries was a real company complete with a Careers and Investor Relations section. They collaborated with TED peeps to create a TED talk from the future that would be realistic for 2023. All of the layers create a life-like story about the movie.

Give em’ first dibs

Fans that create an account on any of the Prometheus Project websites can connect with other fan-boys on forums, as well as access special content and hidden sections of the website. Social followers are also privy to a steady stream of updates and juicy content–before it hits traditional media outlets. Instead of just sharing the full-length trailer with WonderCon attendees, they live streamed it through Facebook, Twitter, and AMC Theater’s website giving fans good reason to stay tapped in for what’s next.

Put some thought into your content strategy

Someone is working a content calendar here. The quality of content is certainly in line with fan’s expectations of the movie. The images and videos are intense, stunning, and in step with the original creative vision of Alien. The forum questions and social media posts tackle big questions and they tackle them on a steady basis. All of the microsites, which have sprung up periodically throughout this campaign, offer a healthy supply of content–a lot of which is user generated in the form of forum replies.

So here’s to some brain-sucking, heart-pumping, infectious marketing… and to getting your socks scared off on June 8th! Remember, in space no one can hear you scream.

And, in case you missed it–here’s the official Prometheus teaser trailer.

If you’ve been following us for any length of time–you’ve spotted Nathan Pyatte’s handiwork. (You’re actually spying it right now since he designed our website and blog. Nice, we know.) Nathan began his atLarge career at a kitchen table across from founder Anand Pallegar. He has seen the team expand from that Lakewood Ranch kitchen to a free standing building–a building it’s quickly outgrowing, in Towles Court. He has also worked on major projects for Orlando, Inc, Ruth Eckerd Hall, and the Sarasota Convention & Visitors Bureau. We catch up with him in this Q&A to see what he has learned along the way.

How would you describe the transition from startup to being named one of Florida’s Top Companies to Watch?
The biggest change has been the increased brain power on projects. When I started, there were just two of us contributing which made things easier but as our projects grew we needed team members to tackle information architecture, workflow, and profound programming challenges. Each new team member added or deepened a speciality that has helped us create work that appears simple on the front-end yet is complex in terms of the workflow and logic happening on the back-end. That means more input and collaboration but it also means that we can execute projects today that would have been impossible for us when we first started.

Get all the facts. I review the who, what, when, where, why, and how.
Then, I freak out. The level of panic is in line with the investment I’ll be making. Big project = big freakout. Big connection = big freakout. Big freakout = big success. Now, I’d worry if I didn’t freak out before I started a project.

Hillman Curtis who unfortunately passed away earlier this month. Mr. Curtis was my first introduction to interactive design. His creativity stretched from music to film to design and back again. And, it was all good.

Steffan Segmeister is one of the few people who makes me want to be a better person, not just a better designer. I’ve had the privilege of hearing him speak a couple times and his messages about creativity that actually help people and taking time off really resonated with me. His ads, branding, books, films, CD covers, posters, and furniture–yeah furniture–is kickass.

Amanda Wright also known as YahnyinLondon

Her speciality is sketchnotes though she moonlights as an illustrator. I admire her style and the way that she is able to communicate weighty subjects at a glance.

What advice would you give to interactive designers just starting out?
One of the biggest decisions you make is where to work. There’s not a wrong or right path but it will shape your perception of design. I appreciate working in a small agency because I have a lot of control over my work. It’s definitely more responsibility. Other designers appreciate the more defined role of a large company. Usually the structure of large companies means that you’re more specialized. You just have to figure out what works best for you.

An architect like George Costanza. I like the idea of designing something that becomes a tangible piece that could outlast me. With interactive design–there’s so much flux.

Oh, you like dictionary.com too? I can’t stay away from the word of the day. Guess we have the same taste in websites. Maybe we’re a perfect match?

Wow, you look as comfy as a pair of sneaks but fancy enough for a ball gown. Wait–if that’s true then it’s like I’m getting two pairs of shoes for the price of one… Okay, I’ll click your sweet little SHOP NOW button.

Reunited and it feels so good…

Sure, this little scenario may be disarming from a consumer standpoint. Do we really need the temptation of products following us online? I obviously don’t. But, from a marketing standpoint–remarketing or retartgeting is a no-brainer. Who wouldn’t want to target people already interested in their products–especially those that had their trigger finger on checkout. I know–you would never spend an hour debating whether to put those Winning Diva ballerina flats into your cart only to abandon the purchase when “Dancing with the Stars” begins. But, I’m not alone. About 60 percent of all e-commerce visitors drop their carts like a bad habit says the Baymard Institute’s E-Commerce Checkout Usability report.

So how do these would-be purchases find you? First, organizations add a retargeting pixel to their website. They may place it on certain sections of their site or the entire website. When you browse a site with retargeting pixels on it, you’re placed in an “audience” bucket and cookied. Audiences can be as broad as anyone who visited your site or as specific as anyone who viewed a certain product or type of content. Now, you’re an audience member. And, when you visit sites within the ad network these organizations are advertising with–voilà, you see their retargeted ads. These ads may include the product you added to your checkout, more general brand ads, or incentives like free shipping.

I know what you’re thinking–we need to step up our remarking efforts. Here are a few platforms that can help you get started.

Google Remarketing

When you use Google’s remarking products, your remarketing has access to millions of websites on the Google Display Network. You can also manage your audience lists right within the AdWords dashboard as well as how long you want a particular remarketing ad to run and how many times you want a particular audience to see a certain ad. For example, you might decide to run remarketing ads to people that visited your website 3 x in 30 days versus 6 x in 30 days for people who added items to their cart. And you may also decide to run different remarketing ads to these two audiences. Want more details? Check out this video about Google remarketing.

Criteo

Want a one-stop shop? Try Criteo. They specialize in what they call highly personalized remarketing banners for e-commerce websites. These ads can include products from an abandoned shopping cart, products viewed on the website, or even complementary products based on an online purchase. Criteo handles the media placement, ad serving, and reporting. You’re only charged when a visitor clicks on a banner to go back to your site.

Quantcast

While it’s not retargeting exactly, Quantcast does offer services based on the concept of audience models. You will tag content on your website that corresponds with your audiences. Then, Quantcast analyzes the best-performing visits and make suggestions of the most likely websites this audience is likely to visit as well as the actions they’re inclined to take.

So you’ve mastered the remarketing concept and want to increase those conversions. Here are some tips to close the deal:

• Give em’ an incentive like free shipping or a 10% off promotional code and display product images they viewed or added to their cart.
• Stay relevant by driving people to a page that pertains to them like a welcome back page that displays their shopping cart contents along with the highlights of your offer.
• Create landing pages and banners that pertain to their interest instead of showing the same banner and webpage to everyone that visited your website regardless of the pages they visited.
• Don’t beat people that convert over the head with your remarketing. So if I sign up for your newsletter–add me to your “newsletter convert” audience that won’t see a banner prompting a newsletter signup for special deals. Through Google’s custom combinations, you can remove “converts” so that they won’t see your remarketing ads. Read all about Google’s custom combinations here.
• Offer a cookie tray by varying up how often you show those remarketing ads to different audiences. For example, you may show a remarketing ad to someone who made a purchase that shows complementary products within 60 days of their purchase while you show a remarketing ad to someone who abandoned their cart within 30 days after they’ve left the scene.

If you’re not familiar with ShelterBox–you should be. Get up to speed with this video:

Now, to the social secrets.

#10 Secret to Social Media Stardom: Find your peeps

One of the best ways to stay inspired on- and offline is to connect with people that spur you on. Social media is no different. It’s all who you know. So if you cultivate your social media marketing, it can deliver a steady stream of new ideas and virtual introductions to movers and shakers that care about the same things you do.  As an interactive agency, we follow peeps and organizations across design and technology as well as anything or anyone that catches our fancy. We pump our social community for new project ideas, community news, and trends.

#9 Secret to Social Media Stardom: Show, don’t tell

Do you think this guy wants a walk? A massage? Nope, this pup is showing you that he wants grub. Your social media marketing can do the same and have a lot more impact if you can “show” your cause in action. How do you do that? You can weave in photos, videos, infographics, and animations. Not only do visuals drive home your story but it’s a fact (a sad one for any copywriter) that we don’t read online. We scan. Social media is no different so save the long copy for your novel and work in some visuals.

#8 Secret to Social Media Stardom: Give it time

Most of the frustration related to social media marketing is tied to the time it takes to see results. We throw a video up on Facebook and are bummed when it doesn’t go viral overnight. What gives? Social media fundraising darling Beth Kanter says organizations should devote at least 20 hours a week to listening and sharing with their community. And, when can you expect to see results? She says it takes a minimum of three to six months–notice she didn’t say days. Relationship building and “network weaving” as Kanter calls it requires listening and one-on-one follow ups. And that takes time.

#7 Secret to Social Media Stardom: Spice it up

While you want to give your community what it wants–you also want to change things up once in awhile. You can mix your social media posts up with links, polls, questions. We’ve done games, dance-offs, soundtracks, office pranks. You name it, we’ve posted it. And since we cover design, technology, writing–we share a variety of content in our social media marketing so our posts are as diverse as our team.

#6 Secret to Social Media Stardom: Get with the times

Looks like the Easter Bunny is here! That’s right–this secret is all about piggybacking off timely events, holidays, and news items with your posts. We’ve tried holiday music videos, Novembeard photo blogs, and Year in Review Picture Shows. You can also tie in with lesser known events like National Watermelon Month or Join Hands Day. Holiday Smart has all the deets you need to map out a social media content calendar.

#5 Secret to Social Media Stardom: Celebrate Wins

Everyone wants to play on a winning team so share your success with your community–and thank them for their efforts to help you spread awareness and information. We’ve shared background videos about what it’s like to work here to celebrate awards and profiled clients who’ve achieved great things–often outside of the realm of apps, websites, or digital advertising.

#4 Secret to Social Media Stardom: Ask peeps to share

Our brains on social media are stir-fried. We’re pulled in so many directions so to stand out your posts have to be share-worthy (think of the posts that you couldn’t resist re-sharing yourself) and you have to tell people what action you want them to take. If you want them to retweet, ask them. If you want feedback, ask them to share their opinion. In trying to understand how designers and copywriters can work better together, we polled our social community and got smart tips we were able to use in our “Faceoff: Designers versus Copywriters” post.

#3 Secret to Social Media Stardom: Spread the love

Recognize people within your industry, your community, and your team for their accomplishments. Tip your hat to others putting out great content or doing awesome work in the community. We can all learn from one another.

#2 Secret to Social Media Stardom: Use action words

One of the tricks to grabbing attention is to use active words in your posts. Words such as like, take, watch, click, and tell quickly communicate what you want people to do. They’re also space savers for the long-winded.

#1 Secret to Social Media Stardom: Be a friend

A big part of your organization’s “likeability” will be how it treats others online. Do you listen to what your community wants and do you try to deliver on those wants? Do you respond to their posts? These are the basics but deeper relationships require more in terms of connecting like-minded friends to one another and following up individually. You don’t want to be a fair-weather friend so you’re going to want to stay up with your peeps regularly as opposed to just when you need something from them.

Did we leave a juicy secret off the countdown? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

You can also catch all of the workshop slides here: How to use social media to engage supporters

Every year, ShelterBox volunteers from across the globe come together for their annual conference to learn how they can best deliver shelter, warmth, and dignity to disaster survivors. This year, the Poynter Institute’s Roy Peter Clark led a session on storytelling. There is no better man for the job. He has appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show, NPR, and Today and has written Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer, The Glamour of Grammar: A Guide to the Magic and Mystery of Practical English, and Help! For Writers: 210 Solutions to the Problems Every Writer Faces. Basically, he’s a big deal for writers.

So what’s the secret to a good story? Well, according to Clark the most important story elements are an inciting incident, up-the-ante-moments, and colorful particulars.

Luckily, he had plenty of material to work with from the conference itself. Many of the stories were told by volunteers on the service response team. These are the people that hand-deliver ShelterBox aid wherever and whenever it’s needed. The story that most captured Clark’s attention, as well as the audience’s, was–”The Love Motel.” The story named itself as people discussed it in between sessions. Of all the stories told, including a story about saving preemies in a makeshift hospital tent from a fire in Haiti, “The Love Motel” was the one people couldn’t stop talking about. But why? Clark explains and gives us the how to’s of effective storytelling.

An inciting incident

This is what tilts the story from its “once upon a time” axis. It’s the “something” that happens to change the nature of your day.

Let’s check into “The Love Motel” for an example. It begins with Bill Decker walking on foot with a fellow volunteer to find a room for the night. They’re in Manila–the capital of the Philippines, where a typhoon has left hundreds of thousands of people homeless. They’re exhausted. The two men see a hotel. The go inside and a hotel clerk greets them and asks, “how many hours will you want the room for?” As Clark explained–this statement tells you that this is no ordinary hotel. If you had any doubt, the follow-up explanation that the hotel deskman gives the two men about the hourly rate of 7 pesos sums up the accommodations.

Up-the-ante moments

These are the elements of a story that raise the stakes… and then, and then, and because of that…

Back to “The Love Motel.”

When the two volunteers enter their hotel room, they face a small, rubber bed covered in plastic. There’s not enough room for them to lay side-by-side so they lay facing each other’s feet. Now these are manly men squished together listening to plastic crackle with ever toss and turn.

Each of these elements build the story to its climax–when in the middle of the night, someone bursts into their room. The two men scurry to face the intruder who turns out to be a janitor unaware anyone was staying in the room. Apparently no one at this establishment rents a room for a full night.

The power of particularity

The ShelterBox story is chalked full off details like the hourly rate of 7 pesos for the hotel room, the plastic wrap over the rubber bed, and the description that this was the darkest night in Manila. As Clark explains, these details make you feel like you’re right there. He says a story does not point you somewhere–it puts you somewhere. It’s a form of time travel.

He added that the 5 w’s of journalism can help you develop these particulars.

• Who – your characters
• What – what happened
• When – sequence of events
• Where – specific scene or setting
• Why – the motivation of the characters
• How – how it happened

Clark also notes that in addition to the usual suspects “The Love Motel” also had elements of surprise with items like the midnight intruder as well as the very nature of a humorous story in the shadows of delivering life-saving aid to people who’ve lost everything. The storyteller also took his time letting the story unfold before reaching a crescendo. Though Clark mentioned this doesn’t mean the story needs to be long to have this “enforced waiting” and suspense.

Clark also left the audience with some pointers on presentations including being a stickler when it comes to the presentation visuals. They should be powerful and relevant to what you’re speaking about and he advised that what we really need our better stories and fewer PowerPoints.

Want more of Clark’s storytelling tips? Check out his blog posts 7 tips that ‘The King’s Speech’ teaches us about finding our voice as writers and From Homer to 9/11, how storytelling charts our survival.

Have you ever played 2 truths and a lie?

Just in case it has been awhile–here’s a quick refresher course:

• Each player tells you 3 things about themselves.
• Two of those things are true.
• One of those things is a lie.
• The object of the game is to guess which thing is a lie. Got it? Good.

Now, we’ve scrounged up 5 atLargers for today’s lineup.

Ready, set, guess that lie!

And the lies are…

A little more background on our fibs:

• Nathan does NOT have a birthmark in the shape of Texas on his inner thigh but he has heard of Texas and is a fan of their state food–country fried chicken.
• Emily has never dyed or highlighted her hair. Her tresses were inadvertently subjected to a Dorothy Hamill “bowl” cut a few years ago. The incident was an unfortunate hairdresser mishap because she had mentioned her plans to go bowling later that weekend.
• Like everyone else in the world, Danny does NOT like to wait for things. This was a shocking revelation to us all.
• Amanda was NOT a rockstar soccer player in high school… perhaps because of the treadmill accident. She did, however, rock the bench and has seen the movie “Bend It Like Beckham.”
• Frederick does NOT have a 50-lb pit bull named “Princess Daniel” but he does have two Chiguaguas named Nina and Jerome.

1. Evernote

We use it to create shared project notebooks where we organize design elements, articles and examples of functionality with team members. Anyone shared on the notebook can add new notes. Plus, it works on almost every computer and smart phone.

2. Instagram

Every picture looks better with Instagram. And it’s a great place to catch visual inspiration from the photographers you follow. Right now it’s only available for your iPhone but we hear that they’re cooking one up for Androids.

3. Pinterest

Snap, moodboards gone wild! You can create boards based on any project or interest… recipes, fashion, books. One of the best inspiration sources is the daily stream of goodies that come from the people you follow. There’s nothing like inspiration from your pin-up-peeps!

4. Art Directors Toolkit

Sometimes it’s just a matter of finding the right tool for the job. Interactive designers and web developers will love this web app with tools for layouts, swatches, and color palettes.

5. SketchPad

Don’t let your ideas slip away. Jot or sketch them down with SketchPad for iPad. You can also easily email your sketches or notes as PDF files to share.

6. SketchBook Express

Another sketching app that lets you draw, shade, and color in your sketches. This one has a ton of sweet extras and is available for both Android and iPad users.

7. Moodboard

Another app for building inspiration boards for your iPad. A super simple interface makes it easy to add photos, text, color swatches, and more. It’s also easy to print, save, email, and Facebook share your moodboards.

8. Omnigraffe

This all-knowing app for Mac and iPad lets you easily create sketches, wireframes, and relationship maps.

9. MindNode

Clarify your brainstorming with easy mind maps for your mac or tablet. These maps outline relationships and can embed related file links. You can also export them as PDF, PNG, and text files.

10. Adobe Ideas

This is a digital sketchbook with teeth. It works with Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, lets you choose and save color themes, and play with vectors and layers. Basically, in design speak–it’s awesome. Plus it’s available for Androids and iPads.

11. iMockups

We heart this iPad app for quick wireframes and mockups for iPhone and iPad apps. It’s a little inception-esque… using an iPad app to build another iPad app, but it works.

12. GuitarToolkit

The right sound can definitely set the creative mood–especially if it’s coming from you. This iPhone app is a killer guitar tuner with interactive chord sheets, drum patterns, and custom instruments to match your playing styles.

13. kuler

What could be cooler than color inspiration? Look no further! This app generates color themes so you can experiment with different variations and browse thousands of different color themes. The online web app is free. They also have an Android tablet app.

14. Skitch

This app should be called idea sharer. It lets you mark up images and screenshots so you can quickly share them. We sling our skitched images through atLarge chat for visual brainstorming.

15. Gamestorming

If you’ve mixed up your brainstorming with gamestorming, you’ll love The Gamestorming Card Deck. It’s frequently updated with new games and tips. If you have no idea what we’re talking about, read our Innovate with Gamestorming post. Sorry, Android users–right now this is only available for the iPhone.

So these are the apps we use to kickstart our creativity but we’d love to hear about the apps you lean on for creative problem-solving. Please give us a shout-out!

You know that we speak digital. But you may not know that we’ve picked up other vernaculars. Oui–shouldn’t that be spelled weeeeeee? Anywho, we’ve picked up phrases from as far away as Egypt, France, and yes–North Florida. And today’s 5 for Friday will take you inside 5 of those vernaculars. Andale! Andale!

Alison speaks French

Sure, Spanish would have been more practical but French sounded so beautiful. I studied it in high school and college. Come to think of it…  I also know some sweet phrases in Swedish and German thanks to an old boyfriend. Thanks Hans;)

Deena speaks Arabic

Growing up in Egypt, the first words I learned were Arabic. I’d describe Arabic as long and complicated. Attending a French elementary school quickly excelled my French. I enjoyed the language and culture so much that I majored in French and spent a semester in Paris. I associated English with summer vacations to the U.S. to visit family so when we moved here when I was 12, I already knew it. The culture and humor were another thing entirely.

Neirda speaks Kreyòl

While I know enough Spanish to stay out of trouble and enough Italian to get into trouble; I’m fluent in Kreyòl and French. Since my family is from Haiti, I grew up immersed in both languages. All Hatians born and raised in Haiti speak Kreyòl. Many also speak French. But, given the choice–and a lot more spare time–I’d speak Italian. Who can resist Italian food, art, or men? Not me.

Frederick speaks Italian

In case you don’t know by looking at me or by tasting my handmade pizza–I’m Italian. It’s like Neirda said: Italians are awesome. In terms of the actually language, I’d say I’m fluent in all curse words thanks to my grandpa. I’d like to balance out my Italian but I just started learning Japanese so it’s going to be awhile.

Emily Speaks…  Sign Language?

In third grade my parents signed me up for an after school program called LEAP (Language Education and Application with Peers). I thought we’d play leap frog but instead our teacher taught us sign language. It has stuck with me. I also took French in high school and then went to Paris to put it to the test when I was 19. I also took Spanish back in the day but aside from entrees on the Tijuana Flats menu–it’s all but left the building.

So what languages do y’all speak?

I’m about to admit something most interactive designers would lose their pixels over… digital design talk is as clear as mud. Sure us designers understand each other but what about the blokes we work with. Do you know what we mean when we say we’re designing an ethereal mobile experience? Err, yeah… most non-designers don’t. So, I’m putting my design cards on the table to fill in some gaps.

Brand/Branding

A brand is not a logo. A brand is the entire personality behind a company or a product which is why a branding strategy extends to every part of the business. Design elements like the logo, color palettes, and style contribute to building a brand. But a designer can’t do it all. Successful branding requires effective positioning, awareness, consistency, content, and customer service. You can have every one of these elements nailed and still have a branding flop. Why? Because it’s the audience that truly shapes a brand based on their perceptions and experiences.

Featured below are some brand collateral, including a poster, brochure, stationery, and mailer for a teen adventure travel company ActionQuest.

Logo

A logo is short for logotype. Sound boring huh? These days we take a logo to mean the symbol, monogram, or typeface that identifies a company or product. Some of the most recognized are the Nike swoosh, McDonald’s golden arches, and Chanel’s interlocking C’s. But a brand stickler like I don’t know… Marty Neumeier would say these aren’t actually logos at all. In the brand bible, The Brand Gap: How to Bridge the Distance Between Business Strategy and Design, Marty says symbols like these are actually trademarks. You can “trademark” these symbols for protection. To muddy the waters a tad more, the United States Patent and Trademark Office defines a trademark as a word, phrase, symbol, or design, or a combination thereof, that identifies and distinguishes the source of the goods of one party from those of others. Chances are, consumers will see all of the above as a logo.

Pop quiz: is a logo a brand? Can’t fool you. That’s right–a logo (or trademark) is one part of a brand though it’s often mistaken as the brand.

Here is an example of a logo we did for the teen adventure travel company ActionQuest.

Mood Board

Dim the lights please, we’re about to set the mood. Call it what you will–a collage, inspiration board, concept board, or design board–we use mood boards to start the artistic direction before any actual design begins. They’re a snapshot of examples and samples that we take inspiration from like images, fonts, textures, and objects. What’s the point you ask? Well, mood boards allow us designers to share initial concepts early on so we can better communicate our creative vision with teammates and clients. Mood boards can save a project by keeping team communication open and saving time. If there’s a creative concept that isn’t going to fly–we can eliminate it before too much time goes into developing it.

Below is a mood board we put together for a new website for the performing arts venue Ruth Eckerd Hall.

Wireframe/iBoard

I hate to say it but if we didn’t confuse you on branding–we’ll do it here. The idea behind wireframes, also known as iboards or blueprints, is to show you a skeleton of a web or mobile page. Simple enough, right? The bare bones show how information will be laid out on a page. To keep the conversation on what goes where and what visitors can do such as the functionality of purchasing tickets or signing up for mobile updates–wireframes are usually devoid of colors, photos, and detailed copy. That said, wireframes can be more detailed depending on how technical a project is or how far along other phases such as content development are in the project. Approved wireframes let us designers focus on design versus playing musical chairs with ever-changing content and functionality.

Below is a wireframe we put together for the Discover Natural Sarasota website promoting parks, trails, and wildlife in Sarasota County.

Comp

After mood boards and wireframes are approved, design comps are created to show what the project will look like before the programmers build it. Depending on the scope of the project, several different comps may be developed to show different design options. Design comps present a page’s layout, font, images, color, and elements of the proposed design. Having approved design comps prior to development saves countless hours for the programming team and allows us designers to finalize design concepts on every page of the website or mobile app.

Jumbo

If you hear us mention jumbo or jumbotron–we’re talking websites. A jumbotron is the largest graphical area on your site. It’s positioned on the homepage, above the fold. Since it’s the first thing you see when you land on a website, this is prime real estate. You might also hear this called a feature or main promo.

This is an example of the jumbo on our company home page. 

Lorem Ipsum

This is dummy text that we use as a placeholder to demonstrate the visual presentation of font, typography, and layout. If copy isn’t written yet, this allows us to show you what it’s going to look like in the design comps instead of skipping over it. We use lorem ipsum so you focus on the content rather than the overall presentation.

Stock Photography

Don’t have a budget for a photographer but desperate for images? Stock photography to the rescue. Stock images are images that you can license for a specific use like a website or banner ad. There are tons of sites that supply licensed photographs of everything imaginable. It allows us to fulfill creative assignments within a tight budget.

Font

What the font? A font is a collection of letters, numbers, and symbols. They can be flowery, stern, playful… there’s a font for virtually every brand personality. Your font should fit the message you’re trying to convey.

See how variations of the Helvetica font family change the look and feel of the copy below. 

Want to impress a typography snob ? Though the words “font” and “typeface” are often interchanged in these here digital days–they’re not the same thing. Gasp. That’s right, a font is what you use and a typeface is what you see. This goes back to the horse and buggy days of publishing when a font only included an alphabet and its associated characters in one size. So if you needed to make the words bigger–you needed to manually change out your 8-point Arial font for a 10-point Arial font. One typeface with multiple fonts. Whew.

Sans Serif

In typography, a sans serif typeface is a style of type without serifs–you know those little details that hang over the bottoms and tops of all the letters? The term comes from the french word “sans” and means “without”. The words below are a sans serif typeface.

Serif

In typography, a serif typeface is a style of type with details on the ends. Times New Roman is a recognizable example.

Well there you have it–the design lingo traps I’ve seen clients and teams step in. Did I miss one? Let me know by leaving me a comment.