Sherry Main · Storify

Creative & Digital | 13.01.25

Sherry Main — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 07:46:01 GMT

Storified by Sherry Main · Wed, Feb 27 2013 23:46:01

LONDON - As the world's oldest subway, better known as the Tube, celebrates its 150th birthday, here's a familiar but gently tweaked reminder: Mind the map. The London Underground is justly famous as a defining feature of the British capital, a wonder of the modern age that whooshes millions of riders around the city every day.

Guardian CEO Andrew Miller on paywalls, mobile, and going global

The story of the news industry at the moment is the interplay between contraction and expansion. As publishers reduce the size of their operations, they're also looking outward to new products, new coverage areas - or new geographies. The media map is increasingly global.

Almost Flat Design | Matthew Moore Design

Flat design is both hot and controversial in world of user interface. Microsoft led the charge to introduce it to the masses and many others have followed suit: LayerVault, The Next Web, and more. Many designers have been calling it a fad since early on, thanks in large part to the UX problems it presents in interfaces that reach a certain level of complexity.

How to Create Great Slides for Presentations | The Big Picture

How to create great slides for presentations from Mike Jeffs

Lessons from The New York Times' app graveyard: When an app has an expiration date

The election is over. Even the inauguration is over. So it makes sense, perhaps, that The New York Times this week discontinued its Elections 2012 mobile app. The Times launched the app some 13 months ago, on the eve of primary season, and the plan was always to give it an expiration date, Times emerging platforms editor Fiona Spruill told me.

For The New York Times, redesigns happen in print, too

Science Times has a new design and an array of features to reflect the growing role of science, medicine and health in the news and society. Among them are The Week, a review of science news and a look ahead; and AskWell, in which journalists and experts answer readers' health questions.

Creative & Digital | 12.11.09

Sherry Main — Sat, 10 Nov 2012 07:22:01 GMT

Highlights in creative, digital and business news. Reads that I find interesting and informational about strategy, design, visualization, creative thinking, social media, visual media, and the collective web.

Storified by Sherry Main · Fri, Nov 09 2012 23:22:01

College applications has always been a mundane task, but gamifying it makes takes it to a whole new level. In the case of USC:
"...Game-based learning allows more young people to learn about college earlier than ever before. We are encouraging freshman to play the game because it’s never too early to start thinking about college."

USC's Collegeology Games Turns College-Application Process Into Facebook Game - AllFacebook

Applying to colleges and seeking financial aid is no game, but a Facebook game from the Collegeology Games project -- a collaboration of ...

Pretty soon, one's reputation as a content creator will directly influence your page rank within Google search results. This is worth taking note for writers and organizations who provide written content on the Web.

Why Journalists Should Care About Google Author Rank A Lot More Than Amazon Author Rank - Forbes

AUTHOR RANK IN A NUTSHELL A while back Google struck upon the idea that in order to ensure search results were of the highest quality con...

Facebook's opt-in notifications and Pages feed bring two new ways for users to engage with brands. This raises a challenge for brands, however since the onus is now on the user to choose to receive notifications from pages they "like"...

How Do Facebook's Opt-In Notifications, Pages Feed Affect Brands? - AllFacebook

Facebook set the marketing world abuzz when it began testing two features: opt-in notifications for page updates (so users can be pinged ...

Beautifying information so that it is attractive and provides an informative narrative isn't an easy task. Fast Company offers ten great tips to help put your information presentation on the right track.

10 Steps To Designing An Amazing Infographic

Information can be useful--and even beautiful--but only when it's presented well. In an age of information overload, any guidance through...

And finally, two new features this week from Instagram and Pinterest:

Announcing Instagram Profiles on the Web!

You've asked for Instagram on the web and we've listened. Over the next few days, we'll be rolling out Instagram profiles on the web! You...

Announcing Secret Boards for the Holidays!

The holidays are a time for being with family, sharing great meals, and, of course, surprising your favorite people with a special gift. ...

Creative & Digital | 12.08.24

Sherry Main — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 07:38:30 GMT

Storified by Sherry Main · Fri, Aug 24 2012 00:38:30

With 1.1 million followers, and tweets like "I'm safely on the surface of Mars. GALE CRATER I AM IN YOU!!!", @MarsCuriosity is a great live case study of how Twitter has given a mere rover, a real voice.

Rovers Are From Mars: How Curiosity Is Killing It On Twitter : NPR

Twitter wasn't built to give voice to Curiosity, the rover currently exploring Mars, but it's awfully well-suited for the purpose. One of...

Blogs are buzzing about Matchbox Twenty's newest album, and their 360 music video. The video itself isn't of stellar quality, but the interactivity and feeling that you're at the "center of it all" is giving fans a unique and engaging experience.

MB20 - She's So Mean - 360 music video

Watch Matchbox Twenty perform the new single " She's So Mean " in a 360 degree video for their new album " NORTH " out in September on Em...

While the MB20 360 capture is a video, there are also still options for 360 viewing. An example is the 360 POV that we shared with readers of UC Irvine's New Swan Theatre article (http://bit.ly/OuNWO1).

Shakespeare Theater - Photosynth

As we continue to explore ways of digitizing and experientializing the content that we create on a daily basis, keeping in mind the four "I's" as identified in a study by Latitude may be key to how stories are not only told, but packaged and designed:

Immersion: Delving deeper into the story through supplementary context and sensory experiences.

Interactivity: Allowing consumers to become part of the narrative and possibly influence its outcome.

Integration: Having a seamless connection among all platforms being used and going beyond just replicating content on different devices.

Impact: Inspiring consumers to take action of some kind, e.g. purchase a product, sign up for a service, support a cause, etc.

The Future Of Storytelling: Immersion, Integration, Interactivity, Impact

As technology becomes more advanced and more accessible across multiple platforms, it's only natural for consumers to expect increasingly...

News content, including those presented on Facebook and Twitter are chronologically sorted. But times are a changing, thanks to platforms like Pinterest and Medium. This means user behavior is changing. And while topic pages aren't new, it's appearing to be a better way to present information and stories to readers.

You'll see that this consideration is being made in the redesign of news.uci.edu when it launches in the fall.

Why Topic Pages Are The Next Big Thing

Chronological and real-time consumption of content just doesn't work anymore. It's time for topic pages to add a layer of organization on...

We always wonder why something gets more leg on Facebook than Twitter (and vice versa). This blog article takes a deep analytic look at this thought.

There are a lot of great visualizations and examples in the post below, but in summary:

- Instant gratification infographics, cuteness, photos, comics, and pop culture get liked on Facebook.
- APIs, datasets, visualizations related to techie sites (Delicious, foursquare, Twitter, LinkedIn), and picture-less articles get tweeted instead.

Tweets vs. Likes: What gets shared on Twitter vs. Facebook? - Edwin Chen's Blog

It always strikes me as curious that some posts get a lot of love on Twitter, while others get many more shares on Facebook: What account...

There's SEO (search engine optimization), then there's Content Optimization Strategy. The difference? As Inbound Writer describes it:

"Content optimization is more than just populating the page with a bunch of keywords, it means using the words and phrases your customers use but still creating readable and engaging material for your audience."

Check out the freemium tool from Inbound Writer. We haven't had a chance to use it yet, but I'd love to hear feedback if you get to exploring it before we do.

Inbound Writer: Create Content That Matters

With InboundWriter, you can find out what interests your target audience by discovering the very words and phrases they use when search...

And finally, visualization of data, research, illustrative stories, etc. are eye candy to me. Information is Beautiful's Awards shortlist for the past year is now out. Enjoy scrolling through these beautiful pieces of digital art.

Categories include: Infographic infodesign, data visualization, interactive visualization, data jounalism, motion inforgraphic, and tool or website.

OUR SHORTLIST! - Information Is Beautiful Awards

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Creative & Digital | 12.08.17

Sherry Main — Sat, 18 Aug 2012 06:36:12 GMT

Storified by Sherry Main · Fri, Aug 17 2012 23:36:12

Developing a truly interactive print publication takes a lot of user experience and interaction forethought, not to mention investment in development costs on the digitizing of the interactivity.

IKEA's 2013 catalogue is a great example of how print can truly become a moving experience. (If the video cannot be viewed, see it on YouTube at http://youtu.be/QQ8HNXtl7jQ/)

A New Kind of Catalog: The 2013 IKEA Catalog App Preview · ikeausa

Ever run into an issue with online video publishing because you don't have the proper releases or someone does not want to have their likeness appear anymore? YouTube now offers a tool to blur faces.

YouTube Blog: Face blurring: when footage requires anonymity

As citizens continue to play a critical role in supplying news and human rights footage from around the world, YouTube is committed to cr...

HBR offers a good read on developing content for "mobile" versus content prepared for "mobility".

Key takeaway: "Instead of creating a whole host of apps that few are likely to download, invest in making your 'digital ecosystem' more mobile-friendly."

The Future Isn't About Mobile; It's About Mobility

While the globe grapples with uncertain economic realities, "mobile" appears to be gold. Facebook is expected to announce their uniquely ...

Adobe released a new open source sans serif font this week that aims for "visual simplicity". Read more below, or download at: http://sourceforge.net/projects/sourcesans.adobe/.

Source Sans Pro: Adobe's first open source type family " Typblography

Adobe's legacy in type technology Adobe has come a long way since its early days in which the specification for the PostScript Type 1 fon...

Publishing to the web isn't about just creating web pages for the sake of creating a content page. Bringing people to a singular webpage does no more than bring them to a final destination, and does nothing about keeping them engaged in other content that becomes lost in layers of pages.

Here is a good post about redesigning web pages to streams of content, much like Pinterest... for consumption on desktops, tablets, and mobile platforms.

Stop Publishing Web Pages

Most users on the web spend most of their time in apps. The most popular of those apps, like Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, Tumblr and others,...

And in closing, a long but thought provoking read on creative delivery of news to your audience. Personalize, curate with three goals in mind – interest, effects, and agency:

"If we let go of the idea of single set of headlines for everyone based around current events, we get personalized news feeds which can address timescales longer than the breaking news cycle."

Who should see what when? Three principles for personalized news

I really don't know how a news editor should choose what stories to put in front of people, because I don't think it's possible to cram t...

Creative & Digital | 12.07.03

Sherry Main — Tue, 03 Jul 2012 07:33:58 GMT

Storified by Sherry Main · Tue, Jul 03 2012 00:44:10

Not much in the social realm in this issue, but some interesting reads that I've happened upon related to all things visualized -- from analytics to platforms and storytelling to fonts.

Google Analytics is daunting for someone who is not engrossed in it on a regular basis. Cue Sparkwise: a new data visualization and outreach platform that aims to help nonprofits and independent media organizations "communicate their initiatives and accomplishments with visual clarity, statistical tangibility, and aesthetic verve."

How A Web App Can Help Nonprofits Tell Better Stories And Raise Cash

Nonprofits depend on successful outreach campaigns to survive. They must consistently generate support for the work they do--and despite ...

Mobify NOW: 31% of adults use their phones for the majority of their Internet access. Among adults 18-29 who use the Internet on their phones, that jumps to 45%.

Analytics shows that www.uci.edu mobile viewership has doubled year-over-year from June 2010-11 to June 2011-12.

New Pew data: There's a good (and growing) chance you're reading this on your phone

A majority of American adults who have cell phones are now using them to go online, according to a study out today from the Pew Internet ...

Visual storytelling is not just in imagery or videography, but in the design of your platform, content, and containers too. Designing the whole package is critical in offering a complete and unified user experience. This story talks about digital photography, crowdsourcing, and the app-ification of content.

Visual storytelling on the net: how web design is changing

Jason Amunwa is on a mission to beautify the web. He works at digital-telepathy, the design studio that created SlideDeck and HelloBar.co...

Mobile design and user interfaces are also key to visual storytelling. To that end, I have started a Pinterest board highlighting mobile designs and what I feel makes them visually successful: http://pinterest.com/sherrymain/mobile-web-design/

As we move forward in responsive design of websites – designing for web, tablet and mobile devices -- layout is of course at top of mind. How about typography?

How To Maintain Readable Type In Responsive Design | Van SEO Design

Setting type involves choices that create proportional relationships in your text. Done well and your text will be both easy and desirabl...

Lastly, in case you missed it in your inbox, LinkedIn is no longer pulling Twitter feeds (via RSS or the #in hashtag integration) to post on your profiles. Note that, however, you can push to Twitter anything that you share via your LinkedIn page.

LinkedIn Blog " Sharing Professional Content on LinkedIn and Twitter

LinkedIn and Twitter have worked together since 2009 to enable the sharing of professional conversations on both platforms. Since this re...

Creative & Digital | 12.06.08

Sherry Main — Fri, 08 Jun 2012 08:12:52 GMT

Storified by Sherry Main · Fri, Jun 08 2012 01:12:52

Storifying a story on Storify. Many organizations are looking to curate content and repackage existing streams. This story features an interview with co-founder Burt Herman on what the company's product strategy and their current aim. See why the likes of the Washington Post and NPR are using this tool regularly.

A catch-up with Storify: The past, present and future | Online Journalism Features | Journalism.co.uk

The past few months have seen a number of new announcements relating to curation platform Storify, which enables journalists to pull toge...

If you don't have Photoshop, but are looking for a quick way to edit photos online, check out Cloudinary. The freemium service purports to streamline your web application’s image manipulation needs. Cloudinary automates image uploading, resizing, cropping, optimizing, sprite generation and more.

Cloudinary

Cloudinary seamlessly delivers your website's assets from the Cloud to your users. This improves the visitor experience while reducing co...

Conversations abound about banner ads and social ads. What are the differences, and which one is better? This article suggests that social ads are better:

"Instead of paying on a per-impression basis, many advertisers have realized that by engaging their consumers with content they are likely to see and forward on, they are reducing the blended cost of impression or blended cost per click. "

Display Ads Are Dead Because They Can't Be Shared

Money is flowing into all things social. We just witnessed Facebook, one of the largest IPOs in history, laser focused on the social expe...

I've been leading conversations about closed social forums for our organization, so I find this piece interesting.

The Intranet isn't dead, as the article suggests, but rather it has evolved... so much so that it is unrecognizable in its original form. The challenge (and key to success) lies in redesigning company Intranets to current behaviors.

What Ever Happened to Intranets?

Back in the mid-1990s when the Web was young, corporate Intranets were popping up at companies all over the place. They were usually quic...

Finally, for publication designers (of all mediums), this article is an interesting study in fonts, numbers, and visual consumability of numbers.

Fonts for Financials | Hoefler & Frere-Jones

Fonts for Financials Choosing Fonts for Annual Reports Annual reports, financial disclosures, investor presentations... When you're faced...

Creative & Digital | 12.05.25

Sherry Main — Fri, 25 May 2012 19:12:29 GMT

Storified by Sherry Main · Fri, May 25 2012 12:12:29

It's been a little while since the last Creative & Digital Storify... but here is the latest!

This week's take-home message is that the key to our success is in the ability to iterate with the changing times... and understand that that is also our greatest challenge as designers, creators, innovators, etc.

Video consumption continues to grow: Study highlights unprecedented levels of video viewership and social sharing habits.

Brands are seeing a greater impact with online video, says report

Brands across multiple industries are seeing more customers respond to online video than ever before, according to the latest report from...

The full report is available from 33across: http://33across.com/pressrelease-051012.php#axzz1uTb91FtO

However, it is worth noting NPR's shift to more audio content, even on a visual platform such as Flipboard. Their reason? Audio is a multi-taskable medium. You can listen to content while doing other things.

Flipboard + public radio could be a killer combo

"Want to keep mobile users engaged longer?" I wrote a year ago. "Just add audio." Flipboard, the popular "social magazine" for the iPad a...

"On average, 20% of sites’ content is now being consumed in mobile browsers. But, evolving technology platforms and consumption patterns makes it far more difficult to succeed on mobile than it is on desktop."

Why Mobile Content Is So Hard to Get Right

As a foreign correspondent in London 10 years ago, my job was to unearth innovative new startups for my business magazine's readers. I tr...

And in case you missed it, some interesting studies on Facebook cover images and twitter content strategy.

Report: Cover Images Draw Eyeballs On Facebook Timeline Pages - AllFacebook

Eye-tracking outfit EyeTrackShop turned its eyes to timeline for pages and found that the cover image was king. EyeTrackShop's findings, ...

Vision Statement: What Makes a Great Tweet

Research by Paul André, of Carnegie Mellon University, Michael Bernstein, of MIT, and Kurt Luther, of Georgia Institute of Technology.

Finally, a fun toy for your Facebook Pages. Check out this customizable Timeline Movie tool. It auto-generates a video that flies through the history of your Page.

Facebook Pages Become Stars With Timeline Movie Maker - AllFacebook

Timeline Movie Maker, a Facebook application created with marketing agency Definition 6, is now available for Facebook pages, giving bran...

Creative & Digital | 12.04.27

Sherry Main — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 15:37:31 GMT

Storified by Sherry Main · Fri, Apr 27 2012 08:37:31

This Friday, our entire office will be going into the first-ever (at least in the last decade) all-hands-on-deck retreat. The impetus is the reorganization of Strategic Communications, and the new leadership (of which I am a part).

This week's stories are all inspiration for the last part of the retreat day... I hope people will leave energized instead of exhausted after a long day of thinking, strategizing and brain-dumping.

Color and color palettes have been on people's minds as we roll out a new graphic standards guide at our institution. Whether we use one color or multiple colors, Adage shares some interesting insights on using color... even the colorful words themselves. Think UPS BROWN or TIFFANY BLUE BOX.

Rules for Protecting Your Brand's Color, in Black and White | Guest Columnists - Advertising Age

A single word or logo conveys powerful brand messaging in an efficient, uncluttered way. Likewise, with careful advertising strategy and ...

Interesting commentary on GMail's UI (user interface) #fail.

GMail: designer arrogance and the cult of minimalism

GMail: designer arrogance and the cult of minimalism Posted by jonoscript under Uncategorized | Tags: email, gmail, google, listen to you...

If you have 18 minutes in your day (perhaps over lunch!), take a look at these "Content 2020" videos by Coca-Cola. I'll be bookmarking my team's portion of the retreat with these videos.

These two videos effectively and eloquently illustrate the web redesign strategy that we've all been feeling, but have been unable to pen.

Coca Cola Content 2020 Part One · thecognitivemedia

URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LerdMmWjU_E&feature=relmfu

Coca Cola Content 2020 Part Two · thecognitivemedia

URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiwIq-8GWA8&feature=relmfu

And finally, in case you've missed out on Google Drive v. Dropbox debate this week, here's a good write-up bu the New York Times. Content sharing and cloud spaces are here to stay, so let's be inspired to embrace the technology...

The Lowdown on Google Drive

Google released its long-awaited cloud storage product, Google Drive. The basics include 5 gigabytes of free storage, no ads and a slidin...

Creative & Digital | 12.04.20

Sherry Main — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 07:22:54 GMT

Storified by Sherry Main · Fri, Apr 20 2012 00:22:54

Creativity is an overused buzz word these days. However, it's an important concept and practice that should be fostered in ANY workplace, and often there "isn't enough time". Here are some tips from Tina Seelig, author of "InGenius".

A Crash Course In Creative Breakthroughs http://bit.ly/J8LUkH by @drake_baer
— Fast Company · Wed, Apr 18 2012 12:15:01

Digital publishing has been at the top of mind in our office – specifically publishing of a digital magazine. There are many considerations to be made, but the PDF linked in the article below gives a good high-level overview.

Digital Magazine Publishing Strategy Basics

Digital Magazine Publishing Strategy Basics (400 KB) Is the Digital Magazine Publishing Environment Your Next Stop? Discover tips for dev...

Perhaps it's because Facebook has made "timeline" an important part of branding practices... but at some point you'll likely need a tool to timeline on a platform outside of Facebook. Check out Knight News Lab's visual tool below, as well as how others are already using it.

Want to figure out how to take a @Storify & have it appear in a timeline using the Timeline tool from @KnightNewsLab: http://bit.ly/w2O5Hu
— Andy Carvin · Fri, Mar 23 2012 17:58:01

Free icon, brushes, fonts, patterns.... have fun! Be creative...

Free Goods | Creative Market ~ Handcrafted, mousemade.

Creative Market is a marketplace for handcrafted, mousemade design content like vector patterns, icons, photoshop brushes, fonts and more.

Lastly, I share this Nieman Lab case study. This quote quantifies the challenge our office is feeling in redesigning for the next generation:

"Launching a new website…and putting the focus on the presentation of the work instead of the daily grind of producing journalism. That’s a hard thing to prioritize."

Emerson College student paper completes a fully responsive, mobile-friendly redesign

The Berkeley Beacon, Emerson College's 65-year-old independent student newspaper, mirrors a lot of professional newspapers: Its funding i...

Creative & Digital | 12.04.06

Sherry Main — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 06:58:10 GMT

Storified by Sherry Main · Thu, Apr 05 2012 23:58:10

The impact of an executive's word is immense, and if your execs aren't effective digital social networks, you're missing the boat. As I hammer out social media strategies and toolkits, one of the recommendations that's always included is reverse mentoring.

Managers Need to Up Their Game with Social Media

Using social media to accomplish a meaningful purpose involves more than providing new technology and praying for success. Successful mas...

In light of my team's web redesign project – one aspect of which is a news page – these two Nieman Lab stories are compelling.

Nick Diakopolous: "computer science and journalism have a lot in common... They are both fundamentally concerned with information. Acquiring it, storing it, modifying it, presenting it. " Diakopolous identified 27 computing concepts that could apply to journalism

A new framework for innovation in journalism: How a computer scientist would do it

What if journalism were invented today? How would a computer scientist go about building it, improving it, iterating it? He might start b...

A recent Pew study makes the case for going mobile (or at the very least, responsive in your web design), particularly if you provide "news"-like content.

News-to-go is here to stay

For anyone who can remember being floored by the mid-1980s Chrysler sedan that warned "your door is ajar" in delightful monotone, it's st...

This is BIG. Ustream had already integrated Facebook comments into chatter when viewing live events on their site. But that a live stream can now be dropped into a Facebook Timeline will only increase audience engagement and event visibility.

Ustream Bringing Live Video To Facebook Timeline

Live video-streaming provider Ustream is integrating Facebook's timeline for profiles with the goal of allowing users of the social netwo...

And for those of us mulling over how to creatively use Instagram, here are some examples of how both the images are being used, as well as the Instagram API.

One of the cool API applications it the overlaying of photos over a map.

INSTAGRAM | Examples of how brands are using Instagr...

Here are some more examples of how brands are using Instagram and our API to create compelling visual experiences for their fans. You can...

Lastly, for those of us suffering week's end mental block... take a break. Re-energize, but away from your office.

Desks, Where Creativity Goes To Die | Fast Company

Along with many thousands of others, I attended SXSW this month. And while there, I learned some important lessons (other than "exercise ...