Peace poster appears in Washington Post

Great "product placement"

An article in the Washington Post features a photo of Congressman Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress and the first African American to represent Minnesota in his office. Just behind him to the left is a poster I designed for the Peace Alliance, promoting the campaign calling for a federally funded Department of Peace in the U.S. government.

Now that's gratifying!

Here is the poster. If you are inspired, you can purchase one here. All the proceeds will support the campaign for a Department of Peace.

Blood diamonds? Conflict electronics? What we don't know can kill others.

I saw the film Blood Diamond the other night on TV. I highly, highly recommend it. It was riveting and inspiring. Yes, horrifying and violent too, but absolutely worth watching. Not only because it depicts an issue of great importance, but also because its a really well-done film. (I worked in film editing for 11 years).

I already knew something of the issue of diamond mining fueling conflict and human rights abuses in Liberia and Sierra Leone. And I knew enough to feel very relieved that diamonds weren't things I ever cared to purchase. (Instead of buying my engagement ring, my husband "purchased" the ring that had belonged to my grandmother from me - by making a donation to a favorite charity. The ring then became his to give.) And that was back in 2000, before the issue of blood diamonds became something the US public was aware of. In fact, it wasn't until 2003 that the Kimberly certification process went into effect - a process that enabled consumers to certify they were purchasing diamonds that were indeed conflict free.

By November 2002, negotiations between governments, the international diamond industry and civil society organizations resulted in the creation of the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS). The KPCS document sets out the requirements for controlling rough diamond production and trade. The KPCS entered into force in 2003, when participating countries started to implement its rules. read more

However, computer electronics... That's a different matter. When I heard that other minerals were essential to building our electronics - I was deeply troubled. I have TONS of electronics!! And honestly, I want more, and I want them cheap! But I certainly don't want them to cost other people their very existence.

So I wanted to know more. And specifically - what could I do as a citizen to shop and live responsibly? Fortune had a great article on the matter. I recommend it to anyone interested in the subject. The bottom line is, its true;

"The consumer electronics industry is the largest end user of the minerals that are fueling the fighting in eastern Congo," says John Norris, executive director of the Enough Project, an Africa-focused advocacy group and leader of the coalition. "These companies have an obligation to ensure they are not financing armed groups by demanding more information and better behavior from their suppliers."

And there is already some efforts underway to address the matter.

In Congress, Sen. Sam Brownback is partnering with Sen. Russ Feingold and Sen. Dick Durbin to revise legislation that Brownback introduced last year addressing the issue. Set to be introduced by April 4, the new bill would require companies that use minerals mined in the region to disclose sourcing to the SEC. previously cited

And;

Some companies already have policies on minerals from DR Congo. Motorola (MOT, Fortune 500), Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500), HP (HPQ, Fortune 500), Nokia (NOK) and RIM (RIMM) bar suppliers from selling them Congolese coltan. "Mining activities that fuel conflict are unacceptable," Motorola wrote in response to Enough's request.
HP also said it would work on the issue. "We take very seriously the issue of the social and environmental conditions associated with our electronics industry supply chain," says Judy Glazer, director of HP's global social and environmental responsibility operations.
But even if the companies want to help, it's not easy. There's no certification system for minerals from the region. "Short of banning all minerals coming from the Eastern Congo or coming from Central Africa, it's going to be very difficult to set up a system on the ground that will be able to distinguish between good and bad minerals," says Jason Stearns, a former UN DR Congo investigator....previously sited

It seems this is an issue to keep an eye on. I'm thrilled that Apple has some policies in place and will track to see what more evolves. I'm hoping these beginning efforts become stronger over time and that more businesses step up voluntarily, or feel the pressure, to adopt and publicize similar policies. And as consumers we can take responsibility as well.

There are several simple things we can each do:

1. Call our congress members and ask them to support S891 the bill before Congress. (Search on bill no. S891 to read the text.) Use Congress.org to find your Congress Members' contact information. Just type in your zip code in and click GO. Contact your Senators and Representative, give them your address so they know you are a constituent, then ask them to co-sponsor this bill.
   
2. Make a donation to nonprofits like the Enough Project.
   
3. Research electronic companies before making purchases to make sure your purchases are as conflict free as possible.
4. Talk about this issue with people you know.
   

...........

Previous efforts to clean up supply chains have had mixed results. The Kimberley Process, a joint government, industry and nonprofit initiative that certifies shipments of rough diamonds as "conflict-free," was largely successful, now covering most of the world's diamonds. But the chocolate industry's response to criticism over child labor on cocoa farms in West Africa, a voluntary protocol by which companies would wean themselves from child labor, then certify as much, hasn't significantly changed practices in Ivory Coast and elsewhere. previously sited

Entrenched situations such as these don't change overnight and our efforts may never "seem" like they are enough. The reality is 5 minutes of action, can go a long way when enough people join together. As consumers, we play a vital role in helping shape this issue and others like it. And we have far more power than we realize.

SEO - the basics and a few tips and tools

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the fine art of getting your website ranked high enough by search engines like Google, so that when people do a search on your keywords, your site comes up on the first page. Sounds great. Though its not such a simple goal to achieve. The bottom line is that the search engines want the content and actual popularity of your site to be the determining factor of your rank, and they are always trying to adjust their methodology to encourage and ensure that.

Still a few basics to consider which can likely help you:

1. Page titles that start with and include keywords
2. Multiple folders (If your site is built in html) and the folders are named with key words - this helps
   
3. Text rich pages concentrated with keywords (but not so much that it turns off humans - they are in fact your primary audience!)
4. Use links with keywords when possible
   
5. Get as many people to (legitimately) link to your site - when your write an article online, or set up a blog - include your web link.
   
6. Link to other people - again keep it legit.
7. Keep the content on your home page fresh and new - this keeps the spiders (and the humans) coming back for more.
8. Of course meta tags and descriptions should also have keywords added.

If you have a great product or service, and great content which you make available for your audience, overtime your ranking will organically improve. If you want to give it a big boost, be prepared to pay - either in time or money.

SEO is a growing industry. You can pay companies to run SEO campaigns. Its often an ongoing process that takes time, frequent monitoring, trial and error, focus and patience. Web designers can incorporate some basic tactics to help boost your ranking, but this is making a site Search Engine Ready and not the same as SEO, which includes ongoing monitoring of results and tweaking the site until you have the results you want. You can do this yourself, but it takes time.

You can also consider SEM (Search Engine Marketing) and pay for a service like City Search, Reach Local or Context Web to run a targeted marketing campaign. Many of these services start at $400 p/m commitment level and that doesn't include the designing of the ads themselves.

Whether or not you're ready for such a marketing commitment, or not, be aware, the search engines are always changing their algorythms to thwart people trying to get their pages ranked higher through tricks. (Adding key words in tiny type that matches the background is one such trick.) These kind of shannanagans can get your site black listed and set your marketing back.

So what's a business to do?

Keep working on marketing your business and your site. Be mindful of SEO, but never loose site of your actual business. Content is what matters - to humans and spiders.

Below are a few tools that can help you

http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/ check out what key words get the most hits online in a particular category.

http://www.trackur.com/ Andy Beal is an ethical expert on SEO, and founded this company to help you track and monitor your brand and its reputation online. Check out his article on SEO (note: its a bit dated, but the content still quite applicable).

http://www.alexa.com/ - this site allows you to see who's searching your wesbite and which keywords they used to find you.

5 tools that help your business run better

I've been working over the past few months to systematize some of my operations. As a solo-entreprenuer, one of the best resources available to help increase my "free" time, are all the cool programs available online. So many to choose from! I thought I'd share some of the favorites I found, and hopefully save you some of the many hours I spent researching. I'm pretty sure most of the tools below come with a 30 day free trial - check the links to be sure. Enjoy!


1. PROJECT MANAGEMENT TOOLS
Hands down, I love Viewpath the best. Wrike.com comes in a close second. Also, I have a wiki - pbwiki.com - now called PBworks.com
What I was looking for:

• Accessible online
• Under $20 p/m
• Gantt chart with dependencies
• Could get a project set up in minutes (without having to read instructions)
• Could assign other people to tasks (without them having to sign up for the software)
• Could prioritize tasks
• Could enter a time estimates for tasks
• Could download the info in XLS as well as PDF
• Unlimited projects & tasks
• Integrated calendar

What each one does:

• Viewpath does it all and more - it is FREE!!! And it has tons of video and text tutorials. The calendar is not as integrated as I would have liked, but after further research - I think its the best choice for me. I don't need to collaborate with others so much. I use it mostly for internal purposes.
• Wrike.com was cool - but not cool enough. It was 20-30 p/m. I could assign people tasks, but it forced them to become wrike members. The cool feature, and I were collaborating on a big unwieldy project, this would sway me - is the intelligent email. You put the project name in your email subject lines, cc wrike.com on all your emails about a given project and presto - it automatically assigns it to the right folder. That was AWESOME. But like I say, I don't really need to collaborate. And no integrated calendar that was a deal breaker for me.
• PBWiki.com - I use this to track tons of information. Its like an intranet. I keep the login information for the gazillion accounts I have (each one wants something different, no letters, only numbers, 4-6 letters, 6-8 letters - so having one password is out the window). I take notes on projects and clients and keep it all there. I also track tons of personal stuff, vet visits with my animals for instance, a travel budget for an upcoming trip. Whatever you need to track, you can search the whole site so even if the organizational vision gets lost, you can still track important information easily. And you can invite specific people to look at or even collaborate on certain parts of of the site and not others. It wouldn't replace viewpath or wrike. I use it along with either one. Personal accounts are free.
  

2. INVOICING, ESTIMATES AND TIME TRACKING
cashboard.com won me over... though I might be reconsidering... or trying to really learn how to use it! I used to use BlinkSale - they don't have enough of the features I want,ed it was too simple. I wanted it to:

• be accessible online
• create estimates
• create duplicate estimates
  
• track time against them
• turn them into invoices
• branded estimates and invoices
  
• a time tracking widget
• time sheets both daily and weekly
• ability to pull various reports

I tried a few others, but this one had more of the features I wanted for a good price - $10 p/m.

3. PERSONAL FINANCE TRACKING
What I wanted:

• accessible online
• under $20 p/m
  
• syncs with all accounts
• provides a snapshot of all your finances
• provides a snapshot of networth
• has investment tracking
  
• could pull various reports for tax prep
• creates a budget
• tracks the budget against reality

Yodlee does it all - for FREE!!! Its perfect for our personal finances - my husband and I can both find all the info we need in one secure place. you can track EVERYTHING - mortgage payments, home value, investments, rewards, bank accounts, debts - you name it. Print reports, pay bills and more. We keep all the notes about our mortgage there, along with details of our insurance plans. And there is Mint.com, which is beautiful, though not nearly as robust. Its also FREE and perfect for a small nonprofit I chair. But it doesn't have enough power for our complex personal finances. Mvelopes was one I used for a year had high hopes for, but ultimately it just wasn't user friendly enough. And its NOT FREE!

4. REMOTE BACKUP
Jungledisk is perfect, especially if you're on a mac. I set it up in less than 5 minutes (UNPRESIDENTED!!) You can use it to drag and drop files while you work, have it back you up automatically on the schedule of your choice, and also access all your files from ANYWHERE. Great for people who work at multiple locations. And its VERY reasonably priced - just $2 p/m and 15 cents p/gig - no minimums, no maximums.

5. ENEWS LETTER
My favorite is still Constant Contact. Best bang for your buck.

THE MAGIC OF THE WEB - a marketing follow up

Earlier I talked about the magic of the web and the need to market your site if you're expecting visitors in volume. (Don't forget, when you meet someone in person, hand them your business card and brochure with your website prominently featured and tell them to visit your website. That's a solid marketing strategy, though not necessarily intended for high volume).

When it comes to online marketing, there are many ways you can go about it. And it all depends on your business goals and marketing strategies as to which way you go. For small business owners and smaller nonprofits, here are three basic ways to consider getting started.

1. Send out an enewsletter (I use constant contact)
2. Write a blog (I'm using blogger.com)
3. Advertise online (I don't do this, but I hear good things about google adwords)

One of the best ways ways to begin is by writing an enewsletter. You can send something as simple as a weekly or monthly tip, a case study, or something as complex as a complete old fashioned newsletter, with articles, interviews, and special offerings. They're a pretty simple, inexpensive, and effective tool. It allows you to stay in touch with contacts you already have and remind them of your products and services on a regular basis. Constant Contact is reasonably priced to meet any size organization's needs and has lots of reporting features, so you can see whose opening your emails and what they're interested in. You can use it to help drive traffic to your site on a regular basis or when you're running a special offer.

Another tool is a blog. You'll still have to drive traffic to the blog - but its way to position yourself as an expert in your field and give your prospects something for free. This gives them a chance to get to know you better and trust you more. One thing to consider, is that it takes time to write a blog. Make sure you're willing and able to spend the time doing it.

And the last marketing tip is to pay for online advertising. This can be very effective in terms of reach, and it can be expensive if you're expecting volume. You can run a banner ad campaigns and buy up targeted ad space. This will mean hiring a designer to design the ad, and then paying monthly to run the campaign. Alternatively you can pay a set amount each month to something like google ad words and slowly increase your traffic over time. Again, it depends on your expectations, needs and your available resources.

These are only a few examples of some of the least expensive and effective ways to start marketing on the web. So remember, first get clear on;

1. your business goals
2. the purpose of your website
   
3. and your ovearall marketing strategy
   

Then choose the online (and print) marketing tools that fit your needs and your available resources.

What's in a name? And the power of repetition...

I'm taking a momentary break from a website I'm designing for a client. I'm encountering something I encounter a lot with small businesses and nonprofits - inconsistent naming conventions. What do I mean and why does it matter? Let me put it this way, when I worked full time at an ad agency, one of the things we were trained to do AS we worked, was make sure things were always referred to by the same name wherever they appeared. For designers its an aspect of branding 101. It meant if "Wonderous Widgets" appeared 3 times on a page, 10 times in a brochure or 100 times in a website, it appeared as "Wonderous Widgets" in every single instance, in each and every format throughout a given campaign. Not sometimes as "WW" or other times as "Fancy Widgets", or occasionally as "Great Gadgets", but ALWAYS as "Wonderous Widgets".

Its a bit like the opposite of writing, where you try never to use the same word twice. In writing its assumed everybody understands the meaning of common words and for artistic reasons you want variety. When it comes to specific services, products or campaigns you are promoting that are unique to your business - using the same word or phrase to describe them each and every time will help your customers know what you're talking about. Otherwise you run the risk of confusing or distracting them [with thoughts like, "are Wonderous Widgets the same as Fancy Widgets? Is one better than the other? I definitely want the best Widget. I better wait until I'm sure I'm getting the best Widget possible. Maybe I'll try another site].

Of course what stands in the way of small businesses and nonprofits being able to do this successfully, is time and energy. It can be very time consuming to keep all the naming conventions square. But what's WAY more time consuming, is when you don't have any...

It takes a little planning ahead, a system and some discipline. Make yourself a cheat sheet - or as we call it in design, a "style guide". It will help you remember what your naming conventions are. And if you decide to change the way you name something, then remember, you want to change it EVERYWHERE it appears. And if you're working with a designer, you'll save yourself a bundle of cash if you make these decisions before they start working on your creative campaigns. :-)

If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter - T.S Eliot

As a designer, small business owner (and former film editor), I struggle with this concept constantly. It’s a big part of what separates good design from not so good design. How do you pack the essence of a company or organization into a tiny symbol that will translate in a nanosecond their audience – that’s the very point of logo design. And by extension, really, all kinds of design.

Reducing things to their essence takes way longer than you think. It’s all about trial and error. It’s often a bit of a meditative process for me. I play around with different ideas, let them marinade for a few days, come back with fresh eyes and reconsider them.

Reducing things to their essence it’s critical. Why? Because otherwise you distract and confuse your audience from their main purpose – being inspired by what you have to offer. And ultimately you loose them.

I’ve had many clients over the years struggle with this. I see them wanting to pack in ALL the information onto – whatever it is – their web page, their brochure, their newsletter, their business card. Their desire is that people will have all the information. The reality is, though, people just don’t absorb information that way. We have a very limited attentions span. By giving someone ALL the information, you’ve making it next to impossible to retain ANY of the information. Its rather counter-intuitive.

For any design or advertising campaign, choose one or two points to address - max. Highlight them. Any additional information you want to pack in there, keep it in small text or better still, leave it off for the next campaign. while first impressions matter, you’re building a relationship. You don’t need to, nor should you expect to, sell someone in the first introduction. Studies show that takes about 7 times before people will buy a product or service. That means they need to hear about you 7 times before they are sold. And that includes being sold on an idea if you’re a not-for-profit. Use that information to your advantage. Pace yourself and think strategically about your campaigns.

I’ll end it there for now. You get the idea. Less is more. That was our mantra back when I was at RISD. Make it yours in all your promotions. When you have something to say, a lot to say, give yourself the time you need to reduce it the essence. Remember, you may have other opportunities to say more another time – does it really belong in this piece now? Ask friends and colleagues for feedback (especially if you know a designer). And practice restraint. Your audience with thank you – by actually getting your message.