For the few E-Newsletters and fancy html email invites that I’m called on to design/code/send, there is a mountain of pain and suffering that nobody else in my office could even begin to understand.  So I suffer in silence.

The first day of my vacation. And what am I doing? Reading posts about web standards for html email.

Microsoft’s Lame attempt at explaining their decision to AGAIN use the Word rendering engine for Outlook 2010, ..has solicited some great/entertaining comments:

Tim Dawson says:

“[click here to] Read this issue online if you can’t see the images or are using Outlook 2007.”

- Quoted from the official Microsoft Xbox newsletter.

Even your company’s own marketing teams cant send out appealing newsletters using the tools you are providing.

Jamie Newman says:

Outlook is the only client that seems to purposely cripple industry-recognized HTML standards in order to allow Word (a Word Processor NOT an email message composer!) to build emails of a poor standard and limited by yesterdays technolgoies.

And before some misguided argument about ensuring a safe experience for the user – the rendering engine should be no different to a web browser which also gives the user the same security preferences and lets them make an informed choice.

What I and thousands of developers want to know is – why should Outlook go against what all other email clients are doing and make our lives a living hell?!

Robert Burke says:

You say your users can make professional grade emails without having to be HTML experts. I have yet to see one person in any place I work use Outlook to generate tables and graphs, they use Word Docs (if they know how, which most people don’t), and attach them to the email.

Outlook’s, and thusly, Word’s capabilities are so far outside what the majority of everyday business people can comprehend. You rarely see anyone capable of using Word/Excel/Powerpoint to their fullest extent because most people aren’t Office literate enough to make use of it all.

You are obviously only thinking from an internal business point of view and not the whole world.

David Kaneda says:

Apologies if this is a bit of a flame comment, but come on — it’s Outlook 2010. One would think it could render HTML emails better than Netscape Navigator 4. Like I said, this is just absurd.

Too often, a designer will design and/or judge a piece of communication based on how it looks, on how it pleases his or her design sensibilities. The single-factor measuring stick of style. I’m picturing a horse with blinders who only sees the pretty.

And I surmise that in the PRINT world, this was semi-sustainable. Enter web. With the advent of analytics and TASK measurement, the same way of “looking at things” doesn’t cut the mustard.

The web designers you WANT TO WORK WITH will hand-off a design and withhold judgment until they get feedback on how well it PERFORMS.

And this involves both a commitment to design AND content.

It’s an old and well-worn conversation.  But a rehashed conversation that took place in my head while reading this great post:

Writing Microcopy
“The fastest way to improve your interface is to improve your copy-writing.”

Microcopy is small yet powerful copy. It’s fast, light, and deadly. It’s a short sentence, a phrase, a few words. A single word. It’s the small copy that has the biggest impact. Don’t judge it on its size…judge it on its effectiveness.

The layouts, the grids, the fancy background images, and the elegant typography are meaningless without effective messaging and meaning.

So two goals for myself as a designer.

• Push back the demand for style when there is a lack of substance.
• Do a better job of crafting and promoting effective content when opportunities arise.

See also:

eduGuru: Content is more important than design
Zeldman: Content precedes design..

Also see also:

Where’s the Beef?

Often times the creation of a site, in a client’s eyes, is about making the juiciest-looking hamburger around, one that customers cannot resist. The conversations in process are about what toppings are going onto this thing, a la sweet javascript functions, glossy buttons and calls-to-action in every nook and cranny. But; and I hesitate to push this metaphor and former Wendy’s slogan too far; where’s the beef? How do you know that what you’re offering your audience even has any value?

I enjoyed the following link from Karine Joly’s most recent HigherEdExperts newsletter.

Noteworthy bits from each speaker at the Suny Cuad Advancement Conference, as cataloged by TimsHead.

“Social media is not a tool to blow your horn, jump up and down and say ‘look at me!’ It’s a place to have conversations.”

“We are all content designers. Whatever you do in communications or design is content management. Content is king.”

“Looking at college Web sites, you can feel the pull of a committee. Too many sites designed to please committees when they should instead focus on what users want.”

many many more here:
http://insidetimshead.wordpress.com/2009/06/14/suny-cuad-web-roundup/

Do yourself a favor. Check out Soul of Athens.

It’s an innovative online publication produced by students at Ohio University’s School of Visual Communication and E.W. Scripps School of Journalism.

Quick stats:

• 41 projects
• more than 50 photographers, designers, Web developers and writers.

My thoughts
If I could go back in time and have a do-over, I’d like to attend a university where I could participate in projects like this. The pitfall of the traditional university visual arts program is a lack of connection to storytelling. To often you’ll find art for art’s sake and design for design’s sake. ..and ultimately a poverty of meaning. I love these stories and their strong community connection.

See Also:

• Nice post about the project at Innovative Interactivity
• Soul of Athens on Twitter
• ..and on Vimeo

Producing lackluster slideshows and videos is a great way to fail in a very public way. It’s frustrating. I should know. The key to getting better, I’ve found, is to produce a large volume of work. Lots of small multimedia projects. Not a few BIG ones, but many small ones. Because failure is more palatable in small doses.

Two inspirational quotes to get us started on our journey of pain:

Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker. Failure is delay, not defeat. It is a temporary detour, not a dead end. Failure is something we can avoid only by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.– Denis Waitley

Men succeed when they realize that their failures are the preparation for their victories. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

So we want to produce better audio slideshows, and better videos. We could fail in every possible way and incrementally and painfully improve over time, or we could follow the simple advice from these two outstanding links:

Ten Ways To Improve Your Multimedia Production Right Now – A post from the experts at MediaStorm.

“Often, as multimedia producers, we are given work to edit that others have created. Some things simply cannot be changed, like an out-of-focus photograph. But there are some things we can do right now to improve the work no matter how challenging the original assets may be.”

Mastering Multimedia: How to make your audio slideshows better

“I have probably produced 75 or so audio slideshows. I understand the challenge of making a compelling narrative resonate with viewers. Here are some of the lessons I’ve learned over time…”

Those two links contain a treasure trove of tips and pointers. Four of my favs:

• It’s best to open your show with a bit of natural sound rather than with a subject talking. The ramp up into your story is important. If you don’t pull the viewer in fast they will bolt. Natural sound eases the viewer into your story without jolting them with dialogue.
• Like video, try to match up photos to what the narrator is talking about. The same goes for the natural sound. When you do this, your story will really start to crackle.
• Use room tone between gaps in dialogue, even when using a musical bed. Without room tone, your audio will sound like someone dipping in and out of a cave.
• Watch your production on speakers with someone who has not yet seen the piece. There’s something about reviewing your work with an audience that makes one more self-conscious and thus open to seeing new things.