Fundamentals – CMS – What’s possible?

Content management is this kind of other-worldly thing to most people… What’s possible? What can I do? What if we did this? What if we did that?

The short answer is that a CMS system is capable of virtually anything you can imagine (as it pertains to website maintenance.) The real questions are “how much would it cost to build it?” and “how much would it be worth to me?”

General survey of what’s possible:
* Changing a snippet of text on a specific page
* Changing an image on a certain page

Taking things further, CMS can:
* Create a totally new page
* Create a totally new section of a website that can have multiple pages within it

Taking it even further, a CMS can:
* Swap site-wide graphics like a logo
* Change font sizes, text alignment, colors, etc.

In fact:
* A CMS can allow you to build your entire site from scratch

So. Why not go for “the ultimate” CMS? The simple answer is that you’re probably not a web designer… The point of a CMS is to empower you to change the types of things that need changed on the website that will make your life easier, and keep within your corporate identity.

Let’s repeat that… “Within your corporate identity.” If your identity designer has done a good job, -they have specific requirements for how your logo is used, what fonts are used, how typography is treated, how colors are used, and etc. If you don’t know what kerning or leading are. If you don’t know how to convert a PMS color to RGB, you might not be the best person to update your website.

Corporate identity is a question of degrees. The more you allow your identity to be watered down, and degraded, -the less value it has.

The majority of our CMS systems allow our clients to swap images, swap text, and do minimal changes to organization of pages. We find that when we over-do an admin, a client typically feels overwhelmed by the amount of decisions, and complexity. It’s much easier to try and estimate the actual usage of the system, and tailor it toward that usage…

When a client changes text on a CMS built by us, -a master CSS style sheet makes sure that the typefaces, kerning, leading, etc, are carefully maintained within the identity standards. We empower our clients to do the things they are best at. We empower our websites to maintain the integrity of the identity that they are subservient to.

Does your design firm have to be close by?

A lot of our clients are in our hometown of Wichita. Several of them aren’t…

We have clients spread all over America. We use email, post, fax, FTP, and telephones to stay connected. While print-work has some unique challenges,(last week we had to overnight some Pantone chips to California) working on websites is seamless. In fact, our process changes very little if our clients are out of town.

The screen is a unifying medium for design and development. Wherever you have one, -you can work, or be shown work.

A few common questions…

• How can you brainstorm?
  We work very collaboratively with our clients. You might think it would be difficult to share ideas. In fact, the meetings conducted via phone are often more productive than face-to-face meetings. People tend to be more concise on the phone. It’s less conversational, and more specific. When both parties have their own screens, their own quiet offices, and their own internet connections, more is accomplished than could ever get done around a single projector screen.

• What about mockups?
  We usually use email to send design mockups anyways… All of our clients have busy lives. We want to explain our thoughts to them, but that can usually be done with a few words in an email, or a quick phone call. We would like to think the work speaks for itself. If it’s a print job we’re working on, we build in extra time, and cost for delivery of swatches, and mocks. Once everyone is visualizing the same sizes, and colors, we can communicate revisions via email.

• Do you ever really get to know the person?
  We have one client we’ve worked with and didn’t see his face for about 5 years… we counted him a friend long before that. We’ll admit, -it’s not quite as good as tipping back a beer together, but there is a bond none-the-less. In fact, due to the circumstance, the necessary trust is compounded.

In short, some of our best friends and clients are long distance ones… We’ve been fortunate enough to experience the world through a bigger lens than our home town can provide…

Relaunching an old friend…

We relaunched the website of our oldest client today. Kontiki Tours and Travel’s new website has more bells and whistles than a firetruck. It’s chock full of CSS, AJAX, Flash, and cool programming. While there are a lot of cool things about the new site, the most exciting things for us was making our first website that includes localized languages and currency.

Working with a translated language has it’s own set of challenges… It’s amazing how many more characters are in typical German words. We had to be really creative with how we handled navigation, and content, -since on many pages the German content was nearly twice as long as the English.

It’s been months in the making, and we’re proud of some of the features we fit in, here are a few:

• Photo tours, and detailed itineraries for every trip.
• It manages currency conversion
• Almost every single bit of text in the site is changeable in the admin… In fact, to launch a new localized version of the site, a translator can handle 99% of the tasks. Within the next few years Kontiki plans on having several more translated versions available, -all controlled through one admin.

With the new London office, and the multi-lingual website, we’re sure Kontiki is on the path for even more success in the coming years. We’re glad to be a part of it…

Graphic Design USA article

A logo Entermotion did for a Marshmallow Kisses campaign was recently featured in Graphic Design USA. The article about logo trends was written by another Wichitan, Bill Gardner of Logo Lounge.

Glimpses of Genius Beauty and Novelty – One step ahead

Fantastic motion graphics…

• What do colors mean? – Colour Lovers
• Where’s the manual for email? – email sense
• the Cornell Method – Take great meeting notes
• Reality vs advertising, or – What photography can do