Branding « Pixels from the Edge

Posts Tagged ‘Branding’

Pop Your Facebook Profile Picture

I came across a cool article the other day which had some examples on how to go a little crazy with your Facebook profile picture, so I can’t take full credit for this. In fact I might not be able to take any credit at all, I just got done reading the article when my good friend (and awesome photographer) Doug was walking by, he had his full set of equipment with him that day and the next thing I knew I was hanging from the drywall down the hall with a flash on either side of me, I’m just glad I opted to wear underwear that day! He did his Photoshop thing and placed the photo over a Facebook profile background template, and added what I can only assume if what he perceives Twitter to think of me, he even added a splat of bird crap to my lid – nice! I uploaded it to my Facebook profile and I think it turned out great. The deal is basically that Facebook allows your profile picture to be up to 200 x 600 pixels and if you overlay it onto the background before uploading then you can make it seemingly interact with or come out of the page.

A few of things to keep in mind:

The position of the photo is dependent on how many lines your status message occupies. The image isn’t pushed down with the rest of the page content, so the more lines your status occupies the more of the upper gray needs to be added to the image. The majority of my status messages seem to take up two lines, so I have my image defaulted to that, and I also have a one line version uploaded to my profile pic album and could switch to that if I really wanted to.
The position of the photo is dependent on the text size of your status message, which is a similar issue to above, but actually a much bigger problem. This is to do with how the browser chooses to render that font, so it is a platform and browser problem. We have already noticed differences from Mac to Windows to Safari – each one was a pixel off even though we used Firefox to test on all three platforms. I currently have mine set to look good in Windows which covers the majority of web users, but of course the people that really care about pixel perfect positioning are all on Macs. We thought about getting creative to try and work around this and have the wall appear to tear, this might work out fairly nicely on a picture like mine where I’m hanging so it makes sense, but wouldn’t work for all cases.
The image doesn’t always appear over the exact background it’s been created to appear over. For example if you look at my public Facebook profile (make sure you are not logged in) it’s pushed way down, or if you look at my profile in the Facebook iPhone app it’s a similar deal. It’s not necessarily bad but something to keep in mind.
If you go with a long profile picture as I have then it will push down the content within the left column.
The thumbnail that accompanies your Facebook feed items is only 50 x 50 pixels so if you have a long picture it won’t all fit. I found that Facebook has quite a nice thumbnail feature that allows you to pick an area of a smaller version of your profile picture so you’ll probably find it works out quite well.

I conclude that it’s all a bit gimmicky now, at least for a personal profile page, it might work well for a fan page that doesn’t have to worry about a status message and the page looks the same whether you are logged in or not. If Facebook were to allow PNGs with transparency to be uploaded then it would solve the issue of not having to worry about where the background meets. But there would still be the issue of positioning, for example in my picture my hands hanging from the exact position of the background seem still wouldn’t be controlled. Facebook would need to allow for liquid positioning of the image – just as the rest of the page moves with the text then so should the image. And I don’t see any reason why they couldn’t allow for us to use a different image for the thumbnail than the one used for the profile picture. None of this is hard to do from a coding perspective, but I imagine Facebook is a lot more concerned with their branding, trying to stay away from the horrors of MySpace. One of the things I’ve always loved about Facebook over MySpace is exactly that – the clean organized look and feel, but c’mon Facebook give us the chance to somehow add just a little personality to our profile page!

Thursday, October 22nd, 2009

Tags: Branding, Facebook, Social Media, Web Design | 2 Comments »

Changing your Twitter name? Watch out!

It’s cool that Twitter lets you change your Twitter name, there’s not a lot of apps that I can think of that allow that. But at the same time there should be a big fat warning sign when you do. It’s no biggie, I’m not trying to scare you away from doing it or anything, I had to change mine fairly recently (basically my old name sucked) and I’m glad I did, Twitter switches over all your friends and followers automatically so no issues there, but there are a few things that you should bear in mind before you do:

Links -Any links that exist to your Twitter page will no longer have any relationship to you – comments you have made in posts, retweets others have made of your tweets, search results linking to your twitter page – these will all be dead, there is no grace period, your old profile is instantly killed.
TwitPic – I imagine this applies to all the Twitter photo services out there but in my case I was using TwitPic. The service depends on your Twitter username and as you are no longer that user then you have no control over that account. And the new TwitPic account you will create will have no images in it (or in my case it had some – see below).
Resurrection – You might find, as I did, that your new name is an old one that someone gave up. Just as the account you give up might one day be picked up by someone else, your new account might be someones old account. Therefore you must understand that there might already be a relationship out there with your account – there may already be links to your new account, you may have photos that aren’t yours in TwitPic or another Twitter related service.
Statistics -There are a lot of statistically driven third party apps out there and you may be using some of them. And just like TwitPic it is highly likely they are tied to your account via your username, so when the switch is made the statistics will be lost. And also,if you are resurrecting an old account you may find that these third party apps will be holding information for your new account that date back to the previous owner.

Like I say it’s probably not that big of a deal. If someone gave up the Twitter username that you are inheriting then it probably didn’t have much usage anyways – there’s probably not a whole lot linking to it, the TwitPic and other 3rd party accounts are probably barely if at all used. But you might want to do the following:

Research

But don’t take switching Twitter username lightly. It may be a move that you think is important enough to do but you only want to have to do it once, so take a moment to research the new name you are picking. Do a search on it to make sure it’s not associated with anything bad (make sure it’s available first!). Like maybe the user changed their name or closed their account because they’d got into some silly negative situations out there on the big bad web. So take a moment to do some searches on the account in Google to see what pre established relationships it already has so you can decide if you want to inherit them or not.

Save, Purge, and Update

Before you make the switch and give up your old Twitter username, which essentially means you are giving up access to your own third party accounts, take the time to save any old data you want to keep – for example make sure you save your Twitpic photos locally, they may be your only copies. And you will probably want to delete everything from these accounts – you will no longer have a relationship with these accounts so you wont want personal photos or information attached to them. And when you have made the switch, if your new name is resurrected from an old user, make sure you go into TwitPic and such accounts and purge any old photos or data the previous user may have left behind. And unless you want to start from scratch you could upload your old photos and data to your new third party accounts.

Secondary Account

I didn’t do this, my Twitter presence wasn’t huge and I was being followed mainly by friends (and I just didn’t think of it at the time!) but if you have a big following you may want to take this step. As explained on this link after you change your name open a second account with your old name and place a simple tweet explaining that you have switched to a new name. This will help with the issue of links to your old account, allowing the users who followed those links to find your new one.

Profile Picture

You might find you want to change your profile picture when you change your Twitter name, in my case it was part of a rebrand so I definitely did, but it’s worth hanging onto your old picture for a week or two to give your followers the chance to associate your old picture with your new name before you do.

First Tweet

And finally, you may find it useful to send out a first tweet under your new account name to let your followers know about the change.

Wednesday, September 9th, 2009

Tags: Branding, Twitter | 6 Comments »

Blog Relaunch

So I finally managed to find the time to relaunch this blog. When I first started the blog it was somewhat of an experiment so I didn’t spend much effort on its design, but unlike other failed blogs I’d started over the years I’ve really been enjoying writing these posts and I think this time around it’s got some staying power. This relaunch is really intertwined with my online rebrand I’ve been talking about lately, this blog plays a big part in my online image and it was important that I spend the time to focus on fixing its issues.

So the biggest areas I wanted to address were:

Domain Name

My old domain ‘blog.londonstreetlife.com’ had many things wrong with it, but mainly it was just too damn long. The hows and whys I picked this domain are obviously very closely related to my rebrand so I’ll talk about it in another post, but this new domain is half as long and I’m really liking how it looks in the browser address bar. In fact it’s so short i can pair it with my own URL shortener (instead of using bit.ly, for example) which will only help improve my online brand in the long run.

Switch from Blogger to Wordpress

For all the work I’ve been doing with Wordpress this past year and my subsequent posts on the subject, I’ve felt for a long time I really should be blogging on that platform. I have nothing against Blogger or any similar web tool, it’s been great to me and I don’t see the need to host the blog myself as long as it provides me with everything I need and doesn’t limit me in any way. However I have really been feeling the strain lately with Blogger, too many missing features, SEO failings, and little tweaks I am not able to make. Now I’m on Wordpress and am my own host and I can really go to town with this thing! Like a kid in a candy store I’m having a lot of fun practicing what I have been preaching and I even built my own plugin which I will be cleaning up and making publicly available soon.

Design

The new design is the most prevolent update as it really changes the whole feel of the blog. Whilst the switch from Blogger to Wordpress could be completely transparent to the user, and the domain name change might not even be noticed by a user coming in via a shortened link, there’s definitely no escape from noticing the redesign. I don’t want to get too into the color scheme I’ve gone with as it’s part of my brand color palette that I’ve been developing over the last month, and again I’ll be talking about that in another post. It’s not yet the finished product I’m sure, I’ll tweak as I go, but time is short for me these days and I’ve found that eventually there comes a point where I just have to pull the trigger or I’ll never get anything done. It is worth mentioning that whilst I do prefer dark text on a light background for readability purposes I really wanted to bring forth more of my personality into the design, so my words don’t just represent me, but also just by being here you already know a little bit of who I am. I’m really happy with the color scheme, it is totally me, and it works really well for my portfolio site (in development) where impression is as important as content, but for here where content is king I might find along the way that the sacrifice in readability is too great for a blog and switch it up and around a bit, make it a little easier on the eyes. I dunno, what do you think? It’s really up to you guys!

It’s worth taking a moment to talk about my old design and how in a way it was sort of an anti-design, I’m not referring to the art movement but the fact that it was meant to look like I hadn’t spent a lot of time designing it (cos I hadn’t). But also when I first started the blog I didn’t know where it was going to go or if it would even last so I really needed it to develop a personality before I could style it. So for old times sake, one last time and forever remembered here, RIP old blog:

Blog Title

And finally the blog title, I’ve been seeing some of my posts come up in Stumble Upon and they’ve been coming across kind of silly – Blogger published the blog name first and then the post title and I couldn’t figure out a way to reverse this setting, so every post of mine that made it into Stumble Upon just said my crap blog name and didn’t give a clue as to what the article was even about. That’s when I really started to realize that if I want the web to take my blog seriously then I’d better do it first myself. Before the the title was just ‘my name the blog’, as in ‘londonstreetlife the blog’, which basically ran along the same idea as my anti-design concept above, and again I didn’t know where it was gonna go or how long it would last so I didn’t spend the time thinking up a cool name, and in the end it never eally had one. The new name ‘Pixels from the Edge’ I think works really well, it kind of means a lot of things at once and they all apply. I wanted the name to reflect the creative-technology hybrid thing I got going on and is mainly what I talk about in this blog, and I think it does that very nicely. My lovely wife helped me come up with the name, so mad props to her! And the more I think about it the happier I am with it.

So what do you think folks, turned out any good?

Tuesday, August 18th, 2009

Tags: Branding, CMS, Social Media, Web Design, WordPress | No Comments »

De-Branding Myself

So here I am, I’m 32 years old and I’ve been on the web forever, shit before the web even really existed I was gophering German university FTP servers for pictures of Claudia Schiffer. And what do I have to show for myself now, for all my years of online service? Who the hell am I online? londonstreetlife? Really??? Now that I can finally see it for what it is, it really is all kinds of lame. A buddy of mine got an iPhone last year and my phone broke so he lent me his old phone, he was all about keeping that sweet sony walkman phone in good condition incase he ever needed it again, which included leaving it in some orange case to keep it safe, I thought it was ugly but I was like whatever, I needed a phone. Then one day at the bar he sees me with the phone in the case and all he can say is ‘I never realized how much of a fool I looked going around with that phone!’ And that’s just about where I’m at right now, I’ve seen myself in the mirror carrying that lame ass phone in that ugly ass case, except it’s not a phone it’s my online brand, and it’s way lamer than that phone in that case ever was.

Lame-ass phone in ugly-ass case

I am a Techie

In fairness to myself there is a history behind “londonstreetlife”. See originally I was just a kid screwing around online, flaming and win-nuking in the chat rooms, and I fancied myself as a bit of a hacker dabbling in some buffer overloading and shit. And at the time I was just “streetlife”, and as a nick back then it worked, everyone had handles like that. And to be honest I think I could still work with that name if I’d managed to hang onto it, shit streetlife alone would be way dope. But back then it was like $70 to buy a domain name and I didn’t even have money to get myself a snack, and that $70 was a reoccurring annual fee, and besides no one back then was thinking to buy their own friggin TLD. And as the years went by streetlife.com was snapped up, but I didn’t care I just threw a “london” on the front, that was cool I was living in Spain and that was a throwback to the streets where I was from. And it seemed to work and I just went with it, and I didn’t think about it again…

I am a Creative

But over the last year or so I’ve taken a journey to embracing my creative side. Really I always had my foot in the creative door but my mind was firmly stuck in the techie room. It took a lot of self reflection on my part to get here, and it wasn’t easy, but thanks to the respect and support of some great creative leadership at my agency, believing in my creative talents, I’ve finally landed. For a while there I was extremely confused, I didn’t know where I was at. I was promoted to ACTD (Associate Creative Technology Director) at work, and suddenly I felt somewhat ostracized from the Technology department but yet I didn’t feel like I was part of the Creative department either. It didn’t help that I now reported to both departments, and I ended up feeling like I didn’t belong to either, marooned somewhere in between. I saw the movie Tropic Thunder and there’s a line where Robert Downey Jr’s character says “I’m the dude playing the dude disguised as another dude”, and at first I laughed cos it’s funny but then I realized that was sort of how I would describe myself and it was kind of depressing. But I ended up understanding that I am creative, and I am also technology, and the fact that I found myself so lost in identity was more the fault of the agency and the industry. See the future of web development is the merging of both those departments, and the agency has taken a great step towards reaching that goal by creating the first cross-over role, and it is now up to me to prove it works and let the rest of the agency catch up.

A dude playing a dude disguised as another dude

I am a Brand

So now that I finally embraced myself as a creative it was apparent that my brand wasn’t working, or even that I barely had one. See a techie is in the background, it doesn’t matter what your brand is, you don’t really get to have one. When you’re interviewing for a tech job none of it matters, they care about your expertise, coding skills, your work ethic and your ability to hit deadlines. None of that can be captured in a brand or a portfolio, therefore you have to produce code samples and references to look good and get hired. But when you’re a creative it’s entirely the opposite. A creative is in the spotlight, a creative represents the agency and the clients brand, a creative’s name goes on the awards and is talked about in the press releases. So if you aren’t able to brand yourself well then how can an agency trust you with a clients brand? If you don’t even know yourself well enough to define your own creative brief then how can you be be capable of capturing the essence of your clients? And if you don’t have the skill set or the drive to effectively execute and produce results when it comes to your own brand then how can you expect an agency to put their clients image in your hands?

But what brand am I?

So I’ve tasked myself with the challenge, and the project “my brand” is well under way, I’m energized and more excited about this than I have been about any project in a long time. Shit finally I get to find out who I am. Coming soon to a browser near you. Summer 2009. Watch this space!

Tuesday, August 4th, 2009

Tags: Best Business Practices, Branding, Digital Advertising, Social Media, Web Design | 4 Comments »

Pixels from the Edge