The new year represents a new start, a time to reflect back on the past with an eye towards the future. It’s a time to be thankful for the many people in your life. It’s a time to clean out the cubbards, for me I’ve been purging through 20 years of samples, mostly printed pieces. Going through the samples made me realize just how much change has occurred within the design industry over that span. For me, each piece had a person, a story attached to it. It made me realize the many blessings, the struggles, the achievements. It made me realize how CS Designworks has adapted to change and managed to pick itself up after each and every adversity.

So this leaves me with a heartfelt thought for the new year.

2010 = HOPE

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I recently hooked up with an old college mate in LinkedIn who has his own design agency. His website was designed in Flash. The site was gorgeous, well designed, clean, simple, great typography and showcased his product offering elegantly. BUT, there was not a hint of optimization to be found.

I recently went to a well-known SEO guru’s website who must get a gazillion hits per month and was visually-offended by the lack of design on his site. Design was such an afterthought on this site that any respectable designer would puke. BUT, the content was amazing and is now bookmarked on my computer.

So who is more successful? The beautifully-designed website or the beautifully-optimized website? Can design and SEO co-exist?

It is in this designers opinion YES.

Content is king in this day and age. And good content is a balance between quantity and quality. Quantity is beneficial to robots (search engines) and Quality is beneficial to humans. And good design, especially good typography, assists the reader in reading your great content.

Good design orchestrates the entire process. It navigates the reader, it speaks. For example, if you we’re having a human conversation and spoke in a monotone manner how would you be perceived regardless of your content. On the other hand, if you ever listened to a dynamic speaker like Tony Robins, you will notice that his delivery is anything but monotone. The variations in his delivery reinforce his message. He raises his voice, he lowers his voice, he weaves and bobs, he pauses. This is all to reinforce his message. This does not mean the monotone guy has nothing important to say, it means that Tony Robins or a Tony Robins-like delivery resonates better.

So effective design and SEO are inextricably linked. And isn’t the point of great content to be read. Imagine the best of both worlds where you have great content, optimized with killer SEO married with great design. AWESOME.

Having printed on the HP Indigo before, I was not too surprised to hear the virtues of digital printing. I knew that digital printing was perfect for high-quality, short run and quick turnaround. But what I didn’t realize,  in those 2 hours, that digital printing indeed has come along way from a few short years ago. Rivaling the quality of offset printing, all but the highly-trained eye can tell the difference. And when the UV coating is applied all bets are off.

So what about the future? And what about the trees?

Quite frankly the future is now with digital printing. The web-2-print process is unbelievably hi-tech and environmentally-friendly at the same time. Instead of traditional offset printing where a client had to order a large up-front quantity of collateral, then store it in a warehouse with the hopes of one day being delivered to the end-user. All-too-often most of the collateral ends up in the old trash can. Not only is this not environmentally-friendly but extremely cost-ineffective.

Perfectly suited for large organizations, such as BMW, as cited by Francis, HP Indigo and its web-2-print process can be deployed by posting actual files on a web platform, then the user can order and personalize on-the-fly and even distribute to it’s targeted audience. More impressively, the response rate can be tracked and analyzed. That is sooo 21st century. To take this a step further, you can incorporate a PURL, which is personalized website, to further capture your target. But that is for another day.

So, gather around the CSD Yule bLog with us – as we look forward to stoking the creative flames with you in the new year!

The Beast
But wait just a second before you start cracking open the bubbly. Have you taken a moment to look at what the masses are coming to?? Have you missed to entire premise of steering people to your site. Have you looked at your site from the point-of-view of the customer. You could have the best optimized site in the world but it won’t mean a hill of beans unless when someone arrives they have found what they were looking for.

This is the classic cart before the horse story 2.0. So what about your site? Have you analyzed your site with the same vim and vigor that you analyzed your word tracker. Have you optimized the look, the feel, and the navigation. When is the last time you� looked, God forbid, at the content of your website. Even more relevant, when was the last time you added new content to your website.

I’m not disparaging SEO by any stretch. But what’s the point in steering people to your site only to have them leave as fast as they came. Consider “first impressions.”� Sometimes the only chance you have with a potential customer is that first impression. Two great indicators from analytics to study are bounce rate and average time spent on site. These will clue you in to whether your site has stickiness or slipperyness.

Was it worth it?? DEFINITELY.

I must admit, the week was a bit daunting from an information-overload point-of-view. But I left the conference with a renewed sense of excitement and direction. My hats off to co sponsors O’Reilly and Techweb for putting together a whirlwind week. In fact this was the first time Web 2.0 expo graced the big apple.

Fred Wilson, Union Square Ventures, gave a fascinating keynote on the history of web in New York.The beginning of the internet in NY, according to Fred, was in 1979 and Red Burns from the ITP program at NYU. He talks of the early days of dial-up services with companies such as Archie, Gopher, Prodigy. Prodigy was the first company to offer dial up access to the www in 1994. The term Silicon Alley was given to the NY internet efforts in the early 90s. There were many failures along the way and agency’s such as razorfish, agency.com and itraffic opened for business as the first internet agencys. One of the early successes with online publishing was in 1995 with the New York Times and their coverage of the Popes visit.� Doubleclick was the first internet to go public in 1997.

As the internet industry evolved, “all hell broke loose” in 1999 Wilson said. An IPO and acquisition frenzie ensued, over 200 startups were funded in ’99 and 300 in 2000. And as history is told the dot com bubble burst later the same year.

I remember several traditional design agencies who fell into this trap and switched all of their resources to web and later paid the price when the bottom fell. At that time CSD played it conservatively and tiptoed into web world and at the same time maintained a strong traditional presence. This allowed us to hedge ourselves quite nicely looking back.

Fast forward, Web 2.0 was coined in 2003 and the next wave of web evolution had begun. Web 2.0 companies such as del.icio.us emerged as the early champions of 2.0. Other key milestones were: About.com being bought by The NY Times in 2005 and in 2006 Google set up shop in Manhattan. In 2007 companies such as Buddy Media, Path101, Tumblr opened.

So a lot has happened since 1979. New York as it compares to Silicon Valley, has gone from 1/8th of the internet companies 1/3rd today. And as Fred Wilson projects that trend will continue.

Fred Wilson’s entire video can be viewed at http://laughingsquid.com/fred-wilson-on-the-history-of-the-new-york-internet-industry.

This was one keynote among many others that we’re totally interesting and educational at Web 2.0 Expo. I eagerly look forward to next year’s expo and am extremely exciting about implementing what I learned in my business.

The trend over the past several years has been startling. In business for 17 years and in the communications industry for 23 years, I have seen the printed piece severely diminished. Is this the evolution of communications? Is this to save money? Is this to save trees? Is the printed brochure still relevant anymore?

I believe that the brochure, or the “printed piece” is still a viable and necessary tool in communications. There is nothing like a well printed brochure. The touch and feel of beautiful uncoated stock. The richness of a photographic reproduction captured with laser-like precision from a 6-color Hidelberg press. The elegance and finish of perfect binding.

A brochure is, in it’s pure form, a reflection and reminder to your client of your company’s product or service. Think of the last time you went to a new car dealer and you fell in love with that car that you couldn’t afford. The salesmen then handed you a fresh-off-the-press brochure. And when you got home you read through every page like you we’re studying for a test. You imagined, you envisioned, you dreamed.

The brochure was a living document behaving like the best salesmen whispering in your ear. This is communications at it’s best. The printed brochure is a controlled article not beholden to a company’s laser printer. And in this era where most company’s are scaling back the printed document, it is, in my opinion, the one’s that still print will truly stand out in the crowd.