Topics, Trends and Techniques from Brooks Bell Interactive
Month: April, 2010
Banner Ads That Push Boundaries
When I tell people that part of my job is building banner advertisements, I often get that look. You know, the “Seriously?! YOU are the one who makes those blasted things?” look. I suppose they think I designed the Omigod! No way! smiley face and the dancing aliens in LowerMyBills.com ads.* There are also a good number of my own peers in the design world who think it’s almost shameful to be stuck designing within such a medium.
Despite what the naysayers will continue to say, I contend that the banner advertisement is yet another art form of the 21st century. Banner ads are a very interesting challenge to the designer, with limits concerning file size, dimensions, and animation timing. With all of these restrictions, it seems like it would be difficult to make your ad stand out amongst the thousands of others out there. What’s a creative to do?
Luckily for us designers, the outlook for banner ad design isn’t as hopeless as I depicted it to be in the previous two paragraphs. That was just a lead-in. You see what I did there? A particularly interesting method for thinking outside the figurative box (while still staying within the literal box) is playing with the borders. Yes, the media buyers might be asking for a 300×250 ad, but did canvas size limit the modern art movement? Heck no, it didn’t!
With that, I present you with a few great examples of pushing the boundaries in banner ad design:
Social Validation’s Influence on Online Consumers
I had another “What did we do before the internet” moment the other day while researching which lawn mower to purchase online. While I’m sure I could just walk into the nearest Home Depot and have someone try to sell me the most expensive lawn mower they have in stock, like many consumers I don’t feel confident that I’m getting the best value unless I do some research. Before the internet this research would involve going from store to store to get a feel for pricing and features, and asking people how they like their brand/model lawn mower. Chances are that I would end up trusting the opinion of my personal network and feeling good about purchasing a lawn mower that they recommended. This is what the concept of “social validation” is all about.
Now that nearly everyone has the power of the internet at their fingertips, seeking social validation before purchasing a product can take far less time, and the sample size is much larger than your personal network. Amazon’s star rating system is probably the most well-known example of social validation in motion. If you jump onto Amazon to research a lawn mower, you’re presented with a huge selection and no way to assess the value of each product other than the price, a ranked list of the best sellers, and the star rating given by averaging the customer star ratings of the product. Sure you could compare and contrast the features and make your own decision, but if one lawn mower gets only 4 & 5 star ratings and another gets 4 star ratings and a bunch of 1&2 star ratings, which one would you buy? The high rated one of course! You are not alone – chances are that the highest rated products are also the products at the top of the best-seller rankings.
But why? The same reason you would end up purchasing the lawn mower that your friend recommended: social validation reduces consumer anxiety.
HTML Email Development Basics
This is a basic guide to creating HTML emails. This post was written under the assumption that you know basic HTML. With the sections below I hope to give you a basic understanding of what goes in to developing an HTML email that can be delivered and viewed by the majority of your email list.
Your HTML File
The first thing you want to do when setting up your email for development is get your HTML file ready. You want to make sure that your DocType is HTML 4.01 Transitional or lower, if using a DocType. Most email clients will not support anything higher than this. Usually it is a good idea to remove DocType completely. Also, I would recommend removing all Meta tags from the header. This could cause problems in the way text is rendered in some email clients. Another thing to note is that most email clients will remove the header completely, but it’s always good to set up your header tags properly to ensure that the vast majority of your audience will be able to view your email as the designer has intended.
Facebook’s Like Button Goes Universal
This week Facebook announced that its “like” button will begin appearing throughout the Internet on publisher sites…
….and digital media planners’ heads everywhere exploded.
The implications of this seemingly small new feature are huge for users’ web experiences and advertisers’ targeting potential but they are downright game changing for Facebook.
As un-sexy as it sounds, in the world of digital media, data is king, with agencies now spending more on data costs for targeting media than for the actual media itself.
With its already insane reach of over 400 million unique users, the extension of the “like” feature (and the data collection proposition it brings with it) puts Facebook in a position to compete with Google in a way no one else can. As of this post, the “like” button is appearing on more than 75 major publisher sites (think CNN.com and NYT.com) with Facebook serving over 1 billion button impressions within the first 24 hours after the announcement.
Dear Flash, I think it’s time we see other people.
Dear Flash,
I think its time we see other people.
It seems like only yesterday that we first met… I was a young graphic designer eager to adopt new technology; you were the cooler, smoother cousin of animated gifs. I amazed all of my coworkers when I showed them the stop() function… It was bliss.
It wasn’t long before you proved that rich media could be taken off of CD ROMS and put onto the web… I was torn! Should I call it quits with Director and commit to you? Was Lingo worth all the effort?? I tried to resist, but your movieclips just sounded so much more fun than Director’s film loops…. I was yours!
