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Designing A Sustainable Future

Anne Stewart — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 04:08:28 +0000

Going green is probably the most fashionable yet the most sensible thing to do in any industry as well as in everyday life. But is it really possible to go green all the way all the time? Anne Stewart, a blogger and copywriter working at Hotcards.com, has volunteered to write about the ways to make our print experience a little bit greener. Anne’s favourite thing to do is finding good design in weird places, like the back of cereal boxes.

Chances are, if you work in graphic design (and this applies even if you basically live online), you’ve had a few experiences with getting something printed. Whether it’s wedding invitations or print promotion for your web presence, the day will come when you have to ask yourself: how shall I print?

Some folks go cheap. Others go local. And increasingly, nowadays, designers and businesses are deciding to go green.

Enter The Green Printer

If you’re a printer, then ‘eco-friendly’ or ‘green’ printing is the sexiest thing going on in your industry. It’s also one of those terms that can come off sounding a bit like an lumbering oxymoron. How can a process that is so resource-intensive possibly be environmentally friendly?

The whole truth is that it can’t. We may be obliged to stand up and admit to the crowd that our profession will never save the planet. That being said, printers and designers can make myriad small changes to our process in order to prevent pollution, reduce our ecological footprint, and revision our industry to be, if not the answer to all of earth’s problems, then at least part of a sustainable future.

So again the question, this time asked by the printer herself: how shall I print?

Not as easy to answer as it sounds. Every printer that’s taking steps to green their process has a different take on what qualifies as eco-friendly printing. And in an industry that’s exploding on a daily basis, what’s green today may be considered toxic tomorrow.

Let’s take a look at the debate.

The Paper Puzzle

A recycled, reusable paper bag, complete with a green mission statement, from International Paper.

There’s a lot of choice – and controversy – out there when it comes to paper selection. Printers will brag about the post-consumer waste (PCW) content of their recycled paper, whether it’s 100% recycled, or just 30%.

The percentage of recycled content that tends to matter to consumers works in direct relation to how much it costs to print. A paper with 30% – 50% PCW will likely cost the same as regular printing, while 100% recycled paper may come at a premium.

Other green printers choose to forgo recycled paper in favor of paper made from farmed trees. Often, paper from farmed trees is milled and shipped locally, cutting down on the carbon costs of printing.

Ironically enough, when printing on recycled paper first came into vogue, many boutique printing houses were buying recycled paper from overseas – a typical (and often repeated) case of delivering the product, while kind of missing the point. Recycled paper: good. But international shipping? just not great for the old ecological footprint.

The best way to get the skinny on a printer’s paper is to trace it back to the mill that supplies it. A good rule of thumb is that if the mill and the paper are certified by the Forest Stewardship Council, you’re good to go. The benevolent FSC is the golden standard when it comes to responsible paper buying.

Design For Your Green Medium

Combine interesting textures with natural imagery to create designs that speak for the environmentally-concerned community.

As a designer preparing a job for print, consider developing a print design that will look good on a matte, or low gloss paper. High gloss paper, though good-looking, has the unfortunate drawbacks of being resource-intensive to produce, and difficult to recycle.

Choosing to design for a matte finish is also a good way to express your eco-conscience to clients and consumers. Textured paper, and themes that identify easily as ‘earth conscious,’ instantly conveys that earthy vibe that’s so popular in eco-design right now.

Inquiring Into Inks

In the world of eco-friendly inks, the term “Low-VOC” says it all. Printer inks have traditionally been lead-based, with a high content of Volatile Organic Compounds. VOCs are basically vapors that create air pollution, and seriously affect air quality in the workplace. Lead-based inks are also toxic in general, take a long time to biodegrade, and are difficult to dispose of safely.

An eco-friendly print design doesn’t necessarily mean dull colors!

These days, most eco-conscious printers are making the transition to soy and vegetable-based inks, which are dramatically lower in VOCs and much easier to dispose of cleanly.

And all those rumors you’ve heard about soy and veggie inks being dull, easily faded, and difficult to work with? So ten years ago! If you want to keep it a secret, no one will ever know your designs were printed using earth-friendly inks.

But Who Does It Best?

Once you’re an expert on papers and inks, you’ll still need to choose the right printer for your project. Lithographers, screen printers, digital printers, and sheetfed offset printers will all argue that their process has the most to offer. The questions you need to ask to find the solution that works for you are:

Is the printer replacing chemical-based processes (like platemaking) with water-based, or even waterless processes, wherever possible?
Is the printer recycling, and using recyclable materials, wherever possible?
Is the printer using electronic billing to eliminate paper waste?
Is the printer working with local vendors and suppliers to cut down on their carbon footprint?
Is the printing engaging in any extra green initiatives in the community, such as supporting clean-up efforts, investing in alternative fuel and energy sources, and contributing to green causes?

Think it might be tough to squeeze all these details out of a printer? It shouldn’t be if the printer is sincere in her effort to make a difference. If a printer is being cagey and evasive, you can bet they’re advertising a stronger green ethic than they’re actually living.

In fact, if a printer is serious about catering to a green community, they should have a ton of information readily available on their website.

All-Around Eco-Ethics

The last check point in the above list might seem a bit extreme, but the fact is that one of the best things printers and designers can do to offset their environmental impact is to be ecologically responsible in other areas of their lives.

To ‘green’ the industry, printers aren’t just thinking about recycled paper. They’re thinking about how they get to work in the morning, where the food in their cafeterias comes from, and what they can do outside of the office to make a difference.

Bring Together Green Design, And Green Living

By ‘ganging’ small print jobs together onto a single sheet of paper, printers cut down on paper waste.

The same philosophy can be applied to the print design process. When engaged in a print business process, a designer can ask herself what she can do to minimize the ecological impact of the printed piece. For example:

Reduce paper consumption by sending postcard mailers instead of cards in envelopes.
Reduce ink waste by creating simple one and two color designs.
Work with a gang-run printer to cut down on the waste paper created by a project.
Find a local printer to cut the carbon costs of shipping.
Stay away from foil stamps, plastic/metal hooks and latches, glues, and other add-ons that make recycling difficult.
Design with a green message. A positive statement about environmental stewardship can be sent not just with copy and logos, but through the style and tone of your design.

As ‘green design’ comes into its own, it’s increasingly taking on a look and feel that makes it stand out from the ultra-polished, plastic looking majority. And for many businesses and consumers, it presents a very appealing alternative.

Expressing a message of environmental concern and desire for change through graphic design may be on of the most powerful things our industry can do to actually make a difference.

Like Your Mom Always Said, Just Try Your Best!

As I mentioned earlier, it’s a semi-depressing fact that green printing PROBABLY isn’t going to save the world. Even at it’s best, logistical and ethical challenges do abound, but around the office where I work, that can’t-win-don’t-try attitude isn’t allowed. Just because printing may never be perfect, it doesn’t mean we can’t constantly be trying to make improvements, brainstorming for new ideas, and challenging ourselves to print, design, and think greener every day.

As long as our industry, and every industry, continues to make the effort, rather than throwing up our hands in despair, we can but move forward into a future that is green, sustainable, and as beautiful as we all imagined it could be when we first fell in love with design.

What’s your approach on going green in your daily activities and work?

RSS: Why, What and How

Vivien — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 06:21:22 +0000

When Jacob Share approached me to participate in his Building RSS Group Writing Project and share my tips, adding that I have a “proven track record”, I smiled. Sure, I managed to attract over thousand subscribers to Inspiration Bit in “just” 18 months, but this could hardly be qualified as a proud achievement. There are hundreds of other blogs that achieved the greater number of subscribed readers in only a few months of their existence.

On the other side I can’t deny and be ungrateful to the fact that there are thousands of other blogs that have a much smaller loyal following than mine. While as you can see from the Feedburner screenshot above, the rise of RSS subscribers to Inspiration Bit has been nice and steady, and with the exception of a couple of months this Spring, the numbers are continuously growing. This progress is far more significant than the actual feed count, especially given the fact that I spend much less time blogging this year than I did a year ago.

So how can bloggers increase their RSS subscription, what tips can I share with the readers? I think before finding the keys to the HOW question, it’s more important to answer the WHY and WHAT questions about RSS.

WHY

Unfortunately in a crazy race after more traffic, more subscribers, more comments many forget that bigger is not necessarily better. How many of the Top 100 blogs on Technorati list do you read on a regular basis? There are only a couple of them in my feed reader, only a dozen of them that I occasionally visit and read, another dozen that I’ve heard about but have no interest in reading, while the rest will remain unknown and unvisited for probably forever.

So why is it so pivotal to you to build your blog’s RSS feed count to thousands of subscribers, and is it that paramount to you at all? Is it the fame you are after, or the money making aspect of the blog is the one pushing you for more subscribers? Whatever it is don’t let the obsession over numbers take over the quality and the value of your posts and writing.

WHAT

What are the benefits of having a large number of subscribers, what impact does it have on a blog?

Obviously the high feed count is a great promotional tool for your blog. But with the larger audience your responsibility as a blogger grows as well. Are you ready to take on more roles and be that authority in your field of blogging? It’s very easy to fall into the trap of following the footsteps of other blogs in your quest to achieve the popularity and numbers that you crave, but is it the right path for you? Do you have what it takes (time, energy, commitment, big pool of ideas, knowledge) to stand out in the crowd, attracting new readers and keeping the existing ones happy?

HOW

By answering those questions you’ll be able to come up with your own strategies for building a solid readership around your blog. Study the tactics of your favourite blogs. Try them out on yours. See what works for you, what felt right for you?

One of the more popular and sure-fire methods to get more incoming links, comments, popularity with social networks and new readers nowadays is to publish ginormous lists of links on a certain topic. Certainly you can try that out yourself as well, but make sure you’ll follow it up with some quality original content. After all how many blogs can we handle that “smash” us with loads of links to follow and pictures to look at?

Another successful method that helps you to attract more business through your blog and gain authority in your niche is to share your business experience and knowledge with the readers, write about things you’ve learned, take them through your business processes.

The best strategy is to stop obsessing about the numbers and instead be committed to your blog’s success, be sincere and passionate what you write about. Be it the love of type or photography, the knowledge of graphic applications, the field of your study.

Ask yourself the question: “Would I subscribe to a blog like mine?”. If you’re brutally honest with yourself and your answer is yes, chances are other people would find it interesting enough to subscribe too. And so what if it takes you longer than for some other bloggers to build your loyal readership? The word of mouth, the link love and the loyalty of your readers will do the magic of spreading the word about your amazing blog. All you need to worry about is to keeping up the great work, being unique and genuine.

As for Inspiration Bit, while I do still check the feed count as soon as I turn on my computer, I’m not letting myself to be preoccupied with the numbers. I have big plans for this blog and when the time comes I’ll be ready to take it to the next level and be comfortable with the larger audience and increased responsibility.

What about you? How does your RSS saga look like?

Meticulous Design: Image Styling

Vivien — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 08:00:38 +0000

It’s been said many times that images support the written word, add visual interest to articles and help to break down long posts by drawing the reader’s attention to pictures and the lines that precede and follow. Nowadays it’s not a problem to find images that support our posts with dozens of free and commercial stock photos online, but it takes a bit of effort in styling them to fit the site’s design without breaking the flow of sentences and paragraphs. I’ve seen many sites where the authors simply insert the images in different sizes, following each other like a zigzag, separated at times with a line or two.

The better approach would be to find out what’s the maximum allowable width for an image to fit nicely in your content area, and set/resize your images to that width. For example, on Inspiration Bit the safe width is 400px, so I try to set my images 400 px wide. There are cases though, when you don’t want or can’t end up with such a long image, then it’s best to set it to half or third of the maximum width and then align those images to the left or right of the content, letting the words to flow nicely and wrap around the image. Randa Clay has put together a very helpful tutorial on how to style images and how to align them with CSS. Finally, if you’re showcasing series of thumbnails, then set up multiples of them in rows of the same height, and equal widths.

Of course you can also let your imagination fly and come up with unusual ways to present your images. A BriefMessage, for examples, features a big image not only as a main element of each post, but the entire site as well. Displaying post’s metadata on top of the image seamlessly integrates the pictures with the overall design of the site. Jason Santa Maria aligned a huge image, 495 x 863 px to the left of the content on his recently re-designed site.

As part of my meticulous design series, I now present you with eight different ways to style images in your site.

1. CSS Drop Shadows

Ads Of The World is a site that’s all about visuals, so it’s not surprising that it pays attention to how the images are presented to viewers. All images here are wrapped in a frame with a drop shadow at the bottom. There is an extensive tutorial on A List Apart that teaches how to add flexible CSS drop shadows to your images. Ads Of The World has done it a bit differently: 3×3 px shadow.gif is tiled horisontally, and applied to the A tag, while the image itself is styled with borders, background colour and padding. Notice how the colours change when you mouseover the image.

.node-image .image a {
background:transparent url(images/shadow.gif) repeat-x;
}

.node-image .image img {
background:#E4EEF7;
border-color:#D9D9D9;
border-style:solid;
border-width:0pt 1px;
padding:12px;
}
.node-image .content a:hover img {
background:#FFE8CC;
}

2. Background image

SimpleBits approach is very simple yet effective and expandable: it’s using a tiled background image and padded picture. SimpleBits’ choice of the background image is hardly noticeable, looking more like a solid colour, however it doesn’t mean that you can’t experiment with more daring images to be used as a background.

div.photo img {
background:#E0E0D5 url(../img/bitstream/noise-earth.gif) repeat;
padding:1em;
width:49em;
}

3. background+border-top/bottom+padding

Nitram+nunca has come up with an interesting touch with its presentation of images: it’s displaying only the top and bottom borders in addition to the background colour and padding around the image. Different colours for the two borders make the pictures look embossed to the site.

.main .entry img {
background:#D9CFBD;
border-bottom:1px solid #FEFEFD;
border-top:1px solid #C9C5B3;
padding:5px 6px 6px;
}

4. Decorative Image Captions

DesignIntellection initiates a new way in using image captions with a semi-transparent layer at the top of the image. First of all, the DIV container with the class “post-image” is set with a position: relative, which allows an absolute positioning with the “title-date” span inside that DIV.

.post-image {
position: relative;
}

.post-image span.title-date {
background:transparent url(images/tnsp-black-65.png) repeat scroll 0pt 50%;
color:#FFFFFF;
font: 11px/16px Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;
margin:5px 0pt 0pt;
padding:5px 10px 5px 74px;
position:absolute;
left:0pt;
top:0pt;
}

#main .post-image p img {
border:5px solid #E7E2DF;
}

5. Dashed borders

Image styling on Antiphrasis is not at all complicated, but combined with a few delicate details it looks very effective. The images itself are simply padded with a dashed border, but because the majority of pictures there are transparent PNGs, they look very impressive, especially when you mouseover them and the background “flashes” at you with a different colour and the light dashed border turns orange and solid.

.article-img {
border:1px dashed #9EA8A8;
padding:10px;
}

.article-img-link:hover img {
background-color:#506262;
border:1px solid #F07800;
}

Cameron Moll also uses a dashed border on his site, with no frills — just a padded image on a white background.

.picC {
background:#FFFFFF;
border:1px dashed #999999;
padding:4px;
}

6. Book-like image captions

Kyle is using various techniques to style different kinds of images on Warpspire: featured post image is prominently displayed in the site’s header; some images in the posts have no accompanying captions, while others appear with book-like captions.

.figure {
background:#F5F5F5;
border:1px solid #DDDDDD;
line-height:0pt;
margin:19px 0pt 1em;
padding:2px;
text-align:center;
}

.figure small {
background:#DDDDDD;
color:#666666;
display:block;
font-size:10px;
line-height:12px;
margin:2px 0pt 0pt;
padding:5px 7px;
text-align:left;
}

You can get inspired by more images with captions over at Elements Of Design.

7. Images with Fixed Backgrounds

If you can prepare and always resize your images with the same width, you could apply a fixed fancy background image underneath. CarnivaleDuVin, for example, is showcasing the images in an ornate frame.

.entry img.hdr {
background:transparent url(../images/hdr-img.jpg) no-repeat;
margin:-8px 0pt 0pt -12px;
padding:24px 25px;
}

The Ernest Hemingway Collection on the other hand is featuring pictures framed like photos with shadows.

Recently Nick La posted a comprehensive tutorial on how to style images with CSS and set them within some very impressive frames.

8. Digital Image Editing

You can also go with a completely different route and style your images not with CSS but in any digital editing image software that you can get your hands on.

Jacob Caas cleverly crops all main post images in a shape of a pencil, similar to the one in his logo. John Boardley beautifully decorates the images on iLoveTypography with white on black captions.

Looking at all those original ideas helped me to choose how I would be styling images on Inspiration Bit after the re-design. Have you seen some other interesting ways in formatting images on the Web?

Across The Universe With Social Media

Vivien — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 06:20:44 +0000

Many years ago I read a science-fiction story that reminds me of what we’re experiencing today. Unfortunately, I don’t remember what it was called, nor who wrote it, so if you can recognize it, please let me know. I’d love to read it again.

The story is about the future when someone has invented walls that people can switch on like a TV and see what their neighbours are up to. So naturally, everyone wanted to install those walls, and see what their neighbours eat, listen to what they talk about, how they’re dressed, what their rooms look like. Then people started getting jealous of what others had, and wanted really badly to be keeping up with the Joneses. Their behavour has changed drastically – they were trying to be perfect with their manners, dressing well, talking softly. All that was causing most of them huge stress – after all, we can’t be perfect and nice all the time. Fortunately, one day someone has invented a paint that could be used to cover the walls so that the neighbours can’t see through. Oh, what a relieve that was – everyone started buying that paint like crazy. So for awhile things got back to normal, but people got bored with that, they were itching to find out what their neighbours are doing, talking about, eating. So then someone invented another paint that can cover the anti-see-through paint and make it transparent again for everyone to see through….

Doesn’t it resemble a bit the way we live today? It certainly does to me, including the social aspect of our lives online. We even took it one step further – we’re willingly opening ourselves up to others, sharing stories, personal information, business and financial details, pictures, videos, we want to follow each others steps, and we actually update the world on what we’re up to at any given moment.

Two months ago we started an experiment – a collaborative Social Media Mega group writing project, so that anyone can share his/her experience with social networks and learn from each other.

Today I present you with over 60 submissions on Social Media Mega Project from 9 bloggers, which cover over a dozen different social networking sites. It will definitely take you awhile to go through all those valuable tips from the social universe, so be sure to bookmark this page and all those submissions that you can’t wait to read, on del.icio.us, share them with your friends on Facebook, Twit about them, Stumble, Digg, vote on Reddit, spin them on Sphinn, refer to them your fellow Flickrs. In other words, ENJOY:

Facebook

HOST: Ina from InspiringWear

Gobala Krishnan from Easy World Press wrote about Getting Blog Traffic From Your Facebook Profile
Simon from Yeepage.com shares his view of Top 9 Facebook Applications
Jacob Share from JobMob offers us his article-review I’m on Facebook – Now what?
Jeremy Lim from Marketing Ruined My Live brings us a very interesting, youthful, point of view in Facebook Ruined My(Social) Life
We even got a contribution in Spanish – Cómo hago para estar en contacto con mis amigos? Facebook!
in the latest issue of “Oprah Magazine” there was an article on Facebook as well You’veBeenPoked! by By Liesl Schillinger

Social Photography

HOST: Brian from Epic Edits Weblog

In Social Media as I See It an amateur photographer pays her gratitude to one of the most popular photography sites, strobist.com, that managed to take the blog to the next level and turn it into a community of passionate photographers.
In his contribution Blog Writing Project Iain confessed that Flickr gives him angst at first, but then realized that in reality it gives him “an opportunity, and maybe in time, inspiration”.
Read Utilizing Flickr as a Photoblogging Tool to find out how to use Flickr as a blogging tool.
Help me Flickr! I want to be a better photographer! is a must read post on how to get the most out of Flickr and improve your photography skills.
Brian wrote an excellent guide on using photophlow: A Social Experience for Flickr Photographers.
Twist & shout! is about another social photography site called Shutterchance.
Virtual community becoming real is just one example of many how virtual friends and social networks are transcended to the real world.
In the article Flickr is the key to my social photography experience Lilahpops recounts how Flickr helped to become the active member of this photosharing community.
Audee warns us about Things to Consider Before You Join a Flickr Pool

StumbleUpon, MySpace and YouTube

Karen Zara from a1-fan-fun

Steven Snell suggests Promoting Older Posts With Social Media
Tibi Puiu gives us A Guide to StumbleUpon: Understanding and Beating The System
Simon shares his personal experience in StumbleUpon: My Story So Far
Tejvan Pettinger reveals Why StumbleUpon is Better Than Digg
Isabella Mori shares her StumbleUpon finds on Frozen Pea Friday: Breast Cancer Info on StumbleUpon
Karen Zara has also written her views on StumbleUpon, Networking At MySpace and Silent Interaction With YouTube Users.

Twitter

HOST: Isabella Mori from ChangeTherapy

Carol from Alphablogs has posted a valuable find – Lee Lefevre’s great video on Twitter.
Rhett ponders about our lives on Twitter with 140 characters or less.
Karen talks about why Twitter may not be for everyone.
Glenda thinks Twitter is much more than instant messaging. it’s about building community.
Simon on yeepage has a mini-series on Twitter with a step by step approach on all you need to learn about this social network.
Gregg has written his post about Twitter on yet another microblog, Tumblr.
Sameer has written about Twitter stats and many other twitter-related posts.

Digg and Reddit

HOST: Vivien from InspirationBit

How To benefit from Digg by Tejvan Pettinger. Broken up in 13 easy-to-follow steps, Tejvan shares his observations on how to prepare your site for Digg. Afterwards he followed up this post with another article, which is questioning and reflecting on
Is it worth Trying to Get On Digg?
How To Get Onto Digg’s Front Page in 8 steps by Jacob Cass. Ever wondered what are the sure-fire techniques on reaching that coveted #1 spot on Digg? Jacob will not only share the secrets but also will make you laugh.
Experience with Digg by Dexter. This is one of those no-luck-with-Digg-whatsoever articles which actually tell the truth about this social networking site.
I’m Really Not a Digg Fan by Karen Zara.
Now you too can join Digg’s NoFan Club, just head over to Karen’s post and share your reasons for not being Digg’s fan in the comments.
Redditers – What They Tend to Do? by A u d e e. If you’re like me and still didn’t quite figure out how Reddit works and how to tackle that site, be sure to check Audee’s article.
Can You Dig Digg?, where I contemplate about 8 things that I especially don’t understand about Digg and the obsession with it.

Technorati

HOST: Monica Hamburg

Simon addressed the purpose of Technorati and how it works.
In another post Simon shares tips on How to improve your Technorati ranking
Kriz Cpec contributed his Secrets of Using Blogorati
Monica has also posted responses to her Facebook query, so be sure to read the results on how bloggers use Technorati.

Sphinn

HOST: Simonne from AllTipsAndTricks

If you’ve never succeeded with Sphinn, be sure to read Simon’s advise on How to reach the front Page in Sphinn
Karen Zara briefs us with some Quick Notes On Sphinn
Simonne gives us an honest and eye-opening review of what goes behind the scenes of Sphinn’s community.

HOST: Isabella Mori from Alphablogs

Simonne contemplates about Why LinkedIn And Pen Names Don’t Go Well Together
Jacob has put together Gigantic Tips Guide for Finding Jobs With LinkedIn
And Isabella has collected interesting LinkedIn Stories from her fellow bloggers.

Del.icio.us

HOST: Aaron Stroud from On Financial Success

Simon from yeepage.com shares his Tips on how to use del.icio.us
Simonne explains why she likes del.icio.us so much in her article They Used To Call It Social Bookmarking
Karen goes as far as claiming that Del.icio.us Is The Best, so read to find out why.
Jacob provides us with the Success Checklist To Hit #1 on del.icio.us
Ronald teaches us how to Share Your del.icio.us Links With WordPress.

Squidoo, Mixx

HOST: Pearl from Interesting Observations.

Lauren teaches us all there is to know on how to Use Squidoo to Drive Traffic and Make Money.
Karen shares her Mixed Views on Mixx

Comparative Analysis of several Social Media sites

I’ve decided to list the following four articles separately since they cover various social networking sites:

In Social Media In My Way Tibor Radványi shares tips on several social photography sites, such as Flickr, photographyVoter.com, Jumpcut and Animoto, Propeller and Squidoo.
Socializing is about social media sites like Flickr, photographyvoter.com, stumbleupon, technorati.
What is the best social media website? Digg, SU, Delicious, Reddit?, by Jacob Cass
In my interview with a local enterpreneur, Social Media as a New Way of Doing Business, Rastin shares his experience with Flickr, Facebook and LinkedIn.

P R I Z E S / W I N N E R S

And now, roll out the red carpet, play a drum roll, the award ceremony begins. As promised, I’ll be awarding five bloggers who excelled in hosting their part of this mega project. Each one will receive $25 cash prize. And the winners are:

Karen Zara from a1-fan-fun for hosting the project on StumbleUpon, MySpace and YouTube. She killed me in a good way with her four hour Social Media marathon, where she contributed 10 articles to this social media mega project. Amazing!
Brian from EpicEdits for hosting the project on Social Photography.
Isabella Mori from ChangeTherapy for hosting the project on Twitter. She also hosted another project on LinkedIn
Ina from InspiringWear for hosting the project on Facebook
Aaron Stroud from On Financial Success for hosting the project on Del.icio.us

Congratulations to all winners! I’ll be contacting you shortly with your prize details.
And a huge, gigantic THANK YOU to Simonne, Monica and Pearl for hosting projects on Sphinn, Technorati and Squidoo, Mixx respectively.
And of course, a mega colossal THANK YOU to everyone who participated in this social media project, without you there would’ve been nothing – no articles, no valuable tips, no winners. Because of you there are no losers here, we all won by being part of this social experiment, by belonging to this great online community. And with your votes on various social networking sites we will be able to expand this community and make it stronger, so grab a cup of your favourite java or tea and start clicking – reading and sharing, voting and reading, click-click-click….

Love And Hate Relationship With Digg & Reddit

Vivien — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 08:31:57 +0000

Somehow I thought that a group writing project on social media would attract lots of attention and get many participants, but I was wrong. Even my part of the mega project, which was dedicated to Digg & Reddit, has managed to get less than ten submissions. I wonder what had happened?

Was it due to lack of promotion from my side? But then I haven’t really promoted much my two previous group writing projects, however they both did very well, getting 30+ entries.

Or was it due to lack of people’s experience with social media? But then I did specify in the project rules that one doesn’t need to be a guru with a particular social networking site, you could write what is it that confuses you, or what would you like to learn more about.

Or perhaps it was due to lack of time? I certainly had this problem, which prevented me from exploring other social networking sites and writing about them.

Any other reasons? What do you think?

Whichever reason prevented people from participating in this social media mega project, I hope you find the submitted entries useful. On Friday, I’ll publish the collaborative results from all other partnering blogs&hosts (Aaron, Ina, Brian, Isabella, Karen, Simonne, Dandellion, Pearl, JHS, Monica), today I’m featuring only the articles on Digg&Reddit.

How To benefit from Digg by Tejvan Pettinger

Broken up in 13 easy-to-follow steps, Tejvan shares his observations on how to prepare your site for Digg and how to focus on the content of your articles, the look of your blog and build a genuine interest in social networks.
Afterwards he followed up this post with another article, which is questioning and reflecting on
Is it worth Trying to Get On Digg?
How To Get Onto Digg’s Front Page in 8 steps by Jacob Cass

Ever wondered what are the sure-fire techniques on reaching that coveted #1 spot on Digg? Jacob will not only share the secrets he uncovered in his study of Digg, but also will make you laugh so hard you’ll never look at the Digg’s front page articles without finding them hilariously ridiculous ever again.
Experience with Digg by Dexter

This is one of those no-luck-with-Digg-whatsoever articles which actually tell the truth about this social networking site.
I’m Really Not a Digg Fan by Karen Zara

Now you too can join Digg’s NoFan Club, just head over to Karen’s post and share your reasons for not being Digg’s fan in the comments. You know how it is – it’s so much better to talk to a soul mate who can relate and understand what you’re going through.
What is the best social media website and why? by Jacob Cass

Now, who could know that only two weeks after writing his humorous and unflattering post about Digg, Jacob, who desperately wanted to experience the Digg effect at least once, would finally write an article that received staggering 2985 diggs and 365 “loving” comments on Digg? See? It could happen to you too. So to prepare yourselves for reaching Digg’s frontpage, be sure to read Jacob’s analysis of the Digg’s aftermath.
And if you would like to read more comparative articles on various social media sites, you can also check out my own experience with reaching Digg’s and Reddit’s frontpages.
Redditers – What They Tend to Do? by A u d e e

If you’re like me and still didn’t quite figure out how Reddit works and how to tackle that site, be sure to check Audee’s article, you will definitely learn more than a thing or two from there.
Can You Dig Digg? by Vivien

This is where I contemplate about 8 things that I especially don’t understand about Digg and the obsession with it. If you have answers to my questions there, I would really appreciate to read them, otherwise please share what is it that you can’t quite get about Digg or what is it that annoys you about it, or on the contrary – makes your to be one of its loyal fans and power diggers?

Thanks to everyone who joined us in this small endeavour. Don’t miss my Friday post, where I’ll feature the submissions from my project colleagues, who received articles about 17 other social networking sites, as well as award the Top 5 bloggers-partners whose group writing projects were the most successful ones.

Graffiti – Graphic Design Developed From Older Cultures

A u d e e — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 06:50:53 +0000

gRaFFiTi… What comes to your mind when you hear this term? Shocking, offensive, disrespectful, obnoxious… but then we might remember some that actually left a lasting impression on us, not the bad one. Then our perceptions change – powerful, influential, skillfully executed. At least that’s what happened to me when I saw a few graffiti places in Vancouver that looked more like works of art, than spray-painting. Looks like I’m not the only one being inspired by the street art: Audee from Graphic Identity is sharing with us her experience with Indonesian graffiti in this guest post:

Graffiti has become culturally or geographically specific. However, modern (twentieth century) graffiti predates hip hop by almost a decade and has its own culture, complete with its own unique style and slang.

During my visit to Surabaya (second biggest city of Indonesia), I spent some of my time taking snapshots of its Graffiti Designs. Hip hop and Grunge style are talked about a lot among teenagers. I found two interesting spots where young people interpret their styles into a mural along the highway wall that is more than 50 meters long. I also discovered some other amazing graffiti art which are located in random areas of Surabaya.