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What Do 17,162 Know About SEO You Need Too? #seo For Web Designers via @HaikuDeck

What Do 17,162 Know About SEO You Need Too? #seo For Web Designers via @HaikuDeck | Must Design | Scoop.it
From www.haikudeck.com - June 23, 2015 7:05 PM

17,162 People Later
We've been asked to make the presentation that created our most viewed Hiaku Deck again at the Iron Yard Code Academy again (made the first presentation six months ago). There were important ideas we shared last time:

* SEO THRIVES or DIES with graphic designers.

* Graphic designers are heroes under siege by many groups.

* Set REALISTIC expectations.
* Set reasonable boundaries (with gorillas looking for bananas).
* Shared a few easy to remember tips to help designers improve their technical SEO skills.

Obviously we hit a nerve. We will be updating benchmarks shared six months ago to see how those we mentioned fared since.  Remember technical SEO is important, but your content must engage, be exciting (visually too) and develop sustainable online community to win over time. 

Good luck and if you have SEO questions we didn't cover email them to martin(at)Curagami.com and we will include and send you a Curagami Rules tee.  

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Beauty, Data Visualization & Web Design's Future - TED Video w/ David McCandless

From www.youtube.com - July 17, 2014 9:02 PM
View full lesson: http://ed.ted.com/lessons/david-mccandless-the-beauty-of-data-visualization David McCandless turns complex data sets, like worldwide milita...


Marty's Take On Web Design & Data Visualization
Had an interesting conversation with Curagami ( http://www.Curagami.com ) co-founder Phil Buckley at lunch yesterday. We were discussing my attempt to change the CSS on the Hack Headphones Shopify store I'm creating. 

I shared how I found a post on how to change the buy button. I wanted a bigger button. The problem was the post with the answer must have been 2 or more iterations behind the theme I'm using.

The change moved slightly unintelligible java to completely unintelligible code (at least for me). Where once there was a "height" variable now there were nested variables.

Welcome to the future of web design.

If a company with more Ph.Ds than almost anyone, Google, decides to float their index creating a responsive float that seems to wrap search results around searchers like a blanket WHY don't we lucky few Internet marketers realize that's the planet we are all in transit to?

The New Web Designer
Once a "website" becomes a series of interlocking "IF" "THEN" statements "designing" a website becomes an exercise in data visualization.  

Design in a variable world is different as this great data visualization TED video shares (stay with it as the visual candy gets better in the middle).  The skills need to be this "new designer" include but are not limited to:

* Spatial reasoning and intelligence.

* Ability to read and translate metrics into meaningful images (i.e. data visualization).
* Enough Javascript to choke a horse.

* Even more CSS as everything is floating in a variable galaxy.
* Understanding how variables and results should influence design, color, layout in order to increase engagement and conversion.

If this sounds like the silos between design, code, marketing, research, sales and customer service are coming down fast we agree.  

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Discomfort That Lies In Comfort - via HOW Design

Discomfort That Lies In Comfort - via HOW Design | Must Design | Scoop.it
From www.howdesign.com - January 22, 2014 8:39 PM
Todd Henry, author of "Die Empty," encourages us to be uncomfortable with comfort in a principle he developed from a quote from Kahlil Gibran.
Martin (Marty) Smith's insight:

Some Destruction Is Good
In college I heard a lecture by an art student. He insisted that the only creation left was destruction. When everything has been commoditized, marginalized and homogenized beyond some bland point destruction is all that left.

Didn't understand the lecture thirty years ago and am not sure I would go all the way there now, but comfort is an enemy to the restless soul creativity requires. Being satisfied is to accept way too much.

When we stop being willing to tear our preconceived notions down, to let new light onto our stage we limit our creative vision. Starving is not a requirement, but a little starving intellectual or otherwise can hone the senses and heighten receptors.

As Internet marketers we live in a constant state of vicious and unknown entropy like the surprise tsunami. Our most dangerous obsessions become anything that worked yesterday because there is less than no guarantee they will work tomorrow. There is an almost sure bet past strategies and the past YOU responsible for them have been washed away with the tide.

Now, using only new shells, driftwood and string washed ashore during the storm we construct a new castle on the beach. We are different. It is different just as it and the builder will be swept away again destroyed by yet another entropy tsunami.

To be comfortable in such a world is to be living a lie. Everyone needs repose, but denying the inevitable rotation, tide and destruction is to cling to a world already put asunder. The hardest thing about Internet marketing may be the growing realization the last person we can become "comfortable" with is ourselves. We must rotate, shift and roil like the tides.

 

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The Role of DESIGNER In A Time of BIG DATA

The Role of DESIGNER In A Time of BIG DATA | Must Design | Scoop.it
From www.printmag.com - March 14, 2013 7:13 PM
What's the role of designers in the age of big data?
Martin (Marty) Smith's insight:

Great wandering post about our increasing dependence on those who can organize, visualize and present DATA so we may ACT. The other clear idea is how the very definition of "designer" is changing from a static role to a more universal guide.


Designers should be involved in every business process since their art is making it easier for others to engage, share and spreacd. Engage, share and spread is a pretty good summary of what Internet marketing is now. 

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Treat Design As Art? Maybe, but Conversations ROCK For Sure!

Treat Design As Art? Maybe, but Conversations ROCK For Sure! | Must Design | Scoop.it
From www.ted.com - August 14, 2014 1:17 AM

Paola Antonelli, design curator at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, wants to spread her appreciation of design -- in all shapes and forms -- around the world.

Marty Note
I like SOME of this TED Talk, but LOVE The conversation below it. The next web, and btw MoMA is NOT on my "must steal from" website list, will be about promoting, curating and sharing conversations just like this one.

The real question is when the CONVERSATION is the website what exactly does that look like? How do we design an online "conversation". Digital "listening" is WORK and an evolving science.

SO, interesting talk from a MoMA curator made SPECIAL by the conversation :). M

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Cool CrowdyHouse.com Is Kickstarter for Designers - HOW Design

Cool CrowdyHouse.com Is Kickstarter for Designers - HOW Design | Must Design | Scoop.it
From www.howdesign.com - January 24, 2014 10:23 PM

Designers no longer have to compete with independent film directors, bands and dance companies. There's now a Kickstarter for design called CrowdyHouse.

Marty Note
Expect niche crowdfunding platforms to proliferate in 2014. Several trends are driving the explosion:

* Creating a crowdfunding platform isn't hugely expensive; we created http://www.curecancerstarter.org for right around $50K.
* Kickstarter does some things like film and music well, but its internal curation and push marketing are poor.
* Crowdfunding, as my startup CrowdFunde wrote today, is powerful "new SEO" content.
* The jobs act will make equity crowdfunding legal by the summer creating a rising tide that should lift all crowdfunding boats (reward, donation and equity).

So expect more of these niche crowdfunding plays in 2014. Also, KUDOS to CrowdyHouse.com for embracing the store aspects of crowdfunding. Kickstarter famously said, "We are not a store," after the Pebble Watch $11.2M campaign. I loved it when they said that, but it does explain why finding relevant content is such a challenge on their network (architect an ecommerce site like KS and you go broke).

Great Comment By @Lori Wilk

I totally agree that this niche crowdfunding will continue to expand and there will be more affiliated products and service businesses launched around the crowdfunding industry.

What about you? Do you see crowdfunding coming to your business? Is it already there? Leave comments and I will curate in. Thanks. Marty

 

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Lori Wilk's curator insight, January 24, 2014 10:57 PM

I totally agree that this niche crowdfunding will continue to expand and there will be more affiliated products and service businesses launched around the crowdfunding industry.
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What Cloud Computing Means For Web Designers • Inspired Magazine

What Cloud Computing Means For Web Designers • Inspired Magazine | Must Design | Scoop.it
From inspiredm.com - January 18, 2014 8:07 PM
Cloud computing is one of the latest technologies that have come to change the way people interact with the web. Cloud computing accords you the chance to
Martin (Marty) Smith's insight:

Solid post by Inspired Magazine on what the cloud means for web design. I got a first hand lesson when we created http://www.curecancerstarter.org.

The sophisticated file management of cloud computing allows more file size without crushing network performance. This means we won't have to create "lowest common denominator" designs that bore everyone to tears but load fast anymore (or that is the theory :). M

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