Email Etiquette Part 2

By Elyssa Dolinger on March 10, 2010 at 4:23 pm in Email

Continuing on with our Email Etiquette series, I have 3 quick tips. The sandwich method, active voice and the use of sentence case.

First, the sandwich method. It goes a little something like this:

compsand

When you sandwich your critique or bad news in good news, it makes people a lot more receptive to what you have to say. It looks less like an attack and more like the helpful-yet-unsavory idea it is meant to be. This isn’t a way to disarm people so that you can sucker punch them; this just a little something you can try to build respect and trust with a person you may not speak to a lot outside of email. Grease the wheels with politeness and things will go a lot smoother.

Another subtle change that can make you more personable is the use of active voice. Oh no. Grammar. Active voice just means that you try to use use the active role of a verb whenever possible.
Example:

Your updates will be processed by the end of the week.

My Response?

WebMeh. A robot sent me a response. I wonder if my updates will ever go through?

We will process your updates by the end of this week.

My Response?

Web I look at the calendar. Oh? Really? The end of this week? That’s fast.


An easy way to tell the difference between active and passive voice? Look at who the subject is. In the first example, it’s the ‘updates.’ The updates are processed. In the active example ‘we’ process updates. It’s a lot more personable when there is a person involved.

My last tip should be pretty self explanatory. PLEASE DON’T USE ALL CAPS FOR YOUR ENTIRE EMAIL. EVEN IF YOU ARE NOT SHOUTING, IT SOMETIMES APPEARS THAT YOU ARE.

Twitter isn’t so scary

By Elyssa Dolinger on February 10, 2010 at 6:44 pm in Social Networking

Twitter isn’t exactly new. People have been using, abusing and even making a living off of Twitter since it’s inception in 2006. In an instantaneous world, four years might as well be a million. It’s like an art form that I all-of-a-sudden need to know and I’m not even sure why. There are Twitter experts and then…there are people like me.

tweettrans

Hi. My name is Elyssa and I am Tweet-impaired.

The first step to using Twitter, I think, is to understand what it is. Twitter is like a Facebook status update. It’s like blogging in 140 characters. It’s like swimming in a pool of millions of people or stepping into a chat room with everyone in the world invited. It is like all those things, but not exactly any one of them. Twitter is Twitter.

So why is it useful?

It’s real time, instant action. You can follow the news not only by following a news station, but you can search for a topic and get real time information. Remember the attempted Iranian Revolution? As a fledgling twitterer, I watched with morbid fascination as people tweeted and re-tweeted which embassies were open, what streets were not safe and quotes of remembrance about why they were doing what they were doing.

People use Twitter like a community. It’s faster than a forum, and doesn’t require everyone to be present at once to hold a conversation like a chat or instant message. It’s a happy in-betweener. Like leaving a note for someone or sending a text message.

Businesses use Twitter to prove that they’re not robots. When you get a response from a large corporation, a non generic direct response, you’ll definitely start to feel important. @jetblue and @homedepot are actually pretty good at this.

So what can you do with it?

Make it easy to succeed. There are programs out there (like HootSuite, TweetDeck, or Twhirl) that make Twitter less overwhelming and more manageable. These applications will even let you load your Facebook on there (and other social sites) for cross posting…if you’re into that kind of thing. You can even use these applications to search twitter so that you can look for conversations that you might be interested in, or you might even find a conversation about you or your business.

Keep it short and sweet. You can post links/photos/videos you found useful or interesting in your community or even in the world. This is best done with the help of a URL shortening service like TinyURL or Bit.ly. It’ll help tidy up your tweets so that you can explain your link. People like to know what they are clicking into before hand, especially if they are at work.

Use your hashtags. As mind-boggling as they are, hashtags help tweeters follow a thread of conversation and discussion trends. It’s similar to tags on a blog. If you use them, it’ll help more people who are interested see what you have to say.

Yeah, I know. I’m late to the party. And I still feel like a fledgling Tweeter, but somehow Twitter is a little bit more understandable. Like any social media, the most important part is making connections. So get out there and make some friends.

Web Design is not Print Design

By Elyssa Dolinger on January 18, 2010 at 5:11 pm in Design

art

It’s easy to think that design is design and that there isn’t a whole lot of difference between the types of design.

For the most part this is true. There are definitely fundamental principles that translate across genres. Principles like the golden ratio and the rule of thirds and all of that good stuff. (If you’re a designer, even if you don’t know the name you’d know the rule.)

Aaaaand then there are concepts that definitely don’t translate.

Resolution

The great thing about web design is that you don’t need high resolution photographs. If you are buying stock images, this means you can buy the smaller (and usually cheaper) images.

As far as print goes, the higher the resolution, the better. You don’t deal with resolution as much in print design except for the dire need of a higher resolution image. Working in a higher resolution file means working in a larger file. Working on a larger file means higher processing needs.

Color Formatting

These are CMYK

Cyan, Magenta and Yellow printing pigments.

CMYK and RGB are two different animals. I could tell you one is additive and one is subtractive, but that doesn’t mean a whole lot to most people. It makes more sense to me to realize that one is light based (the light from the computer screen) and one is pigment (or ink) based.

It is very difficult to match print and web colors since they work with two entirely different color systems. Metallic colors are difficult to achieve, but more difficult for print unless you have access to metallic inks.

Fonts

aliasingIn large blocks of text such as books, brochures and newsletters, it’s advised to use serif fonts for ease of reading. The serifs have a way of directing the eye and helping you keep your line placement. It’s especially beneficial for the dyslexic because of the more obvious differences in i, I, l and 1. (Yeah those are all different characters.)

On the web, it’s advised that you don’t have large blocks of text. Sometimes it’s unavoidable, but for a lot of sites the fewer words, the better. The more you break up your paragraphs, the better too. So the need for serifs is pretty much gone.

There are also some technical benefits to using sanserif fonts. For example, sans serif fonts can be sized smaller than serifs and still be readable. There are also some aliasing issues (hard pixilation) with windows and serif fonts.

Organization

On the web, it is best to have your navigation available on every page so that you can navigate anywhere from anywhere. The print equivalent would be to have the table of contents on every page. It certainly takes up space.

Good design transcends browsers and platforms and material, but unfortunately a lot of times it is defined by them. Since the very make up of Print and Web are different, by definition shouldn’t the design be different too?

Improve Content Absorption

By Elyssa Dolinger on November 12, 2009 at 1:18 pm in Design, How-To

Hey, I’m Elyssa Dolinger, a recent T&S designer hire (Yeah! Helping to even out our designer/programmer ratio.) and I believe strongly in the power of information design.

Print design theory can really help in classing up a web page. More importantly, print designers are used to working with a lot of content. A lot of times people want a lot of content on their web pages. We’ve learned a few things here and there to make content not only readable, but understandable.

Little tricks like the “rag” of a block of text and “leading” and “kerning” can take a page from unintelligible to just plain classy. It’s amazing what small changes to spacing can do for comprehension.

So, what are these amazing tricks, you ask?

Paragraph breaks: Yep. You heard me. Paragraph Breaks. If a reader sees a GIANT BLOCK OF TEXT, they will skip it every time. Give them hope that they can finish your content in the form of spacing between paragraphs.

Rag: The rag is the right hand side of a left-aligned block of text. (Or, conversely, the left hand side of a right-aligned block of text.) Confusing? Yeah. Here’s a picture.

Rag

The rag helps people keep track of where they are when they are reading. If a block of text is justified-aligned, there are no visual clues to help the reader. (Also it messes up your kearning.) The reader is more likely to loose track of where they are in your paragraph. Rather than start all over again, most will abandon the attempt.

Center-aligned or justified-aligned blocks of text are not advisable as far as large blocks of text go, but are okay as far as single lines are concerned.

Leading: Leading (rhymes with heading) is the vertical space between lines of text. It’s sometimes called line-spacing. The more leading you use, the easier a block of text is to read. Too much leading, though, and you’re wasting space.

Leading

See how this block of text (as opposed to the one about rag) seems somehow more approachable? This block of text has about 50% more leading than default.

Kerning: Kerning is the horizontal spacing between individual letters. It is sometimes referred to as tracking. This is most helpful in the case of headlines or specialty “decorative” fonts. (You know, the fonts used in logos and super cool web pages?) Most everyday use fonts or web safe fonts have the kerning ironed out already.

Kerning

Utilizing these 4 tricks, you too can make any content readable, understandable, and absorbable.