Daily Brad, the blog

So you might have noticed that my blog postings were somewhat sparse this year (for the 2 of you who follow it on a regular basis). Beyond not having much time to present my interesting findings, I’ve been busy flipping a house I purchased in January of this year. I blogged about it through most of the process, and now it’s just time to put up all the “after” pictures to enjoy what I came up with.

I’ve got to say I learned a lot in the process about many things that apply directly to being a freelance designer. While working with contractors, sub-contractors and people who I thought were “skilled” tradesmen in their respective fields I learned valuable lessons about being on the “client” side of things. Perhaps I’ll share those in a future post. I also enjoyed being creative in a format beyond my day-to-day job of doing UI design. Picking tile, wood floors, designing window woodwork, picking carpet, tearing down walls, etc. all provided a tactile experience that the design of software lacks. From that standpoint, I’d have to say the experience was an enjoyable one.

I also wanted to mentioned that I joined Facebook recently. I had been interested in some of their use of the latest-and-greatest technologies and wanted to keep track on what changes they make overtime. (Their growth rate has been phenomenal!) I’ve already found many people I know there, and have enjoyed exchanging messages through their internal email, or their “wall” functionality.

In the blogs that I read, email newsletters I subscribe to, and info that comes across my desk, the new search engine Cuil (pronounced like “cool”) seems to have been mentioned quite a few times times. So in typical fashion, I did a vanity search for my own name (and my company’s primary product name for that matter) to see what results it would come up with compared to other searches in Google or Yahoo.

What I found, is Cuil seems to have liked my LinkedIn page best. So I did a search for my friend, and illustrator Jonathan Hull (who continually competes for search engine attention from an author with the same name.) The author guy (that “other” Jonathan Hull) seemed to control the first three pages, and then… well then… nothing else (Nope, no more results at all). So the first thing I found is the fact that Jonathan Hull’s website is named www.jonathan-hull.com or my website is www.bradmccall.com seemed to have no effect on its relevancy for the same terms searched for in Cuil. In fact, even 10 pages into Cuil’s results and I didn’t find bradmccall.com listed as any part of its results when searching for “Brad McCall”.

So I followed up with my typical rounds of search to see what showed up by typing Brad McCall Utah and while links showed up from other sites that directed to mine, the direct link didn’t show up until page 5. Seems odd, right?

So I tried another brand company. Glaceau (They make the Vitamin Water that I’ve been drinking of late – so it was a quick grab.) and voila! Their brand name appears first thing. (glaceau.com) Okay, so they got that right. So I tried “Dell”, and the search engine errored out. A search engine erroring out? More oddness. (I tried this again later and whatever didn’t work was fixed)

So at last, I tried Omniture, the company that has garnered my full-time employ, and a random bunch of links came up, many of which were a part of the Omniture website, but its corporate website was nowhere to be found in the results. If you ARE patient enough to wait, you will notice on an “Omniture” search will create a menu that has some awesome links to the corporate site as well as product links – pages that ARE MISSING from the search results.

Does anyone get how this works? What gives? And is this REALLY supposed to compete with Google?

I meant to mention this the other day when I Googled myself and found I had lost the top spot on Google’s search engine to a blog. (I question Google’s mixed relationship there, because it owns the blogging tool.), but today when I checked, I’ve even moved further down the line to be 5th. I’m talking about when you do a quote-less search for brad mccall. I’m number 4 when you add back in the quotes.

Yahoo’s still got me on top, so I’m good there, and so does MSN.

Perhaps it’s because of my lack of frequency of added material to the Daily Brad? Or my lack of mentioning my name - Brad McCall in my posts with relevant content? I’m number 2 when searching for “Daily Bread”, just beneath a site that I think has been using that phrase a lot longer than me, so that can’t be it. I’m still highly suspicious about Google’s blogs appearing on top, and then not in any of the other search engines. Conspiracy theories aside, I think Google may have it’s hands in too many pots to be unbiased any of them.

Remember when you did your first professional freelance job? You did everything from beginning to end including the design, printing and management? I was thinking about that mixture of excitement and nervousness as I sent it off to press followed by the sure satisfaction that followed when the client loved the way it looked.

Now I look back at my work in 1996 and say - wow, I could have done so much better. But it’s 12 years later and there’s been a heck of a lot of design I’ve cranked out between now and then.

My first true freelance project was for one of my friends from High School, well actually for one her family’s businesses. Her name was Amy Kelly, the job was a postcard for tourist hotel card slots, and the business was Red Garter Ice Cream Saloon in Vale, Oregon. After inheriting land and moving to Vale, OR, Amy’s parents had started several small businesses to cater to the tourists coming through town following on the Oregon Trail. This was one of them and they needed to get their name out there.

Here’s the results (these are two up).

I haven’t had that same feeling about a project for a while and I I don’t know if it’s the medium I work in (100% Internet), or the fact that I work as an in-house designer for the client (Omniture), or that the projects I work on are mostly team-plays with shared responsibilities and rewards.

Do you remember your first “professional” freelance experience?

For those of you who don’t know what Bloglines is, you might as well go and check out the link. But in short, it allows you a one stop place to monitor all your RSS feeds. There are a quite a few tools that do this (even your portals like Yahoo and Google), but this one was the first one I was introduced to, and you know how that goes. (They won me!) Which one do you use?

But it seems lately that I’ve clicked so many of those “Keep New” boxes that I get overwhelmed with posts I want to read further into every time I go to see the new ones. So I thought I’d post the links here. (I’m moving quickly today, so I’ll have to put little one-liners to go with them later.)

But hey! You got a new post. (Something that’s been lacking for a while from the Daily Brad… uh, Yearly Brad is more like it.) I do have a excuse, as my latest project of flipping a house has kept my creative interests outside of work “offline”.

Here’s the links:

Branding:

• MassTerful Identity
• The Roaring Mouse
• Dubai’s Global Globe
• Vectors and Gradients Run Rampant: The New Swiss Style
• I ♥ Wolff Olins
• Enterprise gets Unionized
• 70 of the best logo design resources

Design

• Prepare for any marketing or promotionopportunity with a customizable ‘media kit
• Creative Freelancer Conference site goes live
• Marketing through social networks and social media
• It’s in the cards…
• GD:USA issues annual logo design trend report
• Incoming “logo design love”
• The dreaded “F word” - yea or nay?
• Producing
• 21 Web Design Tips from Web Design Gurus to Beginners
• 70 Beauty-Retouching Photoshop Tutorials
• Let There Be Light: Light Paintings and Sculptures
• Textures and Patterns Design Showcase
• CSS Editors Reviewed
• Beautiful Brochures and Booklets
• Applying Divine Proportion To Your Web Designs
• 35 Useful Source Code Editors Reviewed
• Pixels Go Mad - The Celebration Of Pixel Art
• Five More Principles Of Effective Web Design
• 5 Principles And Ideas Of Setting Type On The Web
• Inspirational PDF Magazines
• Celebration Of Vintage and Retro Design
• 60 Brilliant Typefaces For Corporate Design
• Laptop Sleeves, Skins and Stickers
• Free Fonts Of The Month: FF Unit, M+ Outline, GeoBats
• 35 (Really) Incredible Free Icon Sets
• Best Of February 2008
• Navigation Menus: Trends and Examples
• 45 More Excellent Blog Designs
• Adobe Illustrator Tutorials - Best Of
• 10 Principles Of Effective Web Design
• Grunge Style In Modern Web Design
• Monday Inspiration: Graphics In Motion
• Best of January 2008
• Usability and Interface Design Books
• Free Fonts Of The Month: Newcastle, Anziano
• Monday Inspiration: Data Visualization and Infographics
• Adobe Photoshop Tutorials - Best Of
• Hand-Drawing Style In Modern Web Design
• Smashing Highlights 2007
• Dilectio: A Smashing Wordpress Theme
• Group design blogs
• Omniture’s customer Christmas card
• Wolda 08 now open for entries

Usability

• Thinkbase visual Freebase wiki
• new UK coin design

Now my Bloglines looks much cleaner, but with the links here I can refer to some of my “come back and look at later” articles. Thanks to the websites who’ve put these together (you can notice that there are quite a few that come from the same websites.)

The Omniture UI team is growing continually, and we’re always looking to get some talented people on-board. It seems the UI designer is one of the most difficult to find. Someone who is not only talented in the aesthetic realm (our highly graphic applications depends on creativity and innovation), but who is also adept at creating easy-to-use interfaces for a highly technical and complex web-based software. And someone who’s willing to work in Orem, Utah. (Utah rocks!)

Here’s the latest job description we’re getting out there for a new hire. If you’ve got questions about the position or what it’s like to work at Omniture, drop me a line.

User Interface Designer Job Opening

Omniture is looking for an innovative, visual UI Designer with a strong sense of graphic design, layout, color, and usability. The ideal candidate will have an appreciation for sleek and usable interfaces, a solid understanding of the design process for web applications, strong technical know-how and a great attention to detail.
The UI Designer will work closely with product managers, researchers, engineers, and technical writers to visually and creatively take product ideas to concept by rapidly prototyping through conceptual sketches and mockups. The UI Designer will continually refine concepts to reflect input from internal and end-user testing. This is a high-profile role in a company that places high importance on creating a web product that combines cutting edge graphic technique with an easy-to-use interface.

Description

• Take direction to implement the creative vision and overall look and feel for projects based on design objectives, product requirements, functional specs, and an iterative feedback process.
• Assist in defining and developing the user experience for Omniture’s award-winning web-based products. Work with product manager and engineers in drafting initial concepts.
• Convey design ideas via storyboards, and prototyping tools.
• Create deployment-quality mocks and prototypes on tight timelines.
• Maintain graphic standards and corporate branding throughout the product’s interface.
• Review completed projects for consistent and correct look and feel.

Qualifications

• 2+ years of professional web design experience with an emphasis on creative, visual, and interaction design.
• Prefer web product design experience.
• BA/BS or equivalent in Graphic Design or related field preferred.
• Understanding of graphical web design principles, typography, composition, and iconography.
• Ability to set conceptual design and product direction from functional requirements.
• Ability to collaborate effectively with a group of creative individuals to produce highly polished and professional finished works.
• Ability to accept and design against feedback in an iterative development process.
• Ability to produce effective ideas under tight timelines.
• Strong written and oral communication skills.
• Strong computer skills and a demonstrated expertise in Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator.
• Comfortable in Microsoft Windows environment.
• Willing and able to contribute to the creative spirit and teamwork of the company.

I had an “ah-ha!” moment over the past couple days. CSS is awesome!

Perhaps it’s the fact that I’ve been so focused on the aesthetic design of websites for so long, and not how they’re engineered that I took CSS for granted? (I have always been able to surround myself with excellent programmers who’ve spoiled me.) So maybe the power of CSS hasn’t sunk in due to the fact that I’ve never gone in and tweaked it for myself?

But now I get it. CSS is awesome! (Did I say that?)

I’ve been blogging for a couple years now off and on, and really took what Wordpress does for granted. I enter the content, click publish and Worpress takes care of the rest. I was never concerned about the look of my blog (if that wasn’t obvious enough with my hats-off approach to the default template), nor did I think how a “blog tool” could translate into a content management system for a regular website. (Though the thought had crossed my mind) I always thought I’d get some help (the excellent programmers I mentioned before) in making any content I created in my blog work - somehow - in a future design of my portfolio site.

Now that I’ve considered how to implement and populate content into bradmccall.com in the easiest possible fashion (remember, I’m not a programmer), I now have an answer to the age-old question - what came first, the chicken or the egg? (Insert drum roll here) It’s doesn’t matter.

When I coded my first website in 1994, (did I mention I’m not a programmer?) I created every page individually by copying and pasting code on similar designs. I designed the chicken, cloned it repeatedly, and then designed each of the eggs one-by-one.

In 1999 when I designed the first (and current with the date of this post) iteration of bradmccall.com, the engineer who programmed it used CSS on each page to format the text. I got a feel for how this allowed me not have to constantly copy and paste long font attributes tags when I went in and tweaked parts (though you still may find some here or there). This simplified the production of the eggs considerably, but still left some of the chicken cloning process.

In 2003 this same engineer introduced me to PHP with a new website I created for a small side-business called SpinHouse. Now it seemed that the chicken could be randomly assembled and the mother chicken managed from one place. (Cloning on the fly?)

Now comes along Wordpress and the full realization of content management meets CSS. I can create all the eggs I like - in any fashion - and adopt them to any chicken I’d like. The content does not depend on the design, nor the opposite. It doesn’t matter.

Well, so much for writing about an ah-ha moment in the morning. I think I’ll grab some breakfast - scrambled eggs anyone?

2008 is one of the first years in a long time that I’m not taking a trip to celebrate my arrival to this world on January 31st. For those of you who know me well, you’ve already been asking, “where are you going for your birthday?” This year I decided to stick around town and enjoy this snow we’ve been having instead of lying on a sandy beach somewhere. Years past have been gloomy, gray and cold and it has been nice to escape to Florida, Cancun, Acapulco, Hawaii (all trips in years past). But while this year we’ve had plenty of the cold, in contrast to years past, we’ve also received plenty of the white stuff. I mean lots! It’s a nice change - I love the snow!

So to take advantage of the white stuff, I’m going snowboarding. Yup, hitting the slopes this weekend. I typically head to Brighton with my friend Jonathan, but we’ve also talked about trying somewhere new this time. In pulling up to check the weather for my birthday and the day after on KSL.com, I was surprised to find it was going to be a toasty day (and for the low none-the-less!):

So other than the oceans boiling and every living thing cooking in their skin, I think it just might be a good day to hit the slopes. I’ll be sure to grab my SPF 10,000 - wish me luck!

Another first happened for me at the Omniture holiday party last month. While the party itself was another great event filled with awards, music, dancing, food and general merryment, I think one of my favorite parts was seeing my handy-work on ice.

At the entry doors to the party stood an ice sculpture of Omniture’s logo, flanked in the rear by green lights. Since this was a Brad McCall first (Having a logo I designed carved in ice), I thought I’d mention it in my blog and put up a couple photos.

Watch Omniture this year… it’s going to continue to great things! (Meanwhile, I’ve been feverishly working on the next iteration of my online portfolio. If you think that having the same portfolio online for over 6 years is a shame, well, I’d have to agree with you.)

For those of you who know me, you’ve probably seen that I haven’t updated my blog in a while. You’ve also probably noticed that my Linkedin profile shows me back at Omniture. Or if perhaps you haven’t noticed any of that, yes, I’m back at Omniture. After working nearly 5 years and being a one man show designer, I took a job at Cymphonix, a job that was converted into a contract position after a year. I started contracting with Omniture in March of 2007, and was hired on in August.

Things have changed significantly since I worked for the green machine by way of employee count, their public status, their client base, their product line, and much more. It’s like working for a completely different company - other than the fact I still get to see my brand influence all over the office. My title is “Senior UI Designer”, and since I’ve never been one on throwing titles around, I think it works just fine.

Speaking of User Experience (which I’ve blogged about before), I found a recent user experience pretty comical. I opened up my MSN Messenger to find an ad at the bottom showing none other than Alyssa Milano. Tell me what “user experience” you think is broken in this one:

Here’s a clue: How beautiful is THAT picture of Alyssa?!?