Blogs

Without spending too much time thinking about this one; suffice it to say I was intrigued to receive an email this morning from 37 Signals - the chaps who make Basecamp (which we use to 'manage' client projects).  Getting emails from them isn't unusual but the fact that this one was solely dedicated to advertising a couple of new staff positions they have open.

You see, 37 Signals also provides a commercial job board on their website - which, when I checked after getting the email, also had the listings - albeit, on theirjob board the lingo used in describing the job was more informal... the title of one pos, for example; "A designer who can kick our ass."

What interests me about all this:

• The fact that in addition to the job board listing they needed to send an email out,
• Why their email (which is asumedly being sent to 37 Signals' customers) was more formally phrased than the listing on the job board they host.

Groundwave Design Corp (who, in the past, have worked with Flavorpill - the JC Report's previous publisher) helped us out with a new design for the JC Report mailer and based on that, I today began the process of re-envisioning the aesthetic of jcreport.com and implemented the first batch of those changes.  Moving into Spring/Summer, the goal basically was to lighten the screen with softer grays, thinner lines and more open space.

For the past 4 years, the JC Report has existed as an email newsletter - this past December we started working with Jason Campbell and his team to launch a new Drupal powered website that would allow his readers to engage in his content much more creatively plus be able to access a wealth of archived posts.

You can learn more about the JC Report in our client projects section.

We're looking to expand our network of associates who are highly skilled in using Drupal to develop websites that support communities - preferably you would be located in Toronto for these projects, which start in May and will continue through the year, though we're open to working with website producers/developers around the world.

Also, we're looking for people who are passionate about innovating with Drupal that are familiar with things like building dynamic user profiles with Nodeprofile/Nodefamily/Usernode combinations etc... and certainly not people tinkering with Drupal - you must be committed to working professionally with it.

If you're interested in working with us, please send over an email with some links - including any personal blogs/websites plus on online portfolio or examples of work you've done!

A while back I came across the Email Standards Project through Campaign Monitor - the weapon of choice on our client projects which require email campaigning with html-coded newsletters (such as the JC Report).

They've just made a jokesy video I thought I'd share that overplays relates frustrations we as designers face when trying to make code cross-client compatible with email... Personally, I've been doing this stuff for a decade so I'm used to making things work but it really is time to get email standards up to scratch so that design can get more racey and creative in email newsletters and such.

Et voila:

Email Standards Project - Gmail Grimaces from Mathew Patterson on Vimeo.

Some of you may have noticed that we've been offline for about a week - for months I've planned to overhaul the designguru website with something fresh that would profile all of our network associates who work on the various projects with me that DG undertakes.

Soon, when you click on 'who we are' you'll see a more fleshed out list of these people - it won't just be my smiling mug up there indefinately :)

Clicking around you might notice some things not working and looking wonky, please drop us a line to point out these errors; like any rushed launch, the site isn't fully where we want it to be - but that's often part of the fun of going live slightly pre-maturely anyway right?

More soon,

q./