AbsoluteB.com

It was a while ago, a few months actually, that I was given the green light to (finally) redesign Bonobos.nl, but given that projects that were coming in from our clients had a higher priority, the site that represented us had to remain in the somewhat sorry state that it’s currently in. Which is a real shame, because the there was so much potential to design a cool site with such a unique logo and mascot, I mean, a monkey in a suit for crying out a loud, doesn’t that just scream LOL?

Months later and I’m back on track once again to redefine the online presence of Bonobos Marketing. The directions are endless, and ideas are running through my head at light speed. It’s going to take some careful thought and planning to design something worthy of the Bonobos name.

You’ll undoubtedly notice that I haven’t posted much in the past few weeks, let alone post anything that had any sense or value. Things have been incredibly busy at Bonobos since I opted to take on the ICT Manager role along side my current role as designer/front end developer. The past week or so has been the most busy I’ve ever been as I’ve been working hard to get things the way I want them within ICT, plus learning the ropes and undertaking all the responsibilities of my latest undertaking. Patrick, the manager I’m taking over for, was away for a week and so this was an opportunity for me to get my feet (very) wet. I’ll admit that there are plenty of things I could have done smoother and better, but I’ll be bold enough to give myself some credit for doing the job that I’ve done so far. I’ve certainly had to find the balance between taking the time to design and create my visions and utilizing short time spans to create designs that are “good enough”. I know, it’s such a sin as a designer to do anything that way, but as a manager with responsibilities, I have to decide whether my priorities allow me take the time or to deliver so that we as a company can move forward quicker.

As far as I’m concerned, I will do everything I can to maintain my initial role as designer and front end developer along side my new responsibilities rather than bringing on a new designer. Besides the fact that I believe that only I can carry out my vision better than anyone, I also love designing and every aspect of what it means to me too much. No doubt there will be times when I wonder if I’m trying too much, but I can honestly say that I’ll do everything I can do delegate my tasks so that I can focus on what I love and what I do best; creating beautiful graphics and websites in HTML and CSS.

For now though, I will be taking a break and taking a nice long week away in Hungary with my girlfriend. ROADTRIP! I haven’t been on vacation in years, and now, of all times, I think I deserve it more than any other time.

Holland’s first game kicks off in 10 mins! Dropping everything to go watch it!

EDIT: 0-0 half time… wtf?

EDIT 2: 2-0!!

The story of clients of yore, told oh so well by The Oatmeal, now hangs proudly in my office as a daily reminder that I’m probably on the wrong career path.

…read the rest of this entry »

I have avoided using inline blocks due IE7’s inability to handle them for as long as I can remember. There have been work arounds depending on what I was aiming to achieve like using ul’s and li’s and floats. But I have finally found a fix and it’s freakin’ simple thanks to a post I found on The Mad Ranter

The fix simply involves placing a * before declaring the attribute which all proper browsers will ignore except for the oh so wonderful IE7 and then displaying the div inline

*display:inline;

and voila, it works in IE7. IE8 thankfully doesn’t need the fix and seems to work just fine with inline blocks… so far.

The blog even describes how to fix the issue for IE6, but to be honest, I didn’t bother with that as I gave up on IE6 a looong time ago.

This has got to be the most colorful brand and design I’ve ever created! But I like it and I’m happy how it finally turned out! Looking to launch within a month. Will post details about this project as they develop further.

One of my many functions here at Bonobos includes designing ads that find their way into the phone books. I don’t know about you, but I haven’t looked in a phone book, in like, ever! At least not till I started here. In any case, if you’ve ever seen the ads that are in there, they’re really, I mean, REALLY crap. It’s almost like the plumbers and electricians designed their own ads in MS Word. But then again, like many others out there, I believe that placing ads in the phone book is a dying business, what with the Internet and Google and what not. But apparently there’s still enough business being generated from this medium. So I’ve been attempting to take these ad designs to another level.

One thing I’ve noticed about most of the ad designs in the phone book is that they’re designed as if the reader (if you can call a person who’s looking through the phone book that) knows who they are, when question really is what they’re looking for. Which means that the company logo taking center stage isn’t the right way to go.

First of all, if the person knew who you were, they wouldn’t be looking through the phone book in the first place. Secondly, none of them stand out. They’re all the same, none of them shout anything out or entice me to call them for what it is I’m looking for. Full page ads have way too many bullet points with too much text talking about things I don’t know about or care about either.

In any case, I’ve been experimenting with various methods of print designs concerning ads aimed at the phone book. These are mostly full page ads so that does open up a lot of possibilities in terms of space. These ads are also placed towards the front of the category, so they’re more likely to get noticed. But on top of that, I’ve aimed my designs at grabbing the most attention, while retaining self respect and avoiding cheesiness and above all, they need to remain memorable in the few seconds that a “reader” browses the other pages. Kinda like web design, only static.

Advocaten & Juristen Nederland (Lawyers & Lawyers Netherlands) will be going live in the coming month now that the design has finally been converted into, what I consider, beautiful CSS and HTML code. It will be heading towards the developers in the morning.

In the mean time, I thought I would post the new brand which will be representing the series of sites which will fall under AJN. The main umbrella site will represent general law and legal topics and offices all over the country, while the series of website which fall under the umbrella will be representing more specific areas of law. I’m looking forward to the launch as I’ve seen other sites with similar intentions and functionality, but I find it difficult to grasp that those sites do anything but a good job at what they’re supposed to do. Maybe I’m getting ahead of myself? I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

Bonobos B.V. has been selected as Bedrijf van de donderdag (Company of the day for this Thursday) by Radio 3FM Serious Radio on the Arbeidsvitaminen (literally translated; Labor Vitamin) show, and Patrick Noordhoff, our Creative Director, has also been voted boss of the day! He’s being described as someone who’s crap at math because he thinks that if his opinion is different from that of 4 others, that it’s still a 50/50 vote. Obviously the exposure from all this is nice an’ all, but that our company’s top 10 gets played is the real plus point here! My vote for John Mayer’s “Waiting on the world to change” will get played too, very cool.