Critique of Sprints FREE Samsung Banner Ad from matthew Barton on Vimeo.

You can view one of them here and I will be giving my thoughts and a quick redesign of it in near the future

The Flash Banner Ad

Ummm we need to discuss this site and this idea! – more later

Lets discuss blogging platforms….

While this is not likely to get you a date it is an interesting subject
View Full Portfolio Piece

I am sure you are aware of Scott Hansen – or iso50.com or Tyco Music – I have been checking daily for his commissioned poster for the Obama Campaign….. it uses many of his themes and styles.

While I like it – I was expecting the perfect storm – my Candidate of choice and my designer of choice.
You can purchase it online here

For regular design inspiration you should check out Scott’s blog at iso50.com

Attached are the two versions of this email

One with images off and the other with images on.

The subject line is strong – I think that it is a good offer

But without image turned on there is nothing going on and no alt text except random letters and numbers (which on further inspection turn out to be a the code you need in order to get the offer)

Email screen shot with images turned off in Gmail

Email screen shot with images turned onin Gmail

At least they could have added a system text link and explanation of the random letters and numbers being a code…..Also with images turned on – the call to action is bottom right and not very eye catching

This is an email that our competition is making and I would be interested to see how it is testing.

Resources from SmashingMagazine.com; might be helpful! Quite a few different tutorials and some resources/articles about layouts and icons.

Fireworks Tips and Tricks

View of Email with Images Enabled in Gmail

A comment on the most current marketing email from Nike

I think it is successful in terms of visuals – it is beautifully designed and tempting. The user experience is good in that each of the links takes you to the specific product or category you clicked on.
Where I think it fails is the fact that with images blocked, none of the message of the email gets through. The email is all image without any system text. The only information you get about what the email features without the images is from the Subject Line. One could argue that rather like Apple, Nike is a singularity in terms of brands, they provoke very positive feelings and people want to take the time to download the image in the email.
But I still think there is room from improvement, with good use of system text for messaging and navigation purposes and background colors in .html for design one can still have a compelling email , so that if the email is something I am interested in or not I can make the choice without having to download the images.

A Comment on the Coding of the Email
It’s just a one large image email (the first BIG no-no in email marketing), done all in image maps (where you define a hotspot of an image that’s clickable. That’s the 2nd BIG mistake. They did put ALT text in their image maps, but as we can see, email programs handle image maps differently and some don’t display the ALT text in the image maps. Some email programs ignore image maps altogether, so in those email programs this email would be completely non-functioning.