I was reading ‘A list Apart‘ and discovered a true gem of an article called Orbital Content by Cameron Koczon. Cameron talks about content in the web today and the shift of content from being rooted into pages and discovered laptops and computers and being consumed by tablets and digital portable devices through users.

An example of this shift would be your Facebook wall. Instead of all that content which is dear to you being spattered throughout the web, its all conveniently located in one section and tied to your user account. The shift is not complete because your wall only holds links to this content. In the future this will be different.

Be the center of your content

Imagine your facebook wall, but bigger. Now imagine the links to the articles are gone, but the full article lives there instead. Don’t copy a link to that image you found moving to click back to later, just copy that entire image. Your personalized content will be centralized to you. This is the future that Cameron sees and I agree. This way you can library and consume content in your own fashion. Thats the movement of content on the web.

Content, Copyright, Compensation

The 3 killer C’s of the web. If your holding someone elses content, yet you didn’t produce the content, is that not some sort of copyright violation? Cameron brings this up in his article. In the end he concludes that it is all about compensation:

It is a question that belies a concern about something slightly different: compensation. If publishers were compensated $10 every time content was shared and $1 every time it was read on their site, they would do everything in their power to get their content shared. Copying is not the problem—compensation is.

-Cameron Koczon

After reading this the first thing that popped into my mind is Spotify. The latest and greatest for music lovers. They completely reworked the compensation model for streaming content and holy hell its paying off for them. If your not familiar with Spotify you can find out more at the Spotify Wikipedia page.

Conclusion

Overall I agree strongly with Cameron and his views on the liberation and shifting of content that will be the future of the web. So when your content is shared through some new-age app to be consumed on a different platform, don’t hate it. Embrace it.

A websites’ mission

Brad starts off describing that creativity is different when put into context, so for his sake of web design he says creativity is defined by producing something useful and in the end explains that people generally visit websites because they are trying to accomplish a task. Its the designers job to find out what those are before starting, this will make the most useful site for the users. All of this I strongly agree with and was a focusing point of my current Web Design class I am taking at the university. We talk about it more as a website’s strategy.

Brad continues with the psychology to make people do something. He doesn’t explain too much besides making a site likeable and social proof. He doesn’t explain much more here and left me wanting a bit more.

Finally Brad concludes his article talking about Neuro Science Marketing that says poor user experience can cause stress on websites and that you should ditch the fancy stuff that may be confusing. In other words keep it simple.

Conclusion: Don’t me make think!

Overall this article this article resembles much of the information I have received from my university studies regarding User Experience. First of build a strategy for your users to come to the website and accomplish the task they came to your site for in the first place. Fancy widgets and overly complex applications on the site will cause stress and return users are not as likely. Most of all, as Steve Krug says: DON’T MAKE ME THINK. The tasks that your site accomplishes should be straight forward and available with ease.

For more information great information on Web Design advice are some links for your reading pleasure:

• 7 Key Secrets to a Successful Website
• How to Up Your Game as a Web Designer

Recently I read The Expert Mind, a nice little article for my current Digital Media degree, that backed up this theory of becoming a true ‘master’. In the article, written by Philip E. Ross, he talks mainly of chess players and their journey to becoming chess Grand-Masters. It is here he brings up the ‘10-year rule’, which states that it takes approximately a decade of heavy labor to master any field. And its not through mere effortless playing, but wanting to grow and wanting to improve. Philip gives an example of casual golf with your friends. Your knew so you learn to play, but once you reach the same level of skill that your friends are at, there is no real motivation to continue the learning.

Success Breeds Success

Another interesting point from the article is the fact that success is usually followed by more success. The article talks about children, who by chance are born at a certain time a year. The way soccer leagues are setup typically is by age. So certain children have the size and agility advantage compared to others in the league. They get more chances to score and are ‘better’ players and they are more likely to take there skills to the next level and play in collegiate sports and possibly the pros.

So can I truly be a master at anything?

I find this article to be well written and true. I believe that through hard work and wanting to improve you can truly become a master of anything. Saying that I think would be hard to devote so much time in today’s world. Most of us are out there working our 9 to 5’s, raising children, commuting to here from there. But what if becoming a master just happens because its part of your job? That is what I imagine happens to most experts in their respected fields. They were challenged enough to ‘push the envelope’ in their learning. Web designers who spend 10,000 hours over the course of years taking on new challenges from different clients could easily become masters.

Final Thoughts: Don’t believe in the current idea of ‘Jack of all trades, master of none.’ Just realize the path is long and only with perseverance can you become a true master.

For some ideas of how to become a master, check out How to Master Anything.

ANTS in my scanner > a five years time-lapse! from françois vautier on Vimeo.

This guy put an ant colony in his scanner and scanned it once a week for 5 years!

Each Thursday I will be updating my site with links to help inspire the thirsty minds that are seeking some inspiration to help get the wheels turning on whatever project you may be working on. Some days it may be for logo design, some days it may be some creative photography or maybe just an article to open up the right side of your brain and let it take over.

Since I have been doing quite a bit of logo design recently I thought that would be a good starting point for these Thirsty Mind Thursdays. Logos are at times super fun to create and at other times a giant pain in the ass. I like to create logos that I feel I have some kind of connection with. I just finished up a logo for a team of snowboard coaches and it was fun and exciting. I am a snowboarder so I can really relate to the target audience and with that in mind I was able to come up a set of nice logos for them to chose from rather easily but that is not always the case. So here are some great resources for getting into the logo mode.

Logo of the Day

Logo of the Day comes from a fantastic pair of logo designers. One being Jacob Cass who is a designer based out of Australia who recently finished his degree and is now moving to New York to work for a design agency. I find much inspiration from Jacob Cass and his website is full of great work as well as tips that all designers should know about be sure to check it out here. He has come up with some fantastic logos and much of his work has been published in a variety of books.

Logo of the day has a plethora of great logos to get those creative minds rolling to help get that logo done. They have rankings for each logo and comments as well. Be sure to check them out for great logo idea.

Logo Lounge

Logo lounge is another great resource to get inspired for logo design. Not only do they have thousands of great logos to help you get creative but they go into much more depth than just showing off logos. When you click on a logo you get the designer, the agency it came from and a ton of information on that particular logo. They have a great following which means great content.

My personal favorite part of Logo Lounge is the design trends section. Here they have a great description of the logo trends used each year going all the way back to 2003. As well as other great articles on branding. Be sure to check this site out when creating logos.

Evolution of Tech Company Logos

The final little tid-bit of today’s Thirsty Mind Thursday is a sweet little find on the evolution of tech logos. It has some history of some of the major brands in the tech industry. Names such as Canon, Nikon, Google, Apple and more. It is strange to see their original logos next to the the logos we all recognize today. Clearly when most of these companies first began they did not have a marketing team it seems or at least they didn’t pay someone the big bucks to design the logo they now sit on. I mean if you look at Apple’s first logo it is a picture of newton sitting under a tree with some banner going all the way through and around the image. I don’t know how that is very brandable but I get the idea of original thought and their original computers. The evolution of tech logos is a nice little article that is both fun to read and very informing. Be sure to check it out.

That is it for Thirsty Mind Thursdays this week. I hope this weeks ‘TMT’ will get those minds working and will help you churn out some fantastic new logos. Maybe they will be even be featured on one of the sites. If you like Thirsty Mind Thursdays be sure to subscribe to my RSS feed and you will be sure to get your Thirsty Mind Thursdays article as soon as it hits the web.

Cheers & be inspired!