So I presented the design for the new pride site last night. There was a lot of good feedback.

Everyone agreed that the sponsor logos were too small. I think I was fooling myself into thinking I could make them that small and get away with it. I’ve given in. They will be larger.

Also met some other designer-y creative types in the attendance. I hope I can bring them in on some of the pride projects. I really don’t want to go through another year doing all the marketing support myself.

Still hoping for a Feb 1 rollout. Cheers for now.

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I got laid off in February. Shortly thereafter I met a developer who was doing destination travel sites for a marketing company that catered primarily to the hospitality industry. We’ve since done sites for hotels around the world.

I’ve been webmaster for St. Pete Pride for several years now and this work that i’ve done has colored much of the work on the new 2010 St. Pete pride website. I began to think of Pride as a destination travel event. Remember that 90% of the people that view your site have no connection to pride other than the possibility that they might come to the event.

I started looking at the travel sites we’ve done over the past year… some 30+ of then and began to codify the things that they have in common. I found I agreed with my previous efforts on the pride site and completely disagreed with others.

I started with what I believe to be the primary goal of any pride website: Get people to the event. It seems silly to say it this way, but your pride website should make people want to come to the event. Many sites, in an effort to provide information, ONLY provide information. People will look at your website and decide in less than 10 seconds whether or not they want to come to the event. Make them want to come.

I hope to get the new pride website up by Feb 1. I’ll try to get in several posts before then.

More soon.

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You see the total devastation visited on people who’s lives are already so much worse than yours. Please consider making a donation to Doctors without Borders.

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One of my heroes is Steve Jobs. Always will be. I never want to meet him. I want him to remain larger than life and an inspiration for me.

A year or so ago, Disney bought Steve’s Company Pixar Studios and set Pixar up as the center of Disney’s Animation strategy. This deal gave Steve a seat on Disney’s Board of Directors. A few days ago a story made the news that Steve had a hand in re-mapping the strategy for the Disney retail stores.

As a background, Disney retail stores were created during Mike Eisner’s tenure. Mike was all about volume. Putting as much product in the field as possible equals the most sales. He was about the path of least resistance. Do it as easily and cheaply as possible. As a result, Disney stores saw some initial success, but in recent years have languished because they really didn’t represent Disney so much as SELL Disney. Today they seem the epitome of late 90’s consumerism: Stale and Tired. Whored out.

Steve gave the retail branch of Disney two words: Dream Bigger.

Have you ever worked for a company where your boss says your plans aren’t ambitious enough? I know I haven’t. We’re in the middle of the worst economy since the great depression. Every day another report that 300k+ jobs are lost and the message Steve gives both his staff at Disney and Apple is “Dream Bigger.” Everything about our surroundings tells someone to buckle down and hold on because it’s going to be a bumpy ride.

I am challenged. What am I doing now for which I need to “Dream Bigger”?

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Avenir Heavy

As an experiment in using the @font-face support in modern web browsers, I’ve done screenshots of the navigation’s reference render and each browser’s rendering of embedded fonts.

Photoshop Reference Render

Font Rendering Using Safari/Mac

Font Rendering Using Firefox 3.5/Mac

Font Rendering Using IE6/Win XP

Font Rendering Using IE7/Win XP

Font Rendering Using IE8/Windows 7

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