Recently I had the great opportunity to create a custom Youtube Channel for Dell. While there are some handy features in the Youtube admin tool to change out a handfull of properties (essentially CSS classes), I found it a bit time consuming creating a quickly editable PSD mockup.

I spent many hours taking and dissecting screenshots, then creating editable text in these screenshots place, and finally applying new colors to each element. As I expect to create more custom channels in the future, I came up with a system within my PSD to group each corresponding element into it’s respective property, or css like class. After creating this handful of smart objects, I could then just apply a color overlay to each, change out the background and a few images (logo, top banner, thumbnails), and quickly see new color and style options.

After investing this time, I thought “why not give this away and save other designers time as well”, so here it is!

I won’t go into great detail here about how to use the Youtube admin tool , as it’s pretty straightforward (but if you want to learn the basics, check out google’s primer on the subject here). Instead, I will show a screenshot of the admin tool, and then a screenshot of the layers pallete within my template, to show how they correspond.

The “Themes and Colors” section of the Youtube Admin Panel

View full size image

Here you see the handful of properties that you can change, including: Font, Background color, Wrapper color, Wrapper text color, Wrapper link color, Wrapper transparency, Background Image, Background color, Title text color, Link color, Body text color, and Transparency.

PSD Layer Pallete, including corresponding “class” related smart objects

View full size image

Download the Template PSD

Conclusion

I hope you find this template to be helpful and a great time saver. A few thanks: Bacon ipsum for the high quality filler text, Frank Restaraunt and Christian Helms for the swine inspiration, and Wood Type Revival for use of their fine “Concave Tuscan” headline font.

Here are a few of my early favorites, but i’d love to hear everyone else’s thoughts as well:

Social Media Cures Cancer and Speaks for Survivor
Speakers: Doug Ullman – CEO of Livestrong, and Julie Shussler – Burson-Marsteller

Agency 2.0: Introducing the Innovation Lab
Speakers: Jamie and Chris Monberg – Hornall Anderson

Design from the Gut: Dangerous or Differentiator?
Speakers: Phil Coffman – Springbox / Method & Craft, Naz Hamid – weightshift, Laurel Hechanova – Apocalypse OK, and tom watson – facebook

OMG Your RFP is Killing Me
Speakers: Joe Rinaldi – Happy Cog, and a panel of others

Humanize the Web: Illustrating for Interactive
Speakers: Gerren Lamson – GSDM, and Reagun Ray – Paravel

The Right Tool for the Job: Native or Mobile Web?
Speakers: Buzz Andersen – Tumblr, and a panel of others

TenseUp: Creating Positive Tensions In Experiences
Speaker: Matt Walsh – Crispin Porter + Bogusky

Building the Dell app, therapy for a brand.
Speakers: michael kriegshauser – Dell Global Site Design, and a panel of others

Navigating danger in marketing’s in-between times
Speakers: Allison McCarthy, Guthrie Dolin, and Larry Johnson – Odopod

A Brief History of the Complete Redesign of Google
Speakers: Jon Wiley, and a whole panel from Google

Is it better to bring it In-House?
Speakers: John Stevens and Tommy Lynn – Dell Global Creative

Shameless plug for my own panel:
3 creatives. 3 amazing projects. 18 minutes each.
I’ll moderate, and speakers / creatives To Be Determined! maybe you?!

So those are a few of my favorites. What about you?

So I wanted to share a few reasons that weighed heavily on my consideration of this opportunity, and hopefully you might find them helpful on your own journey.

Dream no small dreams

In some ways, my career so far could not have gotten off to a better start. I had the honor of working at the top advertising shop in the world, at Crispin Porter + Bogusky, daily mixing it up with some of the brightest minds in the creative industry, and partnering with dream clients that were as generous with the creative reigns as Gordoughs is with the awesomeness. A dream job indeed.

And for the last few years, I was part of the scrappy digital agency, Springbox, learning from some very smart, business minded creative gurus. It was here at Springbox, that I’ve truly started to find that sweetspot, where creative innovation, business goals, and user’s need all meet. Not to mention we had dream clients like Livestrong and Sweet Leaf Tea, and a steady supply of Brooklyn lager in the fridge. Good times.

So when a handful of tempting opportunities came my way, it was my instinct to lean to the hippest, most cutting edge, and overall leaders of the creative / technology industries. All great options, but all in someway easy options. Proven track records, tons of recent success to leverage, and fan bases like the world has never seen before. All of them would have been dream jobs to some degree.

But great stories are never about the easy life, or the luxuries one affords himself (via Donald Miller’s ‘A thousand miles in a million years’). Great stories are always about overcoming great obstacles. The underdog, the one everyone had counted out, who then came back to prove all the naysayers wrong.

I want to live a great story. I want to tell my grandkids of when the chips were down, and we proved them all wrong.

So even as Dell currently has some things going for them (which I’ll get to shortly), I also know that as a brand, they have taken quite a hit with the public perception over the last 5-10 years. There is much work to do. And it will require much blood, sweat and tears, as all great adventures do. And that, has the potential for a great comeback story.

Though dell has seen some rough spots over the last decade, there are many reasons for hope, and I will highlight a few of them next.

Momentum

Over the last year, Dell has been going through a massive and far reaching re-branding, largely led by an in-house team. Far beyond merely a logo, a few colors, and a typeface, this effort is addressing the entire brand prescence. And with a corporation this massive, this has been no small task. I have seen this first hand over the last year, as part of the team at Springbox working in partnership. I will admit that I was a bit skeptical about the rebranding when I first began to see it implemented. Many of us have seen corporations undergo a “rebranding”, while the reality is merely a new coat of paint. Though I thought this may be the case at first, I’m now convinced that I was wrong. There is change happening, and Dell is moving in the right direction. There is a renewed identity and passion in who Dell is as a company, as a force for good. There is a new found focus on design, aesthetics, real world usefulness, user experience, and overall brand perception. There is a good bit of momentum, and with a corporation this large, this is no small feat.

Support from leadership

As I saw the momentum building over the last year, I knew that it had to be a huge team effort, but I also knew that it had to contain a key element often missing from the majority of design / branding / creative changes in corporations: they had the support from leadership. More than just a sign off, change is being driven from both the top down, as well as bottom up. This is huge. Unless the leadership values and desires to see change happen, a million psd files / sketches / and dreams will all go for not.

A stellar team is forming

As I began to tell some fellow creatives about my decision, one of the things that I kept hearing repeatedly was “oh wow, my really talented friend / former coworker just joined the team there”. Though I didn’t know this so much when I accepted the offer, it has been quite reassuring and exciting to hear time and time again. Designers, writers, technologist, interaction designers, producers, and more. The breadth and depth of experience is impressive. Along with having support from leadership, I also believe it’s crucial to have teammates who are both highly skilled and passionate about their craft. I’m excited to join this growing team.

50 years from now, I want to look back over my life and be thankful for the people and teams I had the honor to be a part of, remember the challenges I conquered, and have no regrets about how I invested my God given time, energy, and passion. Here’s to being one step closer.

The title “client’s are not the target audience, user’s are”, might be a bit heady, so, simply put, we explored the challenge of getting clients to move past traditional promotional advertising (aptly nicknamed ‘interuption’ by the smart folks at @rga ), and instead partner with clients to create truly unique and engaging digital experiences centered around their brand’s unique value.

So to the highlights…

to introduce the topic, I told a quick story of how this topic came to be burning within me: Last fall, I was in a agency internal meeting, discussing a client project mid way through, when a certain client request caused a riff among the team. My creative partner and I listened to the request, but strongly objected, for both conceptual and functional reasons. Another member of my team strongly pushed back, and eventually gave the reasoning “we have to do it. we’re to make the client happy”. At this point, I pretty much flipped. Almost instantly, I responded with “we’re not here to make the client happy. We’re here to help the client make a great digital experience. They may not be instantly happy everytime.” I probably could have had more tact, but it is a strong passion of mine, and ultimately inspired me to lead this talk. Now on with the actual talk.

We framed the conversation around two key phases in each project: how to begin a project well, and then how to keep focus midway through a project (when everything is bogging down) and finish well. With each phase, anton and I both gave a case study example from our own experiences. I’ll frame this write up in the same way.

how to begin a project well

I spoke about my experience at Springbox (an interactive agency in Austin) in leading the design for the 2010 complete re-design of http://www.Livestrong.org , the non-profit division of the Lance Armstrong Foundation, aimed at helping “all whose lives are affected by cancer. It is an amazing orginization, with an feircely loyal and supportive following. I focused on knowing exactly who your target audience is. Our team did this by creating an extremely helpful set of fictional personas, based on factual research.

While we looked at the traditional factor / demographics of the audience, such as age, sex, nationality, language, education level, etc.; what i found extremely helpful were some additional factors. These included: how are these people affected by cancer (they have just been diagnosed, their mom has cancer, etc.)? What are they trying to accomplish by coming to the site? What is their digital technology savviness? How do they use technology in their daily lives? What is their experience with the Livestrong brand?

After looking through these evolved personas, I was able to reason that people came to livestrong.org for two primary reasons: To either get help (as they or someone close to them is in immediate need of help), or they have come to take action, such as to participate in a livestrong marathon, bake sale, or one of a number of great events. After discovering this key insight, the whole project shifted from ‘how do i create a visually stunning site?’, and but instead to ‘how do craft the whole digital experience through these two priorities, in both aesthetic and heirarchy’. this finding made all the difference in creating an extremely useful, and easily navigable site.

On the first topic, Anton shared his recent experience in creating the HTC Sense website , a really playful and well done site! I will be much more brief here, as I do not want to misquote him, but I will share some of the highlights. In regards to the HTC site, Anton spoke of how the client had some really amazing features, called HTC Sense, but didn’t quite know how best to communicate them in a conversational and non-techy tone. To communicate these features in a fun and truly interactive way, @F_i crafted a series of interactive cartoon shorts, in which the viewer actually plays with the phone on the site, and experiences the aha moment through interaction, rather than just a observational video. Really cool stuff.

how to keep focus midway through a project (when everything is bogging down) and finish well.

or how to push through the “crap, just get it out the door moment”. Originally I had wanted the talk to focus on just the beginning of a project, but Anton had so many great insights on the latter that we had to include it. Honestly, I personally learned a ton on this topic, and found it extremely helpful in the day to day of running a creative services shop.

Here are a few highlights that really stuck out to me, in regards to finishing well:

As creatives, we have to be the expert, that’s why a client comes to us. you have to earn a client’s trust, and while a good portfolio is a good foundation, the details in a relationship really really matter. Things like: always be on time. heck, always be earlier. Always giving your client an idea of the contents of a meeting. Nothing elaborate, but start every meeting with a 30 sec – 1 min overview of what will be shown, discussed, what is new, old, etc. Always be organized. Ultimately, these might come across as trivial matters, but if the client is comfortable with you and can trust that your leading them well, they will let you control the project.

Educate the client. I know there is some opposition to this in the industry, but I agree with Anton. Most good clients are not creatives, or that experienced with the intricacies of the digital space, and they want to learn something. That’s a great opportunity for us, the digital creative professional. So own it, be on top of it, know your craft, know your industry. It should be something your passionate about, so it shouldn’t be that difficult.

And I save the best nugget for last: what do you do when the client has a request that they will not back down from, and you disagree strongly with? The grim reality, we are ultimately not fine artist or rock stars. we are in the service industry. The good news / wisdom from
Anton: find out what one section / page / feature matters most to the client, and make this amazing in their eyes! Then, find the other overlooked areas that most people never care much about, and freaking blow them out! For example, the login, contact, or about us page. Essentially, find out where you can play wide open, and where do you have to please. This is a huge encouragement and challenge at the same time.

In closing, I was truly blown away by the turn out and lively conversation. A huge thanks to everyone that was there, and a huge thanks to Anton for making the journey down south to join us! If you were with us, or even if your just digesting all of this now, I would love to continue the conversation here, so don’t hold back your thoughts!

passion

You may be tempted to skip over this part. I mean really, who wants to talk about passion, right? we’re in a business, an industry, who’s really passionate about the 9-5 anyway. Wrong. Above any thing else, the driving force of passion came up again and again for me while at south by. Though I can easily be distracted by the latest and greatest shiny gadget / idea / startup, ( what self respecting nerd can’t ;} ), the people and conversations that i consider most memorable are ones centered on whatever it is someone’s passionate about.

I’ll get to the offical business of the festival soon, but I wanted to first highlight the passion I found outside of the convention center halls. Whether it be conversations over pints at the gingerman, or over tacos at la condesca, the greatest moments for me were not spent leaning back gazing at slides or the next twittbookspace idea, but rather leaning intently into conversations about fatherhood, adoption, architecture, clients, pricing, camping, cylcing, and a handful of other topics. If we need more of anything at sxsw next year, it’s not opinions, technology, or parties. we (including myself) need more passion for the projects that fill up our moments, days, and lives.

a festival

I read that there were over 19,000 paying attendees this year, the greatest number in sxsw history. I also read that there was somewhere close to 1000 panels. Though at times the shear number of attendees and panels felt overwhelming, I’m thrilled overall to see both my city and my industry grow.

I was fortunate enough to make some outstanding panels, but I also missed a few, as to be expected with so many options at every turn. A few of my favorite in particular, were @rga ‘s “congratulations your brand is about to become obsolete”, Blake ( founder and chief shoe giver at Tom’s shoes, @blakemycoskie ) Mycoskie’s keynote, and john ( @jkolko ) kolko and dennis ( @dennis_littky ) littky ‘s panel “will technology save education” . Different subject matter for each, but the same theme of passion in each. These people are smart, but more importantly they are extremely passionate!

Overall, some of the panels were extremely basic, or mundane, but I did find some real gems! Sometimes you just have to dig! As far as value, I would say the conference is valuable, but I can not see myself ever paying for a badge. If in the future my company is paying, or if I get the honor to speak again and have my badge comped, I would love to come back. But I just can’t honestly say that the festival is worth $500 admission. I would pay $100, and consider $200. But not $500, at least at sxsw current state. which leads me to a challenge of where the festival can go!

Also, I am writing a summary of my own panel, “clients are not the target audience, users are”, co-led by the extremely smart and talented Anton @repponen, an associate creative director from fantasy interactive in new York, New York, and will post this shortly here on the kreathaus blog.

A Challenge

One of great individuals that I met this year, Ted @Boda , recently tweeted

“The best way to complain is to make things.” -James Murphy

This is the best summary for my thoughts on the possible future of sxswi. Over the course of the festival, I heard far too many complaints on how lame this or that panel / keynote / talk was. It was almost the standard way to start a conversation. And though I won’t deny that many of the panels were hit or miss, we can’t stop there.

We have to craft the future we want to live in. do you want sxsw to be amazing next year? well, how are you going to make it happen then?

so let’s drop the cynicism, evaluate what we’re passionate about, what we’re spending our lives on, and how those two things can intertwine.

So here’s my challenge for next year: Determine what your passionate about. What keeps you up at night? What project / business / app / idea do you day dream about? What project will you have invested so much time / sweat / and blood into by march of next year, that by the time I see you, you can’t help but tell me about it?

And if a couple thousand of us gather again next year in this fair city, with a passion for whatever it is we’re spending out lives on, I think we will alI be blown away.

So get to it. And I can’t wait to run into you next year!

Until next year, what were your thoughts on sxsw this year? how can we make it better? I’d love to hear other takes on the subject!

the creative agency

Though I have had the privilege of working at two great digital agencies, Crispin Porter + Bogusky and Springbox, I am still very interested in hearing from other leading shops, to find out the struggles, unique viewpoints, and victories that they have discovered. Whether it’s exploring the digital pod / team concept from R/GA, or a radically new compensation model from Fahrenheit 212, or hopefully a dozen of other innovative agency models / structures, I am looking forward to hearing other’s thoughts on forming and unleashing creative teams, adjusting and finessing the creative process, and the evolving digital agency in general.

the good, the bad, and the ugly role of digital in our daily life

how is the ever present stream of information and connectability helping / hurting our lives? our relationships? our family? our health? our careers? our neighborhoods? what are the psychological affects of always being connected / on / checking in? Specifically for me, as a new dad, and young husband, what precautions do I need to take to keep my own and my families digital intake at a healthy ebb and flow?

technology for the greater good

how can we move past shiny gadgets and time wasting games, and use technology for the greater good of our community, and ultimately our world? how can we use technology to provide basic necessities such as clean water / food / dignity / freedom from slavery to those daily affected by these issues? Much closer to home, how can we restore wonder and play to a dilapidated education system? What can be done to improve easy access to locally grown foods? The possibilities are endless. I know this one is a bit vague, but I have a feeling that there is so much that COULD be done, but is currently being trumped by angry birds and shiny plastic. I mention this topic, not as one who is an expert or even currently active in creating solutions, but rather as an area that I want to invest more of my time and energy into.

So those are my top interest for #sxswi 2011. What about you?

yep, seven years, three states, and 35,892 psd files later, I’m finally staring down the joy of taking part in the sxsw interactive festival this year. oh joy.

so to give this monumentous event the care and energy it deserves, I will be sharing a bit of my preparation on the blog here, with a desire to facilitate a conversation, more than prescribe a plan of attack for others. if 2011 will be your first year attending as well, welcome fellow newby! or maybe your a veteran and could recite the last ten years keynotes in your speech. if so, i would love to hear tips and advice, as well as what your looking forward to as this year’s shindig. or maybe your in the same boat as i have been up until this point, and you can’t make it to tehas this year. even so, i’d love to hear your thought on the topics and have you join in from afar!

Enough preamble, here’s a rough look at the topics I want to cover in this series of posts:

Topics I’m interested in

Reading list in preperation for #sxswi

People I’d like to share a pint with

hidden gems to find while in Austin

daily thougths (during the conference)

post-conference wrap up

I hope you join me in my preparation. And as always, if you have any thoughts, suggestions, or gems of wisdom to contribute here, share away!

FUKINSEI (imbalanced)
Asymmetry, odd numbers, irregularity, unevenness, imbalance is used as a denial of perfection as perfection and symmetry does not occur in nature.

KANSO (simple)
Elimination of ornate and things of simplicity by nature expresses their truthfulness. Neat, frank and uncomplicated.

KOKOU (austere)
Basic, weathered bare essentials that are aged and unsensuous. Evokes sternness, forbiddance, maturity and weight.

SHIZEN (natural)
Raw, natural and unforced creativity without pretence. True naturalness is to negate the naive and accidental.

YUGEN (subtle profound)
Suggest and not reveal layers of meaning hidden within. Invisible to the casual eye and avoiding the obvious.

DATSUZOKU (unworldly)
Transcendence of conventional and traditional. Free from the bondage of laws and restrictions. True creativity.

SEIJAKU (calm)
Silence and tranquility, blissful solitude. Absence of disturbance and noise from one’s mind, body and surroundings.

of the few national / large companies that I have encountering advertising for (one of which is on my screen in grooveshark as i type, ha), all of them ended up having consistently bad ratings and reviews, whether on yelp, the better business bureau, or other independent review sites.

sure, as a designer who has worked in the ad industry for a few years, i was naturally drawn to the slick, well designed options.

but as i dug into the reviews, the bad customer service experiences kept stacking up. over and over, people told horror stories about companies that were pretty much impossible to reach for help, once they signed long term contracts guaranteeing a steady premium fee.

it is as if the companies only care about $.

$$$ and only more $$$.

I guess something had to cover the slick design and advertising cost. (and provide the high profit margins, to be fair)

So that led me to keep looking for other service options. I ended up relying on the better business bureau’s web site for my first round of review. i found the site extremely helpful, showing multiple factors, including years in business, record of dispute resolution, and many other things.

Then i had a handful of options left. So i clicked on the link for each service provider, and instantly evaluated the site on the “too slick factor”.

i honestly wanted the site to be a bit lacking in aesthetic flair and pizazz.

i know hard to say as a designer that strives for pixel perfect designs.

i wanted the service provider to be a bit raw. to care for presentation, but not too much, as if they were trying to cover up for lack of a quality product.

i was looking for someone to present their service options, contact information, and uniqueness clearly, but i was actively looking out for anyone that was trying too hard.

is this making sense?

this morning at springbox, i was putting down a few breakfast tacos, and a coworker remarked about the sub parness of jack in the box restaurants, and i was surprised when he said the biggest beef he had with the company, was one of the details in their tacos.

what was the single greatest factor in my coworker abhorring this restaurant? the overall greasiness in the food? the lack of flavor? or could it have been bad customer service?

no.

“i just can’t get over the perfectly cut piece of cheese in the tacos”

it was just too slick for him. he knew it was fake.

hmmm…

so what am I to do with this, being in the design profession?

make my designs not quite as polished? not quite pixel perfect?

if you know me, you know this isn’t an option. I’m a perfectionist when it comes to pixels. So this degradation of overall quality just isn’t an option.

But the answer? well, i have a few ideas..

to be honest, i was a bit disappointed with it. if asked, i would admit that. it’s not very playful. it’s not stretching the company visually or conceptually. but alas, it’s not really my place to blast this well established / successful brand.

so i moved on and kept working through the rest of the day.

but it didn’t stop there. just the next day the bonfire of one liners and full on blasts have now grown into a forest fire. everybody has an opinon. and there all ripping this work to shreds. just like they did to the itunes 10 logo / interface a few weeks back.

ripping it apart as if they have their own pedestal of a proven portfolio of work from which to stand on.

some of these critics do good work, but the majority of them have never invested the time, sweat, and blood to make a internationally successful brand.

so, as i alluded to earlier in the week in a tweet:

Don’t criticize someone else’s identity / website unless your own is stellar.

and even then, only do it if it is helpful.

It’s so much easier to tear down every one else around us, than to invest the time and energy into building something great. I’ll be the first to admit this.

I may not be as vocal as some, but i catch myself all the time mentally throwing stones at the latest agency.com redesign, or identity rework. it’s easy to play down someone else’s hard work, guts, and or brilliance.

I heard it a few days before the whole gap hoopla, with a recent agency’s .com redesign. i overheard two guys talking about it, and how meh it was, when they’re very own agency’s site is 4 years old, aging, and in really bad need of a rework.

the monologue usually goes something like this:

“it’s not bad… but…

they’re working with _______ brand, so they can do that…

or

it’s been done before..

or

if only i worked with clients that had that type of budget..

or

it’s kind of predictable…

and the list goes on and on.

It’s time to stop. Stop the crap. Stop the excuses.

Lay down the stones. Turn off twitter. Close out the latest hysterical rant about the hideous redesign of ___________ .

Let’s pick up the chisel. let’s get to work. and let’s make something beautiful.

PS. i realize the irony in writing a post, critiquing the critics. but i had to get this off my chest. please forgive me for having a log in my own eye.