Planit and GBMC identified Primary Care Physicians that operate on the hospital's main Towson campus (as well as in satellite locations across the region) as a key component for feeding the “funnel” of the hospital’s various service lines. The more new patients get engaged in a healthcare relationship with GBMC-affiliated Primary Care doctors, the more they are referred to GBMC specialists and ancillary services. GBMC challenged Planit to go beyond the typical look of hospital advertising—a field cluttered with ads featuring images of doctors and hospital buildings—in order to raise awareness of physician offices throughout Baltimore County and increase new patient volumes.

"I prefer winter and fall, when you can feel the bone structure in the landscape—the loneliness of it—the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn't show."

Describing the landscape as having bone structure is beautifully creative and concise. As a viewer, I was able to gain a deeper appreciation for the painting.

So, how does this apply to my life as an art director?

Reading the artist's thoughts next to each painting reminded me that visual artists need also be verbal artists. This especially holds true in advertising and design. The ability to describe and explain the motivation and reasoning behind an ad campaign or logo is a vital creative skill. It's not enough to say "It looks cool." The client needs to know how that cool factor will specifically support the objective. Or, maybe it's a conservative look that will accomplish the client's goals. Regardless of the stylistic approach, it needs to clearly be stated why that approach is appropriate. After all, advertising agencies and design shops are in the communication business, so it's important they themselves learn to communicate in all forms.

Flash on the Nexus One looks great, not sure what all the hoopla is about with not being able to use flash on the iphone and ipad. 
I guess this is a little off-base after watching the video, but brings up an interesting point about the hover state not being supported on the iphone and ipad.

Record Tripping ,Ingenious flash game using record scratching and storytelling ("Alice in Wonderland").

Crazy lego model

http://www.fokistudios.com/superfun/

"To better explain the poor name for this plugin, I'm not exactly sure what to call this. Consider it an HTML5, CSS3 tech-demo / experiment with scale, rotation and transformation."

Beautiful Safer Roads PSA

Do you use Tumblr? Great looking theme here.

I'm a noob to design patterns, and being a self taught programmer I've slept on learning things like this. But, after picking up this book at the library, I realized how helpful it is to know these by heart. Instead of me trying to figure out how to solve a problem from scratch, I realized that the same problems have cropped up for every developer in every language, and this book covers how to avoid most of the same mistakes and architect your programming in a way that prevents a lot of the same problems from occurring.  If you haven't formally used design patterns, but do a lot of programming, you'll immediately recognize a lot of these patterns that you might have loosely used in the past.   If you don't want to buy the book, you can see all of the patterns at this website.  

Code Organ - See what the Planit Website sounds like.

Keep up with Adobe at the mobile world conference. I've been seeing a lot of flash on mobile platforms.

Welcome Tableau Public to the multitude of Social Data Vis tools out there now, such as  Swivel, Daytum and StatPlot. Although, this seems to live in a more robust desktop application.  It would be nice if you could use private data without making it public to use on your own presentations, but still seems to be useful when you need to embed some nice infographics on a website and don't have the time to create them yourself.

In other infographic news, Google released their own chart tools.

Beautiful website for Manchester City Soccer.

Great resource for seeing AS3 code samples.  And Stack Overflow has become my favorite forum for posting developer questions, incredibly responsive replies.

Opera Unite, turn your opera web browser into a server, share files, host websites (well, host them until you close your browser).  I find myself flipping between two browsers already, Chrome and Firefox, now I might need to add a third one to the bunch, BROWSER OVERLOAD!

Need to give a client the ability to edit a site, but don't want to build a giant cms. Use Edit-ease.  Simply put some javascript on your page, click admin, and edit away.  Just saves the content back to the HTML page, and has a nice WYSIWIG.

Really amazing TED talk on Bing Maps. It's been a while since I have checked out the mapping functionality on BING, the photosynth feature is impressive.

If you weren't sure what HTML 5 was capable of, this will show you (so will this)

Nice Style on the Wrangler jeans site.http://eu.wrangler.com/bluebell/

Really great image search site http://www.moofe.com/

With the record amount of snowfall we've had in the past week I have been spending a lot of time indoors watching television.  And something that has always bothered me with watching cable television are the really poor interfaces they use for basic channel switching. There are many aspects to why these are bad, but the overall problem is that  the interface design and technology are at least 10 years behind everything else. Compare your cable tv interface to your iphone, android, website navigation, and even your home computer.   I live in Baltimore so most of what I see is the Comcast interface, but I have seen many other Cable Providers that have exactly the same problem, actually I have never seen a good Cable TV Interface. 

Now I don't work for a cable TV provider or pretend to know the In's and Outs of interface programing for cable television, but I do program and see many open source alternatives online that have much more intuitive interfaces to allow you to switch between channels,however these are just a hassle to set up and not many people have a computer hooked up to their television.  It seems feasible that Cable Providers could easily update their interfaces, especially since they all double as internet providers as well. The two are never connected, at least not in a way that lives up to their potential.

I am going to outline aspects of bad design in the Comcast Television Interface (which looks almost identical to Time Warner, Cox, etc), point out some improvements that could be made, and show some design concepts in the process.  The intention of this post is not to come up with an entire new interface design, it's more to conceptually lay out a better interface design. I am not looking too far past what is available now, so no wii-motes or minority report interfaces. These are practical suggestions on how the interfaces could be brought up to speed to today's standards.

The main problems I see in interface design are similar to the same problems in web design:

1. Speed
2. Usability
3. Transparency 

Speed

My main gripe with most of these interfaces is the speed at which you can flip through channels. If channel flipping were faster then the interface would already be at least 50% better. These should just be text inputs, when you hit down on your remote their should be an immediate response with what you see, whereas right now it takes about a half second to go to the next menu or page down.  I find it unbelievable that this can't be made faster when a gaming system like the wii has such sensitive controls on its remote, even when you are just using the arrow buttons.
You would think that the cable box could be used better for this, cacheing channel guides and periodically updating them on the backend, so that when you flip to a new menu or channel guide it is not calling for a response from some remote server. 

When you look at well put together web interfaces with similar quantities of content to flip through, you don't see nearly as much of a lag. And when you do, it is for a good reason. 

Usability

Cable TV Interfaces are far from intuitive. You often have to go through three or four menus  to get to what you want, which might be a show you watch all the time. I know the Comcast interface the best so I know how to get around the menus. But, when I sit down to use one that I'm not familiar with (i.e. Time Warner), it has a pretty big learning curve.  The key here is lack of simplicity.
 

The logic for menu priority should go like this:

Highest Priority:  What is on TV Now

Secondary Priorities 
What can Watch that I might have saved or is on On Demand
What is coming up Next on TV
What is on TV in the future 

And when it comes to what you see visually:

Highest Priority: The TV Show
Secondary Priority: The Guide
 

The Interface:

The actual visual interface for Comcast seems to be 10 years old at this point, there are menus inside menus of menus, then menus within those menus that take you to the same menu. Sound complicated? It is, it's like there was never any plan for updating the interface, for adding additional content, etc. Here I will lay out what you should see visually as you navigate through the menus.

The Breakdown

Basically there are three levels of menu here.
1. Immeditate channel surfing – A minimzed version of the full menu.  
2. Full menu subnav, before launching into the most in-depth part of the menu, figure out what the user is looking for.
3. The Full menu, fullscreen, with the most options for browsing. 

1.  Immediate Channel Surfing

When I sit down to watch TV, I click on the menu and what it brings me to is  the most minimal menu on the interface.  A TV grid at the bottom with what you are watching now. Besides the design being clunky, it takes way too much attention from the actual screen content. Where is the use of transparency, overlays, and just a simpler way of navigating.  The first thing I want to know when I go to this screen is

A. What am I watching now then
B. What else is on right now and finally
C. How much time is left, or what can I watch next.

So, with this logic in mind, wouldn't a menu like this be more efficient and less intrusive?  

Ok, it's probably not that different than what they have now, just simplified. Hit that down arrow key on the remote and it will go to a menu like this:

This menu shows what is currently on as you scroll down, which current Cable TV Interfaces do now, but this is way less confusing, I don't need a full TV grid at this point, and it takes up the same amount of real estate as the previous window.  On this menu I see what is on now in rows of two, if I want the next hour I just click to the right.  It's similar to what Comcast currently uses with some slight usability features that make things simpler and more efficient. Also, the menu is subdued in design, it doesn't cry out for attention. If someone else is watching TV with you, and you begin flipping through the channels, it's unobtrusive.

2. The Full Menu Sub Navigation
Now, If I want to browse stations on a more in-depth level, then I go to the main menu. Since the main menu will have more features, I turned the navigation from horizontal to vertical to be able to hold more buttons without interfering with screen real estate.

The purpose of this navigation is to give you the top level categories for the entire interface while always focusing on the quickest way to find what you want.  The reson you go to this menu is either A) You don't know what to watch so you just want to browse within specific categories or B) You want to watch a show you recorded or something on ON Demand.  It seems obvious but when I go to the current comcast main menu, my screen shrinks to 25% and I have these gigantic buttons on the screen, most of which I never go to. 

For browsing purposes there are many options here.  The first option is to open up the full menu for the most robust browsing experience.   The menu items below this are more to narrow down what you see in the full menu.

Flip-Thru Favorites:
This is something I have seen in one form or another. It's usually a button on the remote, and it is hardly ever used. The reason it isn;t used is becauase people don't want to add favorites manually. Cable boxes should be capable of logging what you watch most frequently, what channels you go to most often, and then flip through them when you want. When you click this flip-through favorites button, it goes directly to your favorite stations, one after the next. Think of it as browsing in autopilot, like stumble-upon for TV.

myShows:
This is basically a DVR/On Demand Feature. This menu narrows down your browsing to shows you have specifically included in your myShows box, shows you frequently watch that might be coming on shortly, shows you have recorded in your DVR and shows that you like that might be on on-demand. It is a one-stop spot for everything you like in it's simplest form.  Right now, on Comcast, I have all of these things in different places. If I recorded a show then I hit DVR, if I want onDemand, then I click another onDemand button. Putting these things all in one place and using statistics to present the user with the most used options will not only make the interface more intuitive and less busy, but would also make the remote controls simpler.

On Demand:
I'm not going to go too much into ON-DEMAND, there is too much there to cover and I think you will already get the gist of what I am getting to with the other menus.  ON DEMAND should be way more robust, it it could be doing things like pulling in movie reviews from the internet, offfering a much more sophisticated music listening (and video) interface, and amongst others, it should be offering up more web content like podcasts and youtube video.   Look at the XBOX Live menu's for the best example of how this could work.

Channel Categories
Let's say you want to look for a sporting event, nothing in particular, you just want to watch some sports.  This is where the category menu comes in, which most Cable TV Interfaces it's  buried and works poorly.  This shows you your categories, Network programming, sports, Kids and Local.  It has, in small type, shows that are currently showing below the category name. When you click on one of these categories you can see either a grid navigation (as seen below for kids), or a more linear navigation (as seen below for sports).  The tv grid navigation is to be able to see other shows grayed out while seeing the category shows highlighted, the linear navigation is to just see those shows in that category for that time period. Notice how you can still see what is on the tv without it having to be minimized to a quarter of your screen real estate.  It's amazing what a little transparency will do.  Although I am showing the standard TV grid navigation for the Kids section, I find the vertical, linear navigation of the Sports section to be way more intuitive, you have it right there, what you can watch right now in sports.  

This all might seem pretty obvious, but still something nobody has improved upon.

Category TV Grid Channel View

Category Channel List View

And for a little embellishment, put some transitions into those menus. Have them slide out, fade-in, etc. It's not necessary, but it makes things look so much better and gives the impression of the menu's moving gracefully and working smoothly.

4) Transparency
I have talked about transparency through this article in terms of actual alpha channels, but what I am referring to here is making the interface invisible to the user, make it feel like they aren't using an interface, like they don't have to learn. I might not have fully accomplished this with my examples, but they are a step in the right direction for Cable TV Interfaces.  Give me the options when I need the options, learn my channel browsing habits.  TIVO did this, cable didn't learn much from it. 

The Future Although this is all meant as a concept for bringing the Cable TV Interface up to speed, it seems like it should be even farther along than even what I am proposing. When are cable providers going to open up their software to allow for API's, allowing developers to make widgets that sync to television programs? When is syncing your phone to your cable going to become more widespread? What has been talked about and what will make all of this better and quicker will be when television comes completely to the internet, I more often find myself watching shows on Hulu and other internet TV sites than I do regular cable television at this point.
 

Too often, that is the case with agencies and their self-promotion tools. Especially their websites.  We preach day-in and day-out to our clients about the critical importance of fresh, relevant online content. So, what’s our excuse?

The truth is, we don’t have one.

Granted, when you spend weeks, even months or more building (among other things) websites for some of the nation's greatest brands, it can be a challenge to do one for yourself. Especially one that is a true reflection of the agency’s thinking, passion, abilities, and innovation. Add to that the agency’s typical collective inability to come to consensus on design, content, and case studies. It can be the perfect recipe for a classic agency disaster—over budget, missed deadline, outdated content the day after it launches, and so on.

We’re striving to break that trend.  We want our kids to have great shoes.

We’re proud to launch www.planitagency.com for so many reasons:

•  It offers us the opportunity to showcase our abilities as an industry-leading agency not only with design, but with functionality and content as well.
•  We’re proud to showcase our clients’ work (and our work on their behalf)
•  We strive to lead by example. Play around our new site and you’ll find that this website is so much more than just a website; it leverages the talents of our whole agency, from strategy to creative to PR to search to social media…
•  It puts our money where our mouth is by demonstrating how RELEVANT content is really king—how we have a responsibility to share content, opinions, thought leadership, ideas, complaints, even recommendations to our peers. In real time. Honest and unedited.
•  It offers a forum for us to entertain, inform, and include our friends, peers, clients, and prospects.
•  It makes concrete our passion to open the eyes of current and potential clients to the power of an integrated communications strategy.
•  It gives new friends a peek inside Planit (and therefore inside our culture) to learn about what it takes to be a member of the Planit team—because people hire people, not PowerPoints or RFP responses.

If we do our job right, this site doesn’t get old. I challenge my team to be sure it doesn’t have outdated content, or last year’s case studies or old news. I challenge them to bring new thinking to the table. The site should challenge you to challenge yourself. If we do our job (and I’m confident we will), it won’t become that Catch-22 that so many other agency sites are.

Take a look around. Tell us what you REALLY think.

Then join the conversation, disagree, challenge others, reap the benefits, learn something, grow, share it with a friend.

I hope you enjoy your visit. Come back often.

Adobe Photoshop has become a staple for all designers–print, web and beyond. Though, in its 10+ year history there have been features and functions that have just not made the cut. Whether they were left out by committee, or were just never considered, I'm not really sure why these features don't exist. But, as you'll see from this list, we're not asking for the world here. We're asking for basic functions that would make our lives as designers easier. Please contribute to this list, because who knows, maybe the right people will see it and make the next Creative Suite release a winner!

Why doesn't Photoshop CS4 have:

1) A Triangle Tool

As a web designer, I find myself having to delete a single corner from a square shape way too often to not have a triangle feature in Photoshop by now. Hey Adobe, are you trying to tell me that people need polygons and stars more than triangles?!? UPDATE: I'm aware that triangles are polygons with 3 sides. My point is that there is still no triangle tool. A one-step triangle.

2) A Layer Search

When it comes to setting up Photoshop files, I'd like to consider myself relatively organized. I label layers and even order them as they display in the design. Sometimes though, documents can get a bit unruly and difficult to mine through for the right layer. Why, Photoshop, do you not allow me to search for labeled layers that may be buried deep within the depths of giant files. I know this function exists in AfterEffects, so you know what I'm talking about, Adobe.

3) A Lorem Ipsum clipboard

Every designer uses lorem ipsum. Why, Photoshop, have you not built in a lorem ipsum panel for designers to easily place Greek'ed text into their designs?

4) Math in the Transform Palette

The most convenient (and certainly my favorite) function in Illustrator, is the ability to select an object(s), and then alter the dimensions of said object(s) by using the transform palette like a calculator. If you didn't know that, it's amazing. Why, Adobe, would you not carry this feature over into Photoshop. You're killing me.

5) Adjustment Layers for folders

Ok, so I have a folder filled with images within a larger Photoshop file. I want to de-saturate all of the images in just the folder. Why, Photoshop, can I not create an adjustment layer for just that folder.

6) An Artboard over Canvas option

For the longest time Illustrator was my program of choice for most web design projects. Since it serves as more of a layout tool than Photoshop, it was more efficient to use the artboard as my design workspace. Long-story-short, I wish Photoshop offered users the option to use a non-confining artboard (like Illustrator).

7) The ability to delete everything outside of a marquee selection…beyond the canvas border

So, you just placed a large image on to your canvas. You want to trim (instead of mask) the excess parts of the image you don't need in your design. You select the area you want to keep and select the inverse. You hit delete. The problem is it doesn't delete the excess image that sits beyond the canvas dimensions. Why, Photoshop? WHY?!?!

Photoshop CS4, don't get me wrong, you are a fantastic program. You have many amazing functions that make all of our lives easier, but if you could just make these small changes and get back to me by CS5 we'll be cool.