For many years, web developers have strived to create fluid layouts that adjust with the size of the browser window, called the viewport. The biggest issue with most approaches has been a lack of respect for the typographic grid, meaning line lengths get to an unreadable length, and there is no optimization for image size on smaller screens. Luckily, these problems and many more have been solved with an approach based on a well thought-out methodology called responsive web design. Formalized by Ethan Marcotte, responsive web design is quickly being adapted as the solution for moving your existing site into one that will serve the needs of today’s devices.

Responsive web design is the idea of looking at the size of the viewport and having the site design adjust according to the width. It sounds wonderfully simplistic I know, but as with most great ideas there are a lot of complexity you don’t see. Things such as a flexible grid, flexible images, a way of knowing the type of browser being used, and of course a backup plan for older browsers. The desired outcome is for the grid—the graphical layout for a website—to adjust itself in an aesthetically pleasing way despite the width of the browser. The best way for you to experience this is a simple demo. We recently did the 2011 annual report for CFA Institute using responsive web design. This video demonstrates how the site adjusts for different sizes—you can instantly see the fluidity of the layout and the attention to detail.

Of course, I encourage you to view the site for yourself. Another example to try out is The Boston Globe.

While response web design requires a bit of a learning curve and is more time consuming up front, the benefits to this approach are numerous. The methodology ensures you are taking a grid-based approach to design, creating a more consistent visual experience. Supporting one platform—the web—instead of multiple, frees you from having to create multiple workflows for content creation across different platforms. Testing time is decreased. An mostly, because responsive web design applies a web standards based approach to web sites, the biggest benefit is that your site is more likely to work properly on the device your user chooses, providing a more enjoyable customer experience.

How do you get started? It truly requires a cross-discipline approach, so getting your designers, developers, and content creators up-to-speed is the first step. Ethan Marcotte’s book is a great place to start. An on-site workshop for your team, lead by developers and designers that have created response sites is a quicker approach. And of course you can engage a company like ours to create a site for you, transferring the knowledge to your team at the end of the project. I’d love to hear your questions and comments below or on Twitter ( @larryroth ). If you would like to talk further, you can email me to arrange a time.

Attendees were primarily from Europe, where adoption rates of sustainable business practices and standards are generally higher than in Asia or North America. While each of the 12 presentations contained a unique take on ESG, I would characterize the speakers as falling into three distinct groups:

1. Advocates, who believe that sustainability adoption is a moral imperative that will help preserve our planet’s resources for future generations
2. Skeptics, who understand that ESG factors can help identify potential risks, but are less than convinced about the relevance of ESG in investment decision-making
3. Objectivists, including Brandlogic, who are seeking to help individual corporations determine how best to measure their performance against these factors

A sustainability Advocate, Jonathan Porritt from Forum for the Future, led off the proceedings with a speech filled with pessimism, bemoaning the fact that Coal India’s recent IPO prospectus contained no mention of the societal risks their business causes. He then turned to optimism, noting that we are approaching a “grid parity moment” that will occur in 2016 – when a kilowatt of energy from sustainable sources will soon cost as much as one created through existing, carbon-based resources.

The Skeptics included mostly credit analysts and hedge fund managers. Rory Sullivan from Ethix SRI pushed back hard against advocating for more ESG inputs to investment decision making, saying “Most of what’s written about ESG is advertising and investors should just throw it away.” Larry Abele, who runs Auriel Capital out of Jersey in the UK, cautioned against too much “long-termism” from the ESG community: “Let’s face it – the short term is more important to my investors.”

In the Objectivist camp, my colleague James Cerruti presented a summary of our Sustainability Leadership Report, which measures actual vs perceived performance on environmental, social and governance factors for 100 leading global corporations. Our report engendered a lively debate about reality vs. perception and how some companies are potentially risking their reputations by over-promising relative to their actual performance.

The diverse and eclectic nature of the conference is what kept many of the attendees in their seats until the very end. It was clear by the end of the event that ESG is not just another management fad – it is the foundation for an emerging management practice that will drive corporations and governments to think more about their relationships to the planet, its natural resources, and human society at large.

Change is in the air. Brandlogic has introduced an all-new look that is decisive, beautiful and clean. It is only fitting for our website to match the aspirations of the refreshed identity. When we sat down to plan our site, it was clear from a design perspective that the new site was going to be a stunning (and long overdue) incarnation of what came before. We were inspired to create a technical architecture that complimented the new visual design: a strong, modern foundation to serve us well into the future.

We’ve learned that constraints are a wonderful thing. An aggressive launch timeframe made it obvious that we needed a simple, focused approach. We decided that performance was our main priority, which neatly corresponds with our new positioning statement “ideas that drive performance.”

Why speed matters

More than anything else, we value the user’s experience when it comes to the sites and tools we build. Page speed is an important element in making that happen. It’s something that the user may not even notice when things are running smoothly, but when something is slower than expected, it surely can be frustrating. When it comes to usability, we believe performance is a feature as important as any other. Luckily, there is research to back this up, and it predates the web by a long shot. See Jakob Nielsen’s summarization on how much speed matters to usability.

Speed is so important to user experience that search engines have even started to notice. Last year, Google started measuring page speed as a factor in their search rankings. All other things being equal, a page that is faster than another will receive a higher rank in search results. So, just by making your site more enjoyable for people to use, you’ll get rewarded by search engines for no additional cost.

What we did

Here is an overview of some tactical approaches we use to achieve maximum performance: static HTML, combining multiple resources into one, caching and compression.

Static HTML

On a site using a traditional content management system (CMS), the pages that the user sees are most often dynamically generated by the server. This means that when a user browses to a page, the server collects the content from a data store, pairs it with a template or multiple templates and runs some code to put it all together into the viewable HTML document. As you can imagine, this all takes time.

What we’re doing differently is using an advanced CMS that pre-generates all of the HTML pages. When a user browses to a page on our site, the server doesn’t have anything to do except serve the file that already exists. With no database to call and no code to run, the server can send the page much faster.

You might think that we would have to trade off the ability to have dynamic content on each page load. Not true. We are taking advantage of the JavaScript engine race in recent years among modern browsers. For example, on our homepage we show a random team member on each page refresh using JavaScript. The browser is doing most of the work. By shifting dynamic features from the server to the client we are making the site faster for everyone.

Combine all styles into one stylesheet

When a user visits a webpage, her browser is doing a lot behind the scenes. It sends a request to the server for the webpage, the server responds by sending the HTML and then the browser needs to check that HTML for any external resources to load. These resources could be images, styles, JavaScript, etc. The browser starts the process all over again for each resource: it sends a request to the server for the resource and the server responds to each request. Once the browser has a good representation of the page, only then will it render to the screen.

One of the biggest bottlenecks is the communication between the browser and the server. Every request that is made for an additional resource slows down the whole process and just results in waiting longer to see the page. We alleviate this by combining all of the styles for the entire site into one resource. This means only one additional call is necessary to the server for the user to see the entire site as intended.

Another way we have reduced requests to the server is by embedding images that are frequently used (our logo, for example) directly into the stylesheet. By embedding these images, the browser doesn’t have to request them separately. However, a user must use a modern browser to experience this benefit.

Aggressive caching

As stated above, requesting resources from the server can cause an enormous bottleneck. Another way to alleviate this is by aggressively caching the resources in the user’s browser after they’ve been downloaded. Since we are combining all styles into one stylesheet, the user only needs to download it once to view the entire site. Therefore, we tell the user’s browser never to request the stylesheet again once it has been downloaded. We also do this for all images and JavaScript files. As a result, when a user is browsing subsequent pages on our site, the needed resources are in her browser cache and the site performs dramatically faster.

What about updates? If we’re telling your browser never to request a stylesheet or image again, how can we change something and ensure that you see it? We use another trick to address this issue. When our CMS publishes the site, it sets a version number to any resource that we are aggressively caching and renames the file using that version number. If the file changes in any way, it is guaranteed that the version number will change as well. To a user’s browser, the file appears to be brand new, so it downloads and caches it again. The end result is that a user never has to worry about resources being stuck in the cache again. Every time a user browses our site, she always gets the latest changes.

Minification & Compression

We can ensure that the downloaded resources are packaged as small as is possible. Looking at the source code for our home page, it’s actually rather unattractive. Everything is on one line, and it’s not easily readable. What’s missing is any extraneous whitespace and line breaks. By keeping the page as small as possible, the user gets to view the page that much faster. We do this for all HTML, CSS and JavaScript.

One last thing we do to reduce what a user’s browser has to download is to compress everything. Just as zipping files on your computer saves disk space, we compress files that have to be downloaded so that the transfer completes more quickly. The browser is smart enough to expand the content once it is downloaded so that the user can see the page as intended.

A better web for everyone

Being passionate about making our site faster is a win-win: server resources are reduced, bandwidth costs go down, and most importantly, the user’s experience is much improved. By adhering to web standards and the best practices described above, we hope to promote the idea of making the web a little bit better for everyone. Please take a look at our architecture diagram if you’d like more information about how our site works, or contact me directly to talk about performance.

Gastev / CC 2.0

The new technology is intended to be a way to present raw data in a way that is more understandable and consumable by humans, and thereby improve communication. However, it marks the top of a slippery slope. Technology has a nasty habit of changing how people think. It shapes our expectations and standards.

Texting and tweeting is already requiring us to make sentences shorter and simpler. Attention spans are shrinking. It can be a challenge to express a complex thought. It would not surprise me if the line between automated content creation and actual human communication were to become too blurry to see – not because the robots will be that good, but because people will lose the ability to tell the difference.

There’s a key difference between copy “written” by a machine and human thoughts expressed in words. Good writing is more than just information delivery. It can compel, elicit emotions and drive action. That’s a vitally important distinction for marketers. The purpose of the written word is to communicate an idea, not just information.

Just as superior design takes research, thought and insight into what’s being expressed, effective written communication goes much deeper than canned thoughts assembled in grammatically correct order. Human expertise is – and will continue to be – an essential element.

I think it’s great that through the thousands of variations of colors and patterns, animations and illustrations during its 30 years of existence, the logo has never lost its intent. All of its iterations have only served to strengthen the youthful vibe that is synonymous with MTV. As someone who grew up watching MTV I always knew it was pushing boundaries and shaping American culture. They brought the music video to the masses and created The Real World when there was no such thing as “reality tv.” As a designer, I applaud the flexibility of their identity that has kept them fresh and fun all these years and the knowledge that they were doing this long before anyone else. Happy 30th MTV!

Over our history, our firm has grown through many changes, but none more important than our recent move to become a 100% employee-owned company. At the same time, our founder Wynn Medinger became Chairman, I assumed the role of CEO and Managing Partner and we appointed Dan Dyksen as Senior Partner and Creative Director.

During this transition, I set a very simple and clear goal: to continue building an enduring organization that is committed to doing the highest-quality work for our corporate and institutional clients. To do this, our mission remains steadfast — deliver ideas that drive performance. By addressing the wide array of branding challenges companies face, including emerging priorities that are reshaping brands, we create real value for the organizations we serve. Our new brand embraces this performance focus and expresses the firm’s culture, strategic thinking, creativity and technology prowess.

As part of our brand launch, today’s release of our inaugural Sustainability Leadership Report reflects our commitment to helping clients grapple with new issues. This report, and the suite of capabilities and knowledge behind it, captures the essence of our belief in how organizations should use their brands to lead and create value.

As Brandlogic steps forward, we are more excited than ever to help build great brands for great organizations. We look forward to the opportunity to partner with you, now and in the future.

Sincerely,
Hampton Bridwell
CEO and Managing Partner
Brandlogic Corporation

Why is that important? It has to do with what a name communicates to the marketplace and what it says about the organization. In our case, we have two pieces of information that we need to get across. First, that we are at our core a brand consultancy, and second, our credo: Ideas that Drive Performance.

The name of the firm itself does a good job of accomplishing that, but it came across as two separate thoughts simply because of that capital L. Often, clients would split it apart: Brand Logic. It altered the perception of who we are and what we do, in a subtle, almost subliminal way.

The reality is that “Brandlogic” is and always has been a seamless idea. Changing how we write it reinforces that thought.

Even the construction of the name carries a message. Leading with “Brand” reinforces our core competency. We are not “Logicbrand.” Roll that around your tongue for a bit; reversing the order conveys a different impression, doesn’t it?

The use of the word “logic” as part of the name also is deliberate: it emphasizes that our work is not based on gut instinct, best guesses or flavor-of-the-month trends. There is reason behind all that we do.

The name also shows that we are both creative and grounded in practicality. The business we’re in is immediately apparent from the name. The world is full of names that are, frankly, little more than pleasant sounds. Altria is in the business of tobacco and wine. Nuvis? A camera. Nubira? A car. Could any of these have been guessed from the name alone?

Contrast this with names that evoke compelling imagery. One of our clients – Javia by ARAMARK – has a particularly good name. They’re in the business of office refreshments. They sell coffee. The name alone is so evocative you can practically smell the roasting beans. Acela is another great example: it’s the name of Amtrak’s high-speed train. That name suggests speed and a clean, contemporary image.

Next time you look at a name give it some thought. Does it really tell you anything? How does its expression change your impression of the company or product?

To us, sustainability is a term that represents the totality of an organization’s environmental, social and governance (ESG) commitments. Sustainability and ESG are rapidly becoming synonymous in common parlance, the first being the broad definition and the second being its “mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive” components.

Related concepts such as corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate citizenship have similar intentions, but in practice are often limited to a few areas. A great example are CSRs. We often see them encompassing an organization’s societal and philanthropic commitments, and occasionally its environmental activities. Governance issues, such as board composition and executive compensation policy, are often not part of these definitions.

Some institutional investors view CSR as a vague, hard-to-measure catch-all for initiatives that have little measurable impact on business performance. ESG frameworks, with valuable key performance indicators, are rapidly becoming one of the main decision variables investors are using to select investments.

Through the admirable work of the Global Reporting Initiative, ESG factors are now being measured in a consistent way in hundreds of organizations worldwide. The GRI framework helps corporate leaders create auditable information around ESG factors, giving investors and other key stakeholders a clearer, more quantifiable view of opportunity and risk. (Full disclosure: Brandlogic is a GRI organizational stakeholder and helps clients implement the GRI framework.)

Looking ahead, we believe sustainability will become the default comprehensive term to describe these non-financial performance metrics. As investors and other key stakeholders continue to demand more transparency from institutions who have an impact on society at large, they will look to ESG factors as a reliable set of metrics from which to evaluate overall corporate performance. What sustainability initiatives do you have in place? Leave us a comment and let us know.

The most interesting insight was the importance of having a strong value proposition for your company as it contemplates activity in China. Unlike value propositions for North American markets, Mr. Hoffman recommends a strategy of intimate dialogue with state or local sponsors that can help determine the right fit for your company and the value that it can bring to China. The implications for brands and brand strategies are subtle but very important.

The strategies used in mature, Western markets are probably not a good fit. Specifically, the master-brand technique that drives most multi-nationals could be hard for Chinese politicians to accept. In this regard, brand platforms, brand architecture, value propositions, messaging, design and creative strategies need to be honed, aligned and purposeful for the Chinese market and political dynamics. The only way to do this is with a tactful, listening approach to the needs of the market. And if done right, the opportunity for success is enormous.
The next round of policy changes in China are about to unfold in the 12th Five Year Plan and a transition to new leadership. As such it is a great time to look at how your corporate brand value proposition and portfolio can be aligned to succeed in this fast-paced economy.

One of my former clients started off our meeting with this declarative request as we were getting ready to take him through a “simplification exercise” to fix his very convoluted database.

Clearly, this gentleman had in his own mind an internal benchmark of what simple meant to him. Our team, on the other hand, wasn’t able to articulate in such clear language what the output of our work would actually be. It occurred to me that as a purveyor of simplified communications, I wasn’t making it totally clear what simplicity really meant.

Azudalgia / CC BY 2.0

Following on from that experience, I decided to create a series of simplicity benchmarks. To do so, I created a semi-objective rank-ordering of well-known communications that we encounter in our lives. Using a 1 through 10 scale is the simplest I could think of, where 1 represents a no-brainer communication and a 10 is as painful as your worst migraine.

Here, then, is an elegantly simple list of everyday communications and our rankings based on three simple criteria:

• Is the item universally understandable, across all ages from 18 to 88?
• Is the visual design of the item appealing and easy to access?
• Is the communication written in plain English, free from jargon only a few can understand?

For this exercise, I limited it to 1) output communications rather than inputs like forms 2) communications that traditionally show up on paper, rather than purely digital communications.

1. Driver’s license
2. The Yellow Pages
3. Nutrition Facts (and its companion Drug Facts)
4. Auto insurance policies, especially the declarations page
5. Checking account statements from your bank
6. Last will and testament from your attorney
7. Brokerage account statements, especially if you hold many securities
8. Explanation of benefits from healthcare provider
9. Credit card disclosures
10. The IRS booklet, no longer mailed to our homes but is a fixture around this time of year

I’d like to hear your views.