Creative Director, Matthew Mikulsky Makes : HOW Magazines "Why I became a Designer" List - January 20, 2010

http://howdesign.com/article/whyibecameadesigner
Break out the cake and bubbly, HOW is celebrating its 25th anniversary in 2010. We're not only celebrating our special day, but we're celebrating the design industry, which is why we asked readers to tell us why they became a designer or to share an experience that influenced their decision for this career path. We received stories that are heart-warming, comical and inspirational. See for yourself.
Here is Matthew's top 25 reasons...
25. After realizing how expensive animation school was, I took classes in design at a local community college.
24. Loved illustration and art my whole life, but realized you have to be dead before your artwork can make you money.
23. A friend enrolled in some design classes and said I should do it too (So influential at that the age of 20).
22. I always had a crush on typography. 21. I started to dream in color separations.
20. My art teacher said I could make money with my creative ideas.
19. I loved what Warhol did with print.
18. Then I saw what Chuck Close did with print.
17. My mother supported my talent at a very young age. I think it was 3? I did a nice chicken illustration with red ink. It's framed and still is proudly displayed in their house.
16. I wasn't very good at much else. Straight "Ds” and “Cs” with an "A" in art helped a GPA a tiny bit.
15. Found out I could make some cash designing local punk bands CD artwork.
14. It’s the only way you can sport a Kern shirt without being called a poser.
13. I liked the idea of sitting around in a beanbag chair all day brainstorming.
12. Love to say the word "Helvetica".
11. Being paid to go on press checks sounded like easy money. (No one ever told me press run 24-7!)
10. I love working on Macs and have no concept of anything PC. My options were limited.
9. I was the only one in the class to have a paid internship which lead to my first full-time graphic design job.
8. It always bugged me when the Sunday Funny Pages were out of registration.
7. I like using the excuse "I'm a designer."
6. It's cool to say "I'm a designer!"
5. I was told by a teacher that my handy skills with scissors and x-acto would be valuable. At the time I laughed but it became true!
4. You can pretty much do anything you want and say "it's part of my creative process!"
3. I liked that my work could influence a purchasing decision.
2. Good branding makes me happy.
1. I hate wearing neckties.

CHATTER CREATIVE TO GIVE EDMONDS CHAMBER OF COMMERCE A FRESH LOOK

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Dec 10th, 2009

During a time when advertising is extremely important and information needs to be easily accesible, Edmonds Chamber of Commerce reached out to local ad agency Chatter Creative to help update their current brand.

Through the process of refreshing their brand, Edmonds Chamber of Commerce will be adding many new member benefits, as well as features that utilize progressive media such as Twitter and Facebook to keep up with the changing times. Chatter Creative will also be designing a new website for the chamber.

Matthew Mikulsky, owner and creative director for Chatter Creative, won the bid for the Edmonds Chamber of Commerce project after presenting a fresh logo concept and vision that he says will launch them into the future. Mikulsky also said his inspiration for the new design is directly derived from spending time on the waterfront in Downtown Edmonds.

Logos are extremely important to the overall rebranding process. Its one of the first pieces that set the overall tone. Its very important to get it right. The board made a great choice. We couldnt be more pleased. Edmonds is a cool place and should be represented with a cool look, said Mikulsky.

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For more details, please contact Matthew Mikulsky at 206.219.9229 or info@chattercreative.com

Magenta Trademarked by T-Mobile’s parent company, Deutche Telekom

The world of Trademarks just keep getting crazier. Deutche Telekom Trademarks the color magenta. Then it demands that Engadget Mobile discontinues using the color. Nasty grams from companies claiming they own a color or common shape is becoming a norm in our industry.

Having met with numerous Intellectual Property (I.P.) Attorneys we know that confusion in the marketplace plays a huge roll in the outcome. We look at the case of Engadget. They are NOT a cellphone carrier or a distributor of telecom equipment? How in the world is this possible?

Trademarking a any color or common shape should never happen. Can we trademark Cyan? Yellow? Black? How about orange? We understand that it’s use of color  in that industry or  field, but what about the environmental movement and the color Green?

This brought us to wonder… Who owns Hues? After doing a quick search we find a website  called:

colormatters.com – http://www.colormatters.com/color_trademark.html

This site states, 80% of visual information is related to color. Color will help distinguish you from your competition. They also talk about the importance of color as a brand identity. Today the color war is exploding and the use of color is generation unprecedented  lawsuits.

This site goes over lawsuits of “color” trademark infringement lawsuits. They also include interesting court rulings.

As a agency, we’ll be closely watching the Magenta Trademark story.

Twitter... To follow or not to follow that is the question.

The more our company uses Twitter, the more we realize what a valuable tool it is. Not only do we need to be strategic in who we follow, we also need to be strategic in who we allow to follow us. As Twitter starts to become part of our brand we want to make sure that the brand isn't tarnished by those who follow and those we follow.

Some might think this is egoistical. However, we strongly believe that the people and companies you surround yourself with greatly reflect the company.

It's easy to follow a bunch of actors, movie stars and random companies. As an agency is it the smartest way to get followers? We're looking at Twitter the same way we are look at our market. Who is our target market? Who do we want to reach and how will it play a roll in our future?

Only time will tell.

Top 10 Most Egregious SEO Mistakes*

David Letterman Style, here it is:

#10. You're optimizing your website around really common (probably really popular) keywords that you'll never be able to rank for. In the last week, I've had two people tell me they wanted to optimize their site around "leadership". I said, good luck competing with Wikipedia and About.com.

#9. Everyone of your title tags has the same keyword phrase in it. And it's your company name. The title tag on a page is probably the most important On-Page SEO factor to consider when creating new pages. You probably already rank well for a search on your company name, so you can safely leave that out and still get that traffic. So, make sure you pick appropriate keyword phrases for each page that are phrases that someone is going to type into a search engine in order to find a product or service like yours.

#8. Dynamic URLs without your keywords in it. You bought a fancy shopping cart or content management system (CMS) that uses dynamic urls with all kinds of random numbers and random letters in the url. Your URLs should be readable by humans because search engines read words like humans too. The words in your URLs is another very important signal to search engines what that page is about. So, get yourself a CMS that allows you to control your urls or get yourself a URL rewriter. Include your keywords in your URLs.

#7. You used images as headings. Headings are usually the big bold letters right above the content at the top of a page usually below your navigation. See "HubSpot Inbound Internet Marketing Blog". That's a heading. If these are "words built with images" (designers do this to control the font of the text), search engines aren't reading them. These should be text. Pick a web safe font that's close to what you want. Go with that.

#6. Number 6 is equally egregious, but a little less common nowadays unless your website is circa 1997... If your navigation is built using image buttons instead of text, you're giving search engine one less signal about what that page is about. See #7 for a fix: Use text.

#5. All of the above. I've seen it happen. I've seen sites with all of the above mistakes. Really. Honest.

#4. Doing SEO after the website is designed and built. For some reason, people think SEO should start afterwards. I've been racking my brain for an analogy, but it's really pretty simple: Do you go on a trip before you pack? Do you launch a business before writing some sort of business plan? Do you visit to a friend's new house without printing out driving directions?

SEO done right allows you to determine what content to write in order to get traffic from search engines. And you shouldn't design a site before you know what content will be on it. I'm not saying that you should change your business model or product name based on what keywords will be easiest to rank for, but you should consider it. I guarrantee you that your competitors or smart internet marketers are doing this homework. Why not claim the search traffic for your business? It only takes a little bit of planning.

Plus, if you go to a designer or web developer that isn't an expert at SEO (Most aren't - even though they say they are), they may not implement a system that allows you to publish new pages and optimize your site around your keywords without paying them $100/hour to make the changes and additions for you. Someone that knows SEO will launch your website in a system that allows you to easily do SEO on a continous basis.

Which brings us to...

#3. Our design firm "DID" SEO for us. This one is probably the most common. There is no such thing as "BEING DONE" with SEO. It's an ongoing thing. Just the other night, I logged into HubSpot's Keyword Grader tool and found 2 new keywords that we should target. We rank not-quite-on-the-first-page for both of them and both of them could deliver several several hundred visitors/month once we get to the first page. That's hundreds more visitors we could attract to our site - with a bit of effort. And we already rank for "internet marketing", "internet marketing software" and a bunch of other great phrases that are relevant to our business. Doing SEO once is like doing prospecting once. If your salesperson said "I called prospects last month" as a reason for not calling any new prospects this month, what would you say to them right before you fired them?

#2. You built your website entirely in flash. You might as well put an invisible shield up between you and the search engines because they don't see you.

#1. And the number one most egregious mistake. Drumroll, please... Your site is built entirely in flash, you're a web design firm and you advertise that you do SEO. I've run into two of these people recently. I won't link to them even though they deserve to be called out.

*Originally posted by Pete Caputa - Internet Marketing for HUBSPOT.COM

Upside of a downturn - Sunny Kobe Cook

I had the opportunity to meet a great speaker, Sunny Kobe Cook who knows something about advertising and marketing. When I first moved to Seattle, Sleep Country USA was drilled into my head. Every time I turned on TV or listened to the radio there seemed to be a Sleep Country ad. To this day I remember them.

Sunny gave the group some advise which I would like to pass along. She stressed that every business should do 4 things in a down economy.

1. Advertising is a MUST.

2. Write handwritten notes and do the small things.

3. Cut your costs by 10% off every bill.

4. Look at your team and make adjustments if necessary.

Sunny Kobe Cook : Consultant, Author, Speaker, Award-winning Entrepreneur

Sunny Kobe Cook began her career as a secretary and gained popularity with the company she founded in 1991, Sleep Country USA. She served both as CEO and Company spokesperson in both radio and television advertisements for many years. During that time, she was named Inc.Magazine's Northwest Woman Entrepreneur of the Year along with numerous other business and corporate good citizen awards. She was featured on the cover of Washington CEO magazine when her company was the first retailer to ever be recognized as "Best Place to Work."

To tweet or not to tweet.

Recently, I've talked to many people in my profession about why and how to use Twitter. In many cases their reply is the same. "Why would anyone care what I'm doing?" If that's their answer than they just don't get it. What's really strange is that these are people in the creative industry, these are the people who should be embracing the technology and using it in different ways.

My response has always been... Twitter is another outlet to get you message to the masses. Again, I get the reply. I don't have time to Tweet. Nobody cares. Here today – gone tomorrow.

WRONG! Twitter is the new CB. It's a way to see what is happening at any given time about any given subject. It's a way to figure out what is going on around me.

The first thing I do when I get to a new city is I try and figure out where to go. What to do. Who has the best food. Where is the best happy hour. I want to know what people are talking about and what they like doing. I can ask a question and I get instant response.

I also have a Twitter testimonial. I asked followers to review my online portfolio. No more than I asked the question. I get a great response. One follower event noticed a small issue, which I was able to fix right away.

So let me ask you Twitter nay-sayers...Why wouldn't you tweet? What do you have to lose?

Oh... yah – possible clients, connections and unlimited information.