Typography for Tuesday
First, a few design rules even us non-designers can remember and apply. Then a crash course in typography, followed by an excellent list of other fonts available to use on the web. Now that you have a handle on the basics, calculate a nice rhythm and typeset your web pages. Don’t forget- you can also slim it down or spice it up.
Jobs and Benefits Revisited
When I first started working here I was astounded by the range of benefits I received. Angus Productions Inc.’s benefits are getting restructured, bit by bit…not sure what the catalyst was for these changes, but the good news is, most of them are getting improvements. Wages might be mum around here, but everyone knows about the benefits, so I’ll share.
Paid time off in the U.S. is a rare commodity and one of the defining perks that keeps me here. Last year, between vacation time, personal time, holidays and free days (if we meet production goals often enough, we get a day off with pay, at random intervals) I took off 33 days during the year. Pretty nice, IMHO.
2 weeks paid vacation still applies. Once you hit your 5 year anniversary, you receive another paid vacation day (11 days off instead of just 10), and these add another vacation day until you reach 3 weeks of vacation.
2 weeks paid personal time off. This is a switch- we lost 3 days, from 13 days of ‘bonus time’ to 10 days of ‘personal time.’ It works better this way, though, because the bonus time was a use it or lose it- 4 hours of time off every two weeks, like clockwork. If you didn’t use it, you were paid for it. If you used more than 4 hours, you had to take docked pay.
Paid holidays. Now eight, instead of seven. The day after Thanksgiving was an unofficial holiday here for several years. It has finally become an official one.
Pension plan? It looks like it has disappeared. Sad, but not unexpected. While it was not formally announced that the pension plan is officially dead, not a word was spoken about it during our last benefits meeting. As far as I can tell, it is being phased out/replaced by a 401(k) with a 2% contribution from the company. Roth 401(k) is also offered. Despite the pension plan disappearing, at least the 401(k) options have opened up. We are now allowed to self-direct funds (still for a ridiculous fee, so I doubt I will choose that route) or choose a limited, pre-set portfolio. Now at least I can invest in an aggressive portfolio, instead of being stuck in with the rest of the conservative funds.
Health Insurance. Still 100% paid by my employer, no changes to it. I doubt they will ever take this benefit away, since it is usually the key benefit that draws people to work here.
Life Insurance. 100% paid by the employer. A $100,000 policy for your first year, until you have a W-2 statement. After that, you are covered 4 times the amount on your W-2 statement or $100,000, whichever is greater.
Dental & Vision Insurance. Still 100% paid by my employer, with a new feature tacked on: 20% discount on all vision-related services and products, through VSP.
Flex Spending Plan. New features- they switched companies, so now we have access to a Flex spending debit card and online account service. Very handy to have.
Casual Dress Code. [Funny but true: among us peons, the level of formality in which a person is dressed is inversely proportional to the money they make. Therefore: well dressed = low paid. It is not a direct relationship, but an interesting observation nonetheless.]
Weekends are free. In the past two years, I have only had to work one mandatory Saturday, and our manager was working right beside us. The nice part about the work weekends are the automatic overtime pay. Even if you didn’t work 40 hours during Monday through Friday, Saturday and Sunday are set at (hourly wage * 1.5) for my pay. Also, if I work more than 8 hours in a single day, it’s calculated as overtime too. So 10 hours on Monday means 2 hours are calculated at overtime rates.
Overtime is optional. It is available at all times, since we are still a nascent department. The best part of having an hourly wage is the ability to control one’s paycheck. I could easily have 80 hours a week, considering the projects we have in queue, but I do not feel the need to burn myself out. Sometimes I work it (I wanted the PS3 and new Ratchet & Clank game so bad!) and other times I don’t.
Something I would like to see in the future is a profit sharing plan, where we have the option to buy into the company. Although I am unsure it is feasible, since we are a for-profit owned by a non-profit. As other companies already know, it would be an indirect method to keeping employees motivated towards improving the business. I don’t claim any familiarity with tax laws, but as long as they are improving everything else, what does it hurt to ask?
An e-list design done right
Please excuse the poor headline. It’s rough, just like the “designs” found in our e-lists.
When it comes to design, it doesn’t exist in the e-lists. Our customers dictate what they want and ignore any suggestions made on our part. Go ahead- glance through a few. I hated working on e-lists. It was detestable work, being forced to puke all over a page. I am not an artist in any sense of the term, but I have a rudimentary grasp of the basics: color theory, white space, font choices, dominance of elements on the page, etc. It’s easy to identify good design but difficult to create.
Despite explaining that a well executed design equals effective advertising, few of them understand what that means, so white space is eliminated and as many fonts, colors, and pictures as possible are crammed onto a single page. [Random samples of typical e-list ads].
I don’t buy and sell cattle, but I have to subscribe to the e-lists because it is classified under the realm of ‘web stuff’ handled by our department. Yet, even as an uninterested bystander, I can feel the impact of an effective message an an ineffective one. Here are a few stellar e-list designs that stand out:
Surely, others feel it too. I know people talk about these ads. So why is it so hard to convince customers that good design sells?
Thursday Finds
Something Gorgeous
I have trouble creating beautiful designs, but no trouble identifying them. For anyone else in this same boat, here are some tools and ideas to help create respectable work, design already included:
- Obsidian Dawn: beautiful PhotoShop brushes, to add a graceful artistic element to any print or web work.
- Mad Mimi: prettier e-mail campaigns, with a nice UI to boot.
- Wufoo: easy to use, easy to build forms, displayed in style.
Future Projects and the IS Team
As Sale season comes to an end, I’m looking forward to fewer updates and developing some new projects. Last week Web Services (that’s us) had a meeting with Information Services (think of the Apple commercial where PC meets Mac). It was funny, yet nerve-wracking. Here were the desktop programmers, neatly dressed to the nines, with a team of nine people. Here are the web programmers, sloppily dressed in jeans and tees, the motley crew of five. Okay, great, you say, but why was this meeting significant?
These are the keepers of the keys. They clearly outrank us: the technology team from the parent company, who makes the decisions on the hardware and software used on our web servers. To be dramatic: they can help end the suffering and pain we experience on a daily basis when trying to use the outdated administration section in the Angus Journal web site
I have waited two years to hear that bit of good news.
They listened politely, but none looked eager to help with this project. We are not asking them to clean up bad code or ‘unbreak’ the site. We are asking for a new build, from scratch. No easy task considering how much archived information lives in those databases. I can’t blame them for looking unhappy at the prospect, but I am certainly grateful to see we have help.
So many of the departments are fragmented, little factions unwilling to share their information across departments, despite all of them being owned by the same parent company. I hope our two departments can show others how to collaborate and play nice.
