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Are Your University Websites Working Together, or Against You?
Read FULL Article: Are Your University Websites Working Together, or Against You?There’s a question that exposes more about the health of a university than almost any accreditation review, board presentation, or strategic plan.
Digital Insights from Crowd Favorite
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Using responsive design to create future-ready experiences
*This article was originally published on Forty.co. Forty is now Crowd Favorite. I’m sure you’ve heard all the lovely statistics about how smartphone and tablet usage is skyrocketing, and how if you’re not going mobile, you’re not going anywhere. There’s no denying that our web browsing habits have changed. Thinking beyond the desktop is crucial…
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Crowd Favorite and Simpson College team up to re-launch responsive website on WordPress
Today Crowd Favorite and Simpson College are both proud to present the newly re-launched simpson.edu website. Working with Simpson College was an excellent experience: their deep understanding of their market and ability to communicate their “category-busting” website needs was instrumental to the success of the project. Crowd Favorite helped lead the visual design process of…
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Does “It’s all about you” really work?
*This article was originally published on Forty.co. Forty is now Crowd Favorite. We’re naturally attracted to people and brands that stand for something, and we’re suspicious of those that try to mold themselves around our preferences. Imagine this. You’re on a blind date. You: “So, where do you want to go?” Date: “Wherever you…
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Why successful companies keep investing in ongoing marketing
*This article was originally published on Forty.co. Forty is now Crowd Favorite. Seasoned Fortune 500 companies have a deep understanding and appreciation for marketing. Coca-Cola may already be one of the most recognized brands in the world, but they nevertheless spend billions of dollars every year on their marketing efforts. (And you can bet…
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The benefits of a web typography style guide
*This article was originally published on Forty.co. Forty is now Crowd Favorite. When designing website mockups, I always do my best to stick to a reasonable number of typography styles, and make sure there is clear intent behind the hierarchy and styles. Doing so keeps the final result more consistent and it leads to…
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Introducing Annotum: a scholarly publishing platform built on WordPress
Today we helped launch a new WordPress theme called Annotum. Annotum was built for scholarly journals and publishers to have a robust, WordPress-based platform for authoring and publishing. This theme also serves as a possible alternative as users transition from Google Knol to WordPress. Crowd Favorite worked in conjunction with Solvitor to ideate, design,…
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How to write effective, attention-grabbing headlines
*This article was originally published on Forty.co. Forty is now Crowd Favorite. Whether you work as a copywriting professional or just dabble in blogging, it can be tough to summarize hundreds or thousands of words into one, short headline. Here are a few quick and easy tips to take your title or headline from…
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Inside the Inc. 5000: what it takes to be a high-growth company
*This article was originally published on Forty.co. Forty is now Crowd Favorite. Every year, Inc. magazine ranks the 5,000 fastest-growing companies (privately held) in the United States. When they released their 2011 list, providing a fresh set of data on the movers and shakers across all industries, we compiled and analyzed this data, comparing it against general business…
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Effective advertising techniques we can learn from infomercials
*This article was originally published on Forty.co. Forty is now Crowd Favorite. During a recent sleepless night, I dragged myself out to the couch to watch TV. I was hoping to catch up on some brainless Bravo reality shows or gawk at the ridiculous hoarders on TLC, but all I could find was infomercials.…
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How to keep your SEO juice while overhauling your website
*This article was originally published on Forty.co. Forty is now Crowd Favorite. The biggest mistake people make with website redesigns is thinking that it’s just a website redesign. They see the new site, everything seems to work, and they call it done. Meanwhile, their SEO juice is leaking all over the floor. Their rankings are going…
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The Eiffel Tower vs. the Leaning Tower of Pisa: don’t rush it
*This article was originally published on Forty.co. Forty is now Crowd Favorite. Picture the scene: You’re leading a project, and you’ve got all the plans in place. Everything is going smoothly (cue ominous music)…until you notice your to-do list has failed you. You break into a cold sweat as you realize you needed to…
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Tribal design: sacred things
*This article was originally published on Forty.co. Forty is now Crowd Favorite. Every brand tribe has sacred things that help its members relate to the abstract concepts of the archetypes and the doctrine. They can be symbolic representations, memory triggers, evocative themes, or components of the brand tribe’s mythology. Icons Icons are the symbolic…
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Using screencast videos to remove the pressure of presenting
*This article was originally published on Forty.co. Forty is now Crowd Favorite. The time has come. You’ve slaved away at those new sketches or website comps for days, and now its time to put the pencil, pen, or mouse down and share your ideas with the client. How do you translate your excitement and…
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Break Writer’s Block by Asking Yourself These 20 Questions
We’ve all been there, going through writer’s block. You know you have to write something, but you have no idea what the heck to write about. Sound familiar? We know the feeling! Lately, we’ve been creating a new content strategy to go along with our redesigned website and brand positioning. We want to make sure…
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Metric-lust: how well can you really measure marketing ROI?
*This article was originally published on Forty.co. Forty is now Crowd Favorite. As technology has given our industry the ability to measure more things faster than ever, there’s been a steady trend towards having metrics serve as the basis for design and creative work, with the idea that this will ensure return on investment…
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AMC and WE tv
Working in conjunction with AMC Networks, we lead the platform architecture and development for an entire television channel to manage their content: shows, characters, seasons, episodes, blog posts, photo galleries, videos, quotes, schedule data, movie features and more. The system is elegantly implemented as a WordPress theme using Carrington Core and Carrington Build to allow…
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Why is sketching such an important aspect of design?
*This article was originally published on Forty.co. Forty is now Crowd Favorite. In college, my design professors encouraged me to sketch, but I didn’t want to listen. Why would I want to sketch in a silly little book when I have this computer, with all design software imaginable and more fonts than I could…
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The truth about truth: why honesty builds stronger bonds
*This article was originally published on Forty.co. Forty is now Crowd Favorite. Great advertising is exceptional truth-telling. In 1912, Harry McCann and four partners launched the advertising agency that would later become McCann Erickson. Their founding motto was “Truth Well Told,” which beautifully expresses one of the most fundamental (and often misunderstood) principles behind advertising…