Ok as we near the launch of our first major update I thought I would take the time to put up a few screenshots to show you just where things are heading.

We are really happy with the new layout and we are sure you guys will be as well

New Showreels Display and Management area.

Updated Profile Layout and Features

Rebuild of Project Management area

We have completely re-designed this area of the site to make it easier to use and more intuitive.

Video Player Tools

We are hard at work on our custom video player. It features some really cool tools to help you collaborate on projects and demo draft clips to clients and communicate changes clearly.

All going to plan we should have most of these integrated into the live site by next week!

Why do companies spend thousands on their website and online brand and a heap of time on designing a great user interface only to turn around and slap a wordpress blog (or similar) onto their site with a different layout, nav structure or make a slight variation to an existing template?

Don’t get me wrong I think using a Blogging platform like wordpress, typepad or Blogger is the way to go - My gripe is that no time is spent building a template that fits in with the company site. It should look like you never left. I have always been big on consistency of your brand across all mediums. I struggle to understand why the blog part of your site should look entirely different.

A book I really like and that is still very relevant is The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, by, Al Ries and Jack Trout.

Law number 19. The Law of Consistency: “All brand communications should have consistency in the message.”

Most web designers should be able to make their own custom Wordpress , blogspot etc theme. At least edit an existing one to fit in seamlessly but they don’t seem to be bothered.

Here are some examples… Now I simply selected companies at random from the Web2.0 directory and surprisingly a large number of sites I clicked on failed. It makes it look like the blog was just an after thought. If you brand is important why would you not take the time to make your blog fit in with your site and in the very least your company colours.

I am wondering why this seems to be an accepted practice in the industry. If your trying to brand your site as innovative and original then please spend a bit of cash or time and get a custom template made for you. It will be worth the effort in the long run.

Not so good consistency between Site content areas and Blog.

Great Examples of consistency between Site content areas and Blog.

I love beautiful sites. Yes there is such a thing as a beautiful, sexy looking website. Now I am not taking away from Jacob Nielsen and friends… but have you visited his site lately? The word yuck comes to mind. Sure I can click on the blue underlined links easy enough, but is there anything there to capture my eye and make me want to explore the site any further. Not really.

When you go and buy a pair of shoes do you try and find the most comfortable or easy to do up and walk in or do you go for the pair that looks the best on you and suits your style. Enough said. (for the record I only own 2 pairs of shoes – so maybe not a good analogy)

When I am involved in the planning of a User Interface for a website sure Usability is of course a key consideration however design and visual aspects sometimes overrule convention/standards.

There are some beautiful sites that are very user friendly and I think the general public knows what a nav link looks like weather it is blue or orange. Now if your target market is “new users” then perhaps practice some of Jacob Nielsen's techniques but if your target market are active web users then make your site look great and work well. There is nothing wrong sacrificing a bit of usability for beauty. If it looks good enough people will want to explore it and will find their way around. While I agree that most humans are stupid not all of us are.