Process is like most things in life, it needs balance. The hard part is determining where the right balance is for a company.

Companies that focus too heavily on process can slip into the all-to-common roll of being a workhorse. Producing medium quality work that lacks feel and creativity. Yet, companies that can’t reign in certain aspects of process tend to lose money and long-term durability. The key lies in finding a medium.

Implementation of a strict process can help companies rebound in times when individuals aren’t present. Yet, companies must be careful. The ability to swap individuals in and out has a cost. There’s a reason small businesses sometimes change the game all together and not just the rules. Small companies thrive on being nimble and innovative. These two things are the result of talented individuals working together as a family. If you remove this aspect from a company, over time it will bloat, lose drive, and eventually quality will diminish.

Case in point, rather than: check your approach, verify other team members understand and agree, confirm the customer is on board, document it, and then start. It’s better to just do it. If the result is good: add it to your toolshed, document it, and teach others. If not, eat crow, fix it, and move on. My feeling is most of the time this gamble pays off. Especially if your people are high caliber and your customer buys into the strategy.

However, for small companies it’s a facade to pretend that you can replace a family member and keep moving forward like nothing happened. A company, especially one that strives to break barriers, will always be hurt by the loss of a key individual. There is no way around this. The goal of a good process shouldn’t be to avoid this all together, but rather to mitigate its damage. Employee happiness, company profit, high quality work, and long-term sustainability should be enhanced by process. Not stifled. This… is not easy.

Best of luck to all companies (including us) who are trying to combat this challenge

As the internet landscape has evolved at a blistering pace, universities have been left behind and often teaching skills and concepts that are years out of date. I was excited to read about The University of Colorado’s Boulder Digital Work program. Their stated mission is, “developing today and tomorrow’s digital leaders and entrepreneurs.”

This sounds like a very forward thinking program and hopefully it will produce a lot of local talent with a much better understanding of the digital realm than most schools offer today. Courses include Interaction Design, Experience Design, Digital Branding, Social Networks, and Software Development.

I hope this program is successful and that it will help to continue the growth of Boulder as a hub for innovation.

Over the past few years the landscape of home entertainment has been changing. As broadband internet access has found its way into households across the country the utilization of on-demand content is becoming commonplace.

Netflix, who we’ve criticized before and been pleasantly surprised by their response, has been really on top of capturing this next generation of home entertainment. In fact, it seems like they’ve secretly been waiting for this moment since the incarnation of their brand “Internet Flicks”.

When I first heard of Netflix I was in early high school, my friend’s parents had just signed up for this new service that delivered movies via mail. I was confused, how in the world did the name Netflix really correspond to mail delivery movies? Further, was it really worth waiting two days to get a movie when you could go to a local store and get it in 30 minutes? Well, as they say, the proof was in the pudding. As the internet boomed in the early 2000’s Netflix became a real time rival to those other rental services such as broke-ass-buster Blockbuster and Hollywood Video.

However, it wasn’t until this past year that I really started to respect Netflix as a company with vision. In fact, I find it almost creepy how well they’ve positioned themselves in today’s current home entertainment market.

I imagine the idea of on-demand content has to be terrifying to most rental services. With pay-per-view, Hulu, torrenting, and iTunes the idea of brick and mortar rental is on the way out. And while DVD mail delivery isn’t quite as dead as store rental it definitely has a limited lifespan.

Here’s where Netflix is different from a lot of companies. They recognized their business model was dying and instead of whining about it they acted. They didn’t whine about liscensing costs, they didn’t worry about not having a media center product. Instead they took their vision and started working. Giving their customers an opportunity to watch movies instantly on their PC’s for free. Hear that? I said FREE. By not expecting immediate returns on their investment they captured a substantial portion of the online steaming market share and the buzz around it.

It comes down to this. How many people would have been willing to pay an extra $10 a month to try online movie streaming? Maybe a few. How many were willing to try it for free? Everybody.

Netflix, whose name now seems surprisingly perfect for their service, is suddenly a leader in the online delivery world. Since they started delivering online content they’ve cut deals with a number of home media center device manufactures. Including Roku, a few Blu-ray players, and Microsoft’s Xbox. Further, they’ve bundled their online delivery with their plans at no additional cost (I imagine they make up some money by not having to use as much postage) and they’ve started adding HD quality (720p) content.

In essence, Netflix lined up their challenges, picked up a bat, and started knocking them out of the park one by one.

Now granted the battle for next generation content delivery isn’t over, but it seems clear that Netflix isn’t holding the losing hand. They’ve played their cards perfectly up to here and I can happily say that I’m a user of their service and it rocks.

Who sat down and made the executive decision that advertising must look crappy and out-of-place? I understand that the point of advertising is to attract attention and therefore should be an anomaly that the viewer is drawn to, but come on… enough is enough. People are starting to become desensitized to big flashy ads that are borderline unethical.

So how does one maintain ad-space and a good design? The online radio site Pandora managed to solve this problem. Instead of sticking the ad in a banner and calling it good, Pandora takes it to the next level by incorporating the ad design into the background. Not only does this draw more attention to the ad (by using the entire background it creates more visual interest) it also doesn’t sacrifice the design for an ad – it adds to it. Furthermore (and probably most importantly) the ad is usually a memorable one. A good example of this was when I was debating this topic with a co-worker (who is a general hater of flash sites) and he named a previous ad without even thinking about it. I say good work, Pandora. Not only do I love your music, but you made me a believer in ad-space.

Perhaps one of the most enlightening discussions we’ve had at Imulus was in regard to the following question.

Starting now if you had to read all type for the rest of your life in one typeface, what would it be?^*

My answer: Gotham. The font is profound, clean, inescapably strong, yet different enough in weight to convey emphasis and prowess. Gotham is the sort of typeface that a type-designer becomes famous for. It’s Helvetica with out the genericism^**.

So while Gotham is used frequently (pdf) it deserves credit for being a landmark typeface in the twenty first century^***.

In the end a typeface is much like wine, if it tastes good to you the complexities and price don’t mean much. However, you may just find that over time your tastes refine. And as far as Gotham is concerned, it’s about as refined as it gets.

^{* Note: This means an entire font family, not one particular weight.
** I’m a wannabe lexicographer.
*** Gotham was released from H&J in the year 2000.}