Communicator | Online Strategist | Considered Opinions
I write a lot about good campaign websites and landing pages, and I get often get asked for examples of what I mean. This post is a showcase of four of the best union campaign websites out there at the moment. One is a campaign that I had direct involvement in, while the others encapsulate [...]
All unions, progressive organisations and political parties produce advertisements (or collateral) — whether posters, brochures, leaflets, billboards and so on. We can easily measure whether the collateral has been successful by whether the intended audience actually stops and consumes the ad. “Where the eye stops, the sale begins” is an old advertising maxim. With unions [...]
People are hard wired to look at other people’s faces, and to look where other people look. This principle is an important one to keep in mind when you are designing your websites, leaflets and posters. UseableWorld.com.au has a very interesting post about how this phenomenon actually works. Here’s a little experiment with 106 people [...]
Have you heard of the concept of fluency? Simply put (and for the purpose of this blog post), fluency is the “ease with which people process information”. Fluency affects a wide array of judgements people make about almost everything, and can influence our confidence in things, concepts, people or organisations. It turns out that a [...]
A Princeton study entitled “Fortune favors the bold (and the Italicized)” (their emphasis) has shown that readers retain information more reliably when they are challenged with so-called “disfluent” fonts. The research suggests that introducing ‘disfluency’ – by making information superficially harder to understand – deepens the process of learning and encourages better retention. The psychologists said [...]
Two instances of spoof activist websites have come to my attention recently (although there are no doubt thousands of them around). The first was created by The Yes Men – the activists behind numerous notable media stunts including impersonating the WTO – and the Rainforest Action Network in the USA. It is a spoof of [...]
I’ve had a recent surge in traffic from an interesting website, HR Communicator, pointing to my article showcasing union websites. This should be a salutarywarning that as unions become more active, management of the companies where your members work will be checking your website. Of course, this shouldn’t scare you – just be aware of [...]
I often get asked about union websites – and what makes a good website. There’s loads of general advice out there about how to get a fantastically designed website, and what goes into making them usable and interactive. Check out Smashing Magazine as a good place to start for general advice. You could also check [...]
Everyone refers to the Obama campaign as benchmarks for so much in political campaigning, so forgive me while I do the same. Below is a video from the99percent, a think-tank in the US that has a series of talks, lectures or seminars that they video and put on the web. There’s a lot of really [...]
Just a quick tip for when you’re designing your union website: always include a favicon. A favicon is the little 16 pixel by 16 pixel icon that represents your website next to the address bar or in a tab. The favicon is an important part of your union’s website design. All major browsers will render [...]
UK Labour has unleashed their latest salvo against the Tories, in the form of a poster criticising David Cameron for wanting to turn Britain into an international minnow. It’s interesting to see that the UK election is fought out in large part through creative design used to easily explain complicated issues and policy. What is [...]
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