“Name one thing you would do if you knew you wouldn’t fail.” I think that was a question on the Rare Bird job application. Or perhaps it was a bumper sticker, standing out from a crowded field of “Namaste,” “Visualize Whirled Peas,” “My Karma Just Ran Over Your Dogma” and my personal favorite, “Jesus Would […]
Category: Design
With all this talk about mobile friendly design, responsive design, adaptive design, etc., we thought it might be helpful to offer a primer to clear up the muddy waters. So with a nod to one of the classic primers of all time . . . See Spot. Let’s say Spot came up with a great […]
Here at RB HQ, we have been excited for weeks now as we worked to launch this latest website, which we think is going to revolutionize the way home projects get done. We think you’re about to agree. Name Your Price Home Services works like this. Homeowners like you select from over 20 service categories […]
Two of our team members linked up to step slightly outside their normal comfort zone and pen their insights and trade secrets of website design and development — specifically about our new website. Ashley Nixon (designer) and Kyle Bavender (developer) played significant roles in the vision and functionality of our site. Here’s a peek at […]
The announcement from Apple CEO Steve Jobs that he’ll be stepping down from his post is not altogether unexpected, but it does mark the end of an era. Jobs returned to the company he started in the late 1990s when it was in big trouble. The strategic direction was wayward, the products were suffering from […]
When we sit down and talk with clients and prospects, many of whom come to us with statements like “I need a new website,” we always start by asking lots of questions. In my Vistage Group, we refer to this as “brilliant inquiry.” The idea is not to generate solutions but to more clearly define the […]
When I open my email inbox on an average day, I see a wide variety of messages. Like many of you, I sort through a lot of emails from companies offering me the latest and greatest deals on the Internet. As email designers and marketers, many of us at Rare Bird can’t fight the urge to critique messages making their way into our inboxes. In fact, we keep an eye out for emails that make for interesting conversation around the office.
I’ve been debating writing this post, but in the spirit of Sir Richard Branson‘s approach (“screw it, let’s do it”) I’ve decided to go ahead. We’ve been working on a few sites for institutions of higher learning and, in the process of researching the competition, happened upon the site for Elon University. I really like […]
In a recent article (and accompanying video), award-winning author Warren Berger suggests that designers have just the right toolset to answer a whole range of questions; many of which fall outside the traditional role of ‘design’. “Don’t think about design just as your logo or the visual aspect of your business; think of it as […]
Clifford Stoll was wrong. And partly right, too. A Newsweek article from 1995 titled, “The Internet? Bah!” and sporting the unfortunate subtitle “Hype alert: Why cyberspace isn’t, and never will be, nirvana” has recently begun making the rounds on the internet. As you can imagine, it’s normally passed along with some comment about how short […]
We often field questions and have conversations around justifying the investment in good design. Traditionally, it’s been very difficult to quantify the ROI of design. In some ways, the internet is helping to change that. We’ve recently had the opportunity to accurately measure the impact of design for DRG, one of our clients in the […]
