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Kris Nyreen
I am a Principal Designer at Inetium and my primary focus is making SharePoint not look like SharePoint. This blog is dedicated to working with SharePoint from a designer's perspective. Contact Me.
Lori Neff
I am a UI Developer and Senior Consultant at Inetium. My objective is making SharePoint sites look like more than just... SharePointy. Contact Me.
Inetium offers a challenging, energetic environment where you can help build great solutions. Apply today.
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A Blog dedicated to concepts and practices around design and branding as it relates to SharePoint. |
5/7/2009I will be attending the ugMIX event tomorrow night (May 8th) along with some other folks from the Minneapolis .NET User Group and Silverlight User Group. There will be a review of the highlights from MIX09 along with demonstrations of Expression Blend 3 and Silverlight 3, which I am extremely excited to see. Afterward, there will be a private screening of the new Start Trek movie. There may be seats still available but I am not sure. You can check out more information here: http://www.slickthought.net/post/2009/04/ugMIX-Event-Coming-to-Minneapolis-on-May-8th!!!.aspx< div> 4/20/2009I had the privilege of attending the CRE8 conference in Orlando FL. I received a free pass after winning the PhizzPop Online Challenge sponsored by Microsoft and Aquent. This was my first time to the CRE8 conference. Aquent Graphics Institute did a great job putting the conference together. The speakers were awesome and the content was relevant. I can see myself going again. Two of the speakers that I found intriguing were Mitch Joel (from Twist Image) and Avinash Kaushik (from Google). Mitch (who also has a book coming out “Six Pixels of Separation” talked a lot about the value of Social Media and brand. I pretty much agreed with everything he said. Your Brand is extremely important and with the social aspect of the web it is now impetrative that we (designers, marketers, business owners) actually pay attention to the brand. The customer is now defining our brand by what they say and the feedback they have. If this truly is the case, customer service and user experience can not be left behind. Avinash (who also has a book: Analytics an hour a day) gave a great presentation on web analytics. To quote Avinash directly “God never intended for us to have this much data”. It is true. Have you ever looked at the reports you can get from Google Analytics? Amazing. And it is all free. FREE. This means there is no excuse to have a website perform poorly. If you are serious about your website, the ranking of your site and what users are doing on your site than analyzing your data and taking action is just as important as your marketing plan. 
4/2/2009My apologies to Martin Luther King. I mean no disrespect. But it is indeed an exciting announcement in the SharePoint community that SharePoint Designer is now free! Check it out! 3/20/2009Man. In all the excitement I admit I forgot. I am ashamed. For those of you who haven’t heard the rumors, it is said that SharePoint Designer is going to be a free download April 1, 2009. I’ve heard it several times… does that make it true? I don’t want to assume anything, especially anything associated with April Fool’s Day. Now, if it IS free, that makes me happy. SharePoint Designer is a tool. A useful tool. There are, of course, those who fear change. Who fear giving power (SPD) to the masses (the whole world). While it is true that with great power comes great responsibility, I must say that if your SharePoint site has the proper security set up, and if your site architecture is done well, SPD shouldn’t be a threat. And if your architecture and security AREN’T set up appropriately, then you should be fixing those problems anyway, regardless of free SPD. In any case, we’ll find out soon. In the meantime, you can still be afraid of “The Exorcist", Bozo the Clown and people with no eyebrows. On a more reliable note, for those of you that haven’t heard, Visual Studio 2010 is going to have better tools and support for developing for SharePoint sites – very cool. See a video here at Channel 9. 3/19/2009Another big announcement at MIX09 today – final release of IE 8. Slices, security, isolated tabs… but how does it impact SharePoint? Compatibility mode is of course the largest issue (for a review of this, check out this post). Not many answers at MIX09 about this, but I will see if I can ferret out some more information. What I’d love to know is what does Office 13 SharePoint look like? I’m assuming it will run in compatibility mode… Right? Right?? I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to see Bill Buxton’s amazing keynote speech at MIX09 yesterday. He said that now is truly a great time to be a UX designer. And while you might raise an eyebrow at that during the current economic climate, he pointed out that the companies who were design innovators during the Great Depression (Kodak was one of his examples) are all still around today. So go out there and do some great design. I also got the opportunity to ask Bill about RIAs (specifically Silverlight) and how text fits into that model (I’m thinking of users who want to right-click on a link and open in a new window, for example). His response was, “Well, perhaps you need a different solution. Or come up with one.” An excellent point. Time for some innovation. To think outside the box. I’m filled with many ideas and can’t wait to come back and try them out. Bill also spoke about the design process. No less than 5 designs for each project. If you can’t come up with at least 5 designs, then you don’t have the right design. And you NEED to do the 5 designs. If you do just one and stick with it, it’s more than just doing yourself a disservice… You’re marrying yourself to a design without allowing for room for technical and business needs. Well, I digress. Suffice if to say this conference has been quite inspirational. Happy designing to all, and to all, good design. 3/18/2009Ok, so it’s not SharePoint. But sometimes life is not just about SharePoint. And that would definitely be the feeling here at MIX09. While I’m having a fabulous time, and while I’ve been overjoyed about some of the new features of Silverlight 3, there are very few sessions about branding SharePoint. I suppose I shouldn’t be too surprised. Saddened, but surprised. Anyway, more updates to come about MIX09… 3/16/2009Updated version of the Accessibility Kit for SharePoint is now available. https://aks.hisoftware.com/aks_Features.aspx I’m particularly enthused about the Web Part Zone Smart Control Adapter, which will use <div> tags instead of tables to display web parts. Note it only works in display mode, not while in edit mode. 3/12/2009
So you have a SharePoint site (or you’re about to release one). You want to have your company’s colors and branding scheme applied to your site. Where do you start?
Recommendation #1 – Training. Do not send your poor hapless Graphic Designer to SharePoint Designer class. Just because it has “Designer” in the title, doesn’t mean that it will give your designer the tools required to brand a SharePoint site. Instead, send your designer to a basic SharePoint class first. Get them familiar with SharePoint. After they’re familiar with SharePoint in general, get them familiar with YOUR requirements. If you can find a class in your area for branding SharePoint, send them there next. When I find a book on branding SharePoint that I can truly recommend, I’ll post immediately.
Recommendation #2 – Create wireframes. Write out your specifications. Go through each possible iteration of your page to see what you’ll need to cover. If you haven’t done this yet (and it’s surprising how few actually do), you’ll be surprised at just how many pages will be involved.
Recommendation #3 – Prioritize. Find out what you really need branded. Calendars and search controls can be nasty (to brand), so perhaps a simple color change will be sufficient, rather than overhauling the whole thing. If you hardly ever use the calendar view of events, then perhaps postpone its overhaul and stick with a plain list view for now.
Recommendation #4 – Think about your content editors. You’re going to the trouble of branding your site, so make sure that it keeps that consistent look and feel throughout. While Chuck in Accounting thinks lime green text with a red border is attractive, it might not fit with your site. With MOSS WCM, you can control the editing tools and styles that are available. If your content editors are not HTML savvy, then that might impact how you will implement. For example, a Content Editor Web Part might be too complex for some individuals, so then you might think about enabling publishing features to allow users to edit content right on the page.
Recommendation #5 – Plan your deployment. Get the developers involved. Find out how they want to deploy any customizations. If at all possible, tie in your deployment with theirs. Plan so that when you need to change your styles (taglines change, things are missed), it can be done as easily as possible. For example, updating a theme file (even an image) requires an iisreset, then reapplying it is less than fun, especially if you have 100+ sites. However, if you planned your theme correctly (with an import pointing to another file) or if you used the Alternate CSS, then an iisreset isn’t necessary. |
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