“Did you know I’m a designer?” Introducing Diana Hobstetter’s company, Seven Blocks Design
Author: Seven Blocks Design
Date: May 21, 2013
Seven Blocks Design Newsletter – May 2013
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Hi! You may know me as a musician or as a mom, but did you know I’m also a designer? Yep, it’s true, and you are receiving the very first newsletter from Seven Blocks Design, my new design company.
At the end of last year, I changed my company name (from Second Street Design Studio), designed a new logo, created a new website, went to a number of web & design seminars, and launched a new and improved business.
I want to show you some of the projects I’ve been working on, but first let you tell you about some of my areas of expertise.
WORDPRESS WEBSITES
These are full websites, not just blogs. I create a unique website for each client, using high quality customizable templates, and then I even train people to update the content of their sites! This is the perfect way to go for small businesses, and it can be a pretty fast turnaround. For larger web projects, I work with developers, with my focus being the design and user experience aspects.
LOGO DESIGN
I work with clients to determine the direction of the company, service, or product, and it’s branding needs, and bring that to logo design.
BUSINESS PRESENTATIONS
Transform boring text documents into visually communicative messages. Event flyers convey all the information quickly. Put your best foot forward with business cards to match your website and brand.
SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING
If you’re overwhelmed by where to start with utilizing social media for your business, I can help you set up accounts, and use best practices.
Get in touch if you would like to discuss improving your online presence or other design needs.
And if you’re thinking about a new website, be sure to download my handy questionnaire to get you started.
Meanwhile, here are a few examples of some recent work.
Cheers,
Diana Hobstetter
AmyKaps.com
ConnectAnyway Case for Action document
HeyDay Media’s WINGS charitable music licensing program
7 Blocks of Social Media
Social media qualities can be viewed as a honeycomb of 7 functional building blocks.
1. Identity
The identity functional block represents the extent to which users reveal their identities in a social media setting. This can include disclosing information such as name, age, gender, profession, location, and also information that portrays users in certain ways (thoughts, likes, dislikes, etc.). High identity: LinkedIn.
2. Conversations
The conversations block of the framework represents the extent to which users communicate with other users in a social media setting. Conversations happen for all sorts of reasons: to meet like-minded people, to build self-esteem, to promote their ideas. It is important to know the protocol and format for conversations. High conversations: Blogs, Facebook; secondary level: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube.
3. Sharing
Sharing represents the extent to which people exchange, distribute, and receive content, such as photos, videos, music, etc. Evaluate what objects of sociality your audience has in common. High sharing: Pinterest, YouTube, Flickr, Instagram; secondary level: Facebook, Twitter.
4. Presence
Presence represents the extent to which people can know if others are accessible, virtually or physically, like when you “check in” at a location or are “available” online. High presence: Foursquare; secondary level: Facebook, Twitter.
5. Relationships
The relationship block is about how users can be connected to each other, such as a “friend,” “fan,” “connection,” etc. Some relationships are formal, regulated and structured, like LinkedIn, which shows you how many degrees of separation from a “target” member, referral systems, and introductions. Whereas with sites like Twitter and YouTube, relationships hardly matter. In general, social media communities that don’t value identity highly, also don’t value relationships highly. High relationships: LinkedIn, Facebook.
6. Reputation
Reputation represents the extent to which people can identify the standing of others in the social media setting, and can have different meaning on different social media platforms. LinkedIn builds reputation based on endorsements from others, Twitter by the number of folllowers and retweets, Facebook on “likes,” YouTube on “ratings,” etc.
7. Groups
The groups functional block is the extent to which users can form communities and sub-communities, especially the larger the group of friends, followers, and contacts become. High groups: Google+ (circles); secondary level: Facebook (lists, groups, interests), Flickr.
This is a summary from the Business Horizons 2011 article:
Social Media? Get Serious! Understanding the functional building blocks of social media
Years ago, websites were designed for viewing on a computer. Now people view websites on their computer, their tablet, their cellphone. At first, websites were simply created for one optimal size and you would have to scroll around if the size wasn’t quite right. Then some websites got designed with separate versions of the site for various sized platforms. Then came Responsive Web Design…
Responsive Web Design is having one site that adapts to different sized devices.
Here’s Wikipedia’s definition:
“Responsive web design (often abbreviated to RWD) is an approach to web design in which a site is crafted to provide an optimal viewing experience—easy reading and navigation with a minimum of resizing, panning, and scrolling—across a wide range of devices (from desktop computer monitors to mobile phones).”
And here’s a great quote about the approach of designing for the web:
“The control which designers know in the print medium, and often desire in the web medium, is simply a function of the limitation of the printed page. We should embrace the fact that the web doesn’t have the same constraints, and design for this flexibility. But first, we must “accept the ebb and flow of things.” John Allsopp, “A Dao of Web Design”
TECH TALK SIMPLIFIED
In order to design for the web’s flexibility we separate the design formatting from the content with Cascading Style Sheets, or CSS, and HTML, the standard foundation of web pages. To design for various viewing sizes, you set breakpoints, or widths in pixels, for mobile, tablet, and desktop, etc. You can have your web page call up the information about these breakpoints, with what’s called a Media Query, which basically says “If the screen is smaller or larger than this size, make the page look like this.”
SEEING IS BELIEVING
SevenBlocksDesign.com was made with a Responsive Web Design WordPress template. Look at it on different platforms or just make your browser on your computer larger or smaller and see what happens. Here’s a couple things to note: with full desktop mode there’s a slideshow on the homepage, but with a smaller screen a single image scales to size; the navigation links at the top become a drop-down menu on smaller screens; content that’s side-by-side with a large screen reconfigure to be displayed top-to-bottom on smaller screens.
WHY IS THIS GOOD?
Because content is king! These subtle changes take advantage of making the content as easily accessible in different formats. And that’s good design!
Seven Blocks Design is the new name for Diana Hobstetter’s design company.
The previous name was Second Street Design Studio, which was based on the office location. But times change, and the business is no longer based there. So it was time for a new name…
I started brainstorming all sorts of names, and these days it’s not just coming up with a good name, but also a good domain name. I didn’t want to name it after my location this time, but wanted it to reflect what I did, what I was good at, and what I had to offer.
I was looking up words in the thesaurus, reading various articles on topics in my fields… And then I came across an article on the seven blocks of social media. Boom! Then I found another resource on the seven blocks honeycomb of user experience design. Bam! I knew I was onto something.
So Seven Blocks Design is about building blocks. My building blocks include artistic design, branding, user experience, social media, technical skills, empowering others, and a friendly approach.
Seven Blocks Design is about using building blocks to create appealing and effective designs and marketing.
I’m excited to start afresh! I hope you will be too!