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So, I thought it might be nice to provide a list of to-dos before starting your website project with us (or with anyone, really). Of course, there are specifics to each organization that get discussed on an individual basis, but here are some good general guidelines (think of something we left out? Let us know in the comments section below!).

This one sounds like a no-brainer, and for most organizations, it is! This doesn't mean you can't have a team or committee in charge of overseeing the project and making design recommendations. It simply means that you've got a gameplan for who will review the proofs and who will give feedback on the design. Deciding this up-front will keep you from missing valuable input during the Discovery stages of the process.

This comes highly recommended. When your organization had its logo designed, it's very likely that the logo was delivered in a vector file format (most commonly .ai or .eps). Tracking down your logo file in its original vector format will make your creative team's day (we'll probably send you cupcakes) because we won't have to work with a rasterized file format that can pixelate or distort. Of course, if all you can find is a .jpg file, we're more than capable of making it work! Don't have a logo (or not happy with your logo)? Let us know. We'd be happy to put together some concepts for you.

I know, I know... this smells suspiciously like homework, but you'll be glad you took the time on the front-end to have your content updated and planned out. Completing all of your content is not absolutely necessary to get the website started, but it's highly recommended that you have at least started the process. As we develop your website, we'll provide and discuss a new sitemap, but we find many of our clients are so eager to get the website design completed, that they've neglected to polish or update their content (even though we've been reminding them to do so). Once the design is ready to launch, they're caught with several days/weeks of content updates that delay the launch of their incredible new website. As a side note: do you have a team working to write/update content? You might consider signing up for a free or cheap project management system account (Basecamp, for example) for your team to collaborate on content.

Many websites feature photos (how profound - just bear with me). Do you have photos that you would like for us to use? If so, go ahead and begin gathering them. Do your photos have pictures of people in them? If so, make sure you have photo release forms from the folks in the pictures (when you send photos our way, we assume that you've taken care of this step). Please also note, pictures of minors require a photo release form signed by a parent/guardian. Do you need photos taken? Let us know, and we can probably recommend a photographer in your area. If necessary, we have access to extensive stock photo libraries as well. 

None of the ideas above are so profound that you would have never thought of them on your own, but if you can check a few of these items off your list as you are getting started with a new website design, your design team will love you for being so well prepared. As I said before, I'm sure there are other items that could go on this list, so feel free to add your suggestions in the comments below!

Fast forward to today. I've got about 25-30 RSS feeds that I subscribe to with topics ranging from design blogs and project websites to my church news and techie blogs (Palm Pre is launching in June!). Feeds let me keep up with what's going on without having to check my favorite websites several times a day looking for updates. Using a service like Google Reader (my personal favorite because it integrates with my iGoogle page) or Feedburner, I get the story headline and a brief story snippet. If I'm interested, I can open the story, if not... I just check it off my list of items. All-in-all, RSS feeds give me (and you) the ability to stay on top of the latest news while keeping your web browsing clean and efficient.

So... What's in it for the website? More than you would think...

First of all, think of RSS feeds as a means of information distribution. You can't get away with sending an HTML newsletter or Mass Mail to your audience once a day, but your RSS feed can be used for essentially the same purpose. Publish a news story through SiteWrench or your blog, and immediately all of your subscribers are notified that you've got new content. Not only can your subscribers get to the information, but even if they don't read it, they also get the impression that your website is active and alive (generally, a very good impression to make).

Secondly, you are more likely to widen your audience with RSS feeds. If a see a buddy post a link on Twitter (want to follow SPEAK! on Twitter? Click here) that I might be interested in, I'll visit the site. If the content is pretty good (or funny, I'm a sucker for humor), I'll subscribe to the site's RSS feed and visit again when I see the next story. "Old school" methods of web browsing would mean that I'd need to bookmark the site and visit again at an arbitrary time in the future to look for updates. Raise your hand if at one point in time or another you've had a bookmark list full of sites that you meant to come back to. Now, your audience can widen immensely because there is so little action required for them to be reminded that your site is great and provides excellent content.

Of course, that means that you need to be putting out excellent content (which is another blog post entirely), but some quick pointers for making improvements to your content:

• Give me the "latest and greatest" from your organization - I want to read about your accomplishments and how you got there. I want to read about how you are improving (it may motivate me to think about ways I can improve).

• Give me information that I'm not likely to look for somewhere else - There are things that you do that are different from everyone else out there. Tell me about them.

• Give me thoughts from others that you respect (and their links!) - If I respect you, and you respect something that Dr. X (cool super hero name) said on his website, tell me about it! I'm likely to respect what he said AND be excited about the fact that you are expanding your intellectual resources. This makes my opinion of you grow.

ThyssenKrupp Elevators is a company built on innovation, and they take product development very seriously. When they were ready to start promoting their latest product, Destination Dispatch, they asked SPEAK! to develop a custom designed brochure capable of carrying a DVD. They wanted the art of this piece to reflect the core premise of the Destination Dispatch service while maintaining a creative and friendly design that didn't get bogged down with schematics or insider lingo.

As with all of our projects, we started the design process with a Discovery Meeting. This meeting takes place between the client (TKE) and the client's project team at SPEAK! (Account Manager, Project Manager and Lead Designer). Discovery Meetings are a chance for us to hash through the process, creative ideas, specs and must-haves for a project. We don't begin creating any artwork for a project until we've wrapped up the Discovery Meeting.

Now for the fun stuff... design proofs.

First up is the Concept Proof. This phase varies slightly depending upon the type of project we are working on. For logos, we'll typically present 5-7 full color concepts, for brochures, we'll typically present 2-3 concepts and for websites, we typically present 2 concepts (of course, none of this is set in stone - need more? need less? no problem). We presented 6 total Concept Proofs to TKE. You can see from the proofs below that Concept Proofs are meant to show a range of ideas. 

		Concept Proof 1 You can see from this proof that we were going for vertical cover design with photographic design elements. The feel of the piece is highly professional and structural. By providing a state-of-the-art photograph of a building with Destination Dispatch implemented, readers could potentially connect the solution with their project faster.
		Concept Proof 2 This concept also has a vertical arrangement, but this concept moves towards a more thematic, illustration driven design that places the emphasis on the Destination Dispatch concept rather than buildings that house the solution. This design allows readers slightly more interpretation on the types of buildings that Destination Dispatch is designed to service.
		Concept Proof 3 This concept has a square cover presentation rather than vertical (like Concept Proof 1 and Concept Proof 2) and the photographic design elements communicate the problem that Destination Dispatch solves - congestion. This design clearly intends to communicate the need for a better solution while relying on the copy to communicate the solution itself.

Once the SPEAK! team has presented the Concept Proofs to our clients, we make recommendations and wait to hear back on changes from the client. In discussing the Concept Proofs with ThyssenKrupp, it became clear that a combination of ideas from the different concepts would provide the best way forward. Based on TKE's feedback, SPEAK! began work on the next round of the process, Revision Round 1, which you can find below.

SPEAK! presented the first Revision Proof to ThyssenKrupp and made recommendations on moving forward. Again, our clients are involved throughout the entire proofing process, so we waited to hear back from ThyssenKrupp on any potential changes. Once we heard back from TKE about their changes, we moved forward to Revision Round 2 (see below), which in this particular process ended up being the final proof before production of the brochure.

SPEAK! presented the second Revision Proof to ThyssenKrupp. Following this proof presentation, the brochure design and copy was approved by TKE for production. Thus, SPEAK! wrapped up another successful design project with outstanding results and client satisfaction. Look for an update to this post in the near future - we'll provide photos of the final production piece.

As we said earlier, we're hoping to turn this into a regular feature of the blog, so if you have feedback or ideas (or if you're one of our clients, and you'd like us to present your project), leave a comment below!