SODO DOJO / GREEN DESIGN

SODO Creative has “walked the walk” since our inception…but now we’re “talking the talk,” too. On September 18, 2008 we presented our talk “PUSH and PULL: Finding your way through a forest of facts” to members of AIGA Seattle. The event was held at Rocky Salskov’s photography studio in Belltown. The organizers did a fantastic job pulling things together and were quick to respond to some major technical hurdles (thanks all!) Jeff opened up the presentation and introduced us to the group of about 30 designers present. I continued, providing some information comparing green printers to regular printers (weighing cost and impact on the environment), adding a few more green design facts before introducing Eric Benson, founder of Re-nourish–our business liaison,tele-presenting all the way from Urbana, IL (thanks to the wonder that is Skype!) The presentation went great and we had a lot of great feedback. Thanks to everyone for being there and thanks to AIGA Seattle Green Salon for the invitation…it was a great experience and we hope to get out there a bit more to talk about the wonderful things ahead for green design in communications. Stay tuned for more info on Gamut soon to come…

We’re excited about the launch of our latest project for Seattle real estate agent Scott Waterman. Scott came to us through a referral looking for quick turnaround on a project that required a fair amount of innovation. The world of real estate websites is comprised largely of standardized templates from the dawn of Web design, so we had a lot of room to improve. What we came up with (we think) was great innovation on a website that required function far and above form. The site (at www.arboretumhouse.com) uses an open source script to magnify and click through the gallery images, as well as Flash components to highlight some of the best photographs of the home. Finally, the site runs on 100% solar powered Web servers, available through our very own green Web hosting plans. (E-mail us at greenhosting@sodocreative.com for more info.) Check it out and let us know what you think!

In the midst of a ridiculously hot day for Seattle (90+) we set off for lunch followed by a drive by Molly Moon’s Ice Cream, which for the last 3 weeks has been enticing us with lines around the corner. Why in the world would a simple ice cream shop cause people to line up around the corner and wait for over half an hour for a cone? Well, today we found out:

More importantly, it wasn’t just the gigantic, amazing ice cream cones they are serving up at Molly Moon’s…it’s the fact that the ingredients are local, organic and (from my own selection this afternoon) honey lavender-icious. What I didn’t get was a snapshot of the inside where they’ve designed the shop with re-claimed (and awesomely exposed) wood and i-beams. They’ve even got a beautiful website at http://www.mollymoonicecream.com. Though they’ve done a great job with much of the design, doing a search in Google for “molly moon” brings up an interesting confusion of brand identity. You’ll see that the first result is for “Molly Moon’s Incredible Book of Hypnotism” and the subject of this book is none other than a little dog, which also happens to be the subject of the logo for Molly Moon’s Ice Cream. But as far as we can tell, there is no relation—between the dogs or the brands.

One piece of advice we encourage all our clients to consider is brand competition. If there is a pre-existing brand that conflicts with your own brand identity in any way, it could spell danger in terms of growing the business. Once a brand has successfully positioned itself in people’s minds, it can be difficult to compete with that brand. There are plenty of tactics for brands going into already competitive markets, of course. One of these tactics is “filling the gap” that the pre-existing brand is not focused on. Their oversight can be your piece of the pie…or scoop of the ice cream. (So far ice cream online has yet to turn into a competitive market though, so Molly Moon shouldn’t have much to worry about.)

Needless to say, we’ll be returning to Molly Moon’s Ice Cream very soon…the banana split looks tremendous.

Hello loyal SODO DOJO readers. You may have heard of T. Boone Pickens’ Picken’s Plan (from his ads on CNN for example). We encourage anyone interested in an environmental change from the current reliance on oil to read into this program. SODO Creative started from 2 creative individuals who had a conscience and wanted to create their business with as little environmental impact as possible. That is why from the get-go our site uses only 100% solar powered servers (a service we can also provide for your company/organization) while donating to offset the carbon emissions made by our business. We wanted to try and keep things as “green” as possible and believe we are a part of something that will be the new standard for business. In addition, we offer consulting for businesses that want to be environmentally conscience. Give us a call or drop us a line if you are interested in our services, we would love to hear from you and spread the “green” vibe.

It took until late June but summer finally arrived in Seattle and just in time for the 2008 Greenwood Car Show. I headed out with my sunblock and earplugs to check out all the incredibly loud and pristinely restored hot rods I could handle. After 10 blocks of custom motorcycles and early 1950’s American classics I came upon an entire parking lot of the latest and greatest in earth friendly driving. Here I found a late 1980’s VW Vanagon that the owner had converted from gas guzzler to a fully electric green machine. Another one that caught my eye is the “The Miles ZX40ST” by MC Electric (http://mcelectricvehicles.com). Street legal with a 60 mile range, brand new for about $20,000. Nice job GREENwood way to represent!

The new version of Firefox (3) came out on Tuesday, it is awesome. For people who are still using IE or Safari it is time to switch over. The new version has way better security. The Malware feature warns the user of sites known to install viruses, spyware, etc. so all the PC users are safe. Check it out, it has a ton of new features and is by far the best browser out there now. And best of all it is free!

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/

On a mission to obtain a J.J. Putz bobblehead a week or so ago I headed off to Safeco Field to watch the lowly Seattle Mariners. It was a beautiful day and because I got there 2 hours early I had some time to kill. So I took a moment just to sit back, relax and enjoy my beer on one of the only nice days this spring. As I was about half way through my beverage I noticed the text on the cup–”Made from Corn-100% Compostable.” At least something about my $8 Budweiser beer was satisfying.

Alas, Earth Day is here. Hoorah! Have you seen our home page today?

We might also recommend our green Web services page if you’re considering any print or Web design…we be eco-friendly! So what do we all do now? (Are your thumbs twiddling? Are you twittering? We are!) For starters, you can check out sites to help you get involved…

Check out events in Seattle here or find an event in your own home town.

But beyond all the happy joy of Earth Day, I thought I’d point out something interesting…a turn of the tides, as it were. That is to say, I’ve got some dirt on Google! Yes, we love Google…but looking at the search results for “earth day” in both Live and Google, it’s quite apparent that Live is doing a much better job with this query. What’s up with that? You’ll see what I mean when you compare this to this. The first query is Google’s…why in the world does an entry for “The Day the Earth Stood Still” from Wikipedia come up as the 5th result for “Earth Day”? In the humble dialect of Yoda, “Sense, this does not make.”

Live’s results on the other hand are not all that bad. I get a pretty dense set of information all pertaining specifically to Earth Day. That’s Rock and Roll! What does this mean though?

Well, for as much as we can gather, it’s apparent that Live is placing some pretty heavy emphasis on <title> tags whereas Google is continuing to rely more (perhaps) on linking to define context and relevance. Either that or Live has done some amazing programmatic changes to surface these results today. We’ll be checking and comparing these same results the day after Earth Day to see what we get. Should be interesting! Anyway, we we wish you a fantastic Earth Day and hope you get all “earthified” from today forward…all the cool kids are doing it (like us)!

CNET covers it here. But in short, the algorithmic perfectionists at Google were so inclined to “tweak” how Google search results are rendered 450 times (at least) over the course of 2007. What does this mean? Well, essentially Google is trying to improve their product…by tweaking the results they are really trying to give you better information based on what you search for. The extended version is that this has an impact on site owners. Sites might disappear from that golden first page of search results temporarily…or for good based on these tweaks.

But what about the case for the searcher, where what you find today in Google may not be in the same place tomorrow? That’s a likely scenario and in fact will most definitely occur depending on what zip code you’re searching from and whether or not you’re signed in to a Google profile or not (Gmail users out there)…

This should come as no surprise for anyone keeping up on search news. Google search algorithm tweaks have been so big that they’ve had names. So what is an SEO to do?

The first step is not to totally freak out…we do this by listening to a little Sinatra and making a few martinis (shaken, not stirred). Add a couple of olives and then it’s over to the forums to read up on things and try to better understand what the impact is…or will be. As far as change management, the secret is that for the most part no emergency tweaks are needed. Most of these changes are so minuscule that they don’t necessarily impact the big impact ranking factors we at SODO Creative focus on. That said, the bottom line is that search rank shouldn’t be the focus of an SEO campaign. The ultimate goal is to drive more search referrals (and more conversions) through optimization.

Optimizing sites for search is our game. SODO Creative is our name. Get in touch with us today so we can bring your site into our DOJO. You’ll be kicking *!$ in no time.

The Seattle Green Festival pretty much ruled. I’ve been to lots of conferences and trade shows but I have to say that this was very well organized and the booths and people we spoke to were just…awesome. As we prepared to enter the exhibitor area, we were dominated by a giant cow:

That was pretty cool. When we got there, it was still relatively quiet…had a lot of space and fresh legs to walk and chat with everyone. We had a great time checking out all the different products and green companies out there. (Still need to chat more with the guys from Organic Fred!) After visiting somewhere around 30 booths, we spotted the organic beer samples and grabbed a few tokens:

We tried the Fish Tail and Wolaver’s…good stuff! Shortly after organic beer tasters, we checked out the food booths but we were unimpressed on the price of the food (says Jeff, “Eight dollars for a burrito? That’s not green!”) A good laugh was had at the expense of our stomachs. Lots of really great teas and food samples though. We had a good time and made some great contacts…definitely looking forward to the next Green Festival!