Gary Hustwit brought us the beautiful documentary Helvetica about the origin and use of this groundbreaking font. Now Mr. Hustwit is back to present a documentary on how design affects us all. The trailer is fantastic, building anticipation for the actual film release. Take a look here:

Objectified: A Documentary Film by Gary Hustwit
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9E2D2PaIcI&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&feature=player_embedded&fs=1]

There is apparently a hub-bub brewing right now over the fact that advertisers are paying high profile bloggers to post favorable product reviews on their sites. This isn’t particularly new but some of the people being paid are the likes of Chris Brogan who supposedly knows a thing or two about blogging. I don’t know if he knows so much about blogging as he knows about marketing but whatever, that’s another issue all-together. Local PR blogger Lara Kretler posted about this in length here and I agree with much that she had to say so you should probably take a glance at her piece.

Briefly though I want to say that, if you have a blog or a website or some online presence and you either have advertisements on that site or you actively review products (which you are somehow compensated for) then you have moved away from neutrality. As long as that is ok with you then great.

So let’s say that you are in fact ok with bias and that you feel advertising is of some benefit to you in achieving your goal. Perhaps you’re a digital magazine, or newspaper; maybe you’re trying to build a home business as a blogger or consultant or something.

When you consider shilling for someone in this multimedia world think of how that effects your image. All too often the ads are an after-thought. Just because signing up for Adsense is easy doesn’t mean the income you derive from it won’t be more costly to you in loss of readership; or quality participation from those readers. What are you trying to provide to your audience, the audience you’ve probably worked hard to attract? Do you want them to notice you or the products that you are drowning in?

Ads that fit the feel and format - NYTimes Online

Ads that dominate and distract - WCMH NBC 4

My opinion, which I have not been paid for, is that you would be far better off to maintain control over your advertising content if you decide to have some than  you are to let your advertising content control you.

The City of Columbus has launched a new website at: http://wbt1.columbus.gov/

As you can see the new site has a much nicer appearance and structure than the old site. There are certainly still some bugs to work through but all in all I think the City is doing some significant things right with this site. In particular is finally subscribing to the reality of “the long tail” where in they have cleaned up the crazy drill downs, created a more intuitive front end that retains the organization but removes the maze like feel. The ability to provide important and timely information in a clearly defined space is also welcome.

Some of the layout needs to be normalized with the style (get rid of the few remaining square edges when the rest of the format is rounded edge, update graphics like the 311 so it is legible). The alert boxes/tabs, etc. should include a generic load of information when clicked on that can then be changed by the user instead of leaving it virtually blank until the user does something. This is particularly true of the events search box. The City should decide what it wants to highlight and list those events in that box until the user chooses a different, more specific search.

All in all I’d like to give the City kudos for their efforts on the updated site. I look forward to seeing the next iterations of the site and hope that they maintain it well.