Skunktastic

It is with great pleasure and great sadness that I announce the retirement of one of Interllectual’s dearest friends. The spotted skunk is officially removed from the list of animals I want to see in their natural habitat, because I saw one this morning. Which means that if I’m going to keep following my own rules, the spotted skunk theme for this site will have to go. This is a bit of a bummer, since he has been the favorite of many. And also because he is one of the two themes I actually made for this recent incarnation of the site. So, to give him good sendoff and to give me some time to get another theme ready, I have switched the default theme from Okapi to Spotted Skunk for about a week or so. If the change didn’t work for you, you can reset the cookie by choosing the skunk over on the themes page.

Spotted skunk in the trap

Departments, Departments, Departments, Departments

During our weekly brainstorming session this morning, we hit that place that is all too familiar— the place where the project would be cross the cool barrier and the suits and faculty would complain that it’s “not academic enough”. Charles and I decided that we just need to do a Ballmer-esque dance showing the department how much we think of them, and we’d all live happily ever after. I have had the mantra of “Departments, Departments, Departments, Departments” in my head all day long…
——-

Lead with the Need

Gerry McGovern hits on a pet-peeve of mine and gives a great example of how internal needs may not work for your customers in Choose Customer Words, Not Organization Words. I love how he blasts the idea of publishing press releases on the home page, and scorns the “self-congratulatory waffle”. I’d also add “Welcome to the ___ Department Web Site” to the list of phrases that need to die…

TypeCast

I decided it was time to change the Interllectual logo type— I’m just not feeling deco anymore. So I searched through the more than 5000 fonts I have (l love being in a Graphic Services department…) and pulled out my favorites. The one I liked best turned out to be Cheltenham bold condensed. Exactly the same font I used on Jangly Ganglia. I am in a rut.

A-Z indexes: A painful exercise in mindreading?

Hmmm. Although our A-Z index does require a bit of mindreading, I think it is much more effective than is suggested in this article by Brian Donohue. This is probably because at Universities we are so focused on departments which have unambiguous names. That is what is in the index, not references to pieces of content.

University homepages: a thankless task?

Excellent article by Georgina Hibberd at the University of Sydney. Very timely, as I am in the midst of redesigning ours at HSU. I may email this to the campus in preparation of the Big Change. :)