Or so I thought to myself before stumbling upon this little beauty.

… michael

…

The js framework is only half the equation. You’ll also need a server-side framework to render static content.

I’m sure you’ve run into this, but the two tools for accomplishing this are #! and pushState. Googlebots that find a hashbang such as mysite.com/#!/blog immediately request
mysite.com?_escaped_fragment_=blog and credit any content they find to the #! url. That’s where your server-side framework comes in.

Pushstate is cleaner but is only supported in newer browsers. With pushState you can generate clean urls – ( mysite.com/blog ) – without resorting to a #, which kept the page from refreshing and zeroing out your js in the previous technique. But google bots still wont execute your js so if they land on your homepage – ( mysite.com ) – and see a link – ( mysite.com/blog ) – you’ll need a server-side framework to sever a static version of that page. If a person requests that link you sever them the same static page but allow your js to take over from there.

All in all, I still haven’t found a system for seo-ing js apps that feels clean. Neither have my solutions been very DRY as they’ve typically required two sets of templates. Though node.js offers a possible solution to that problem and I’d imagine there are server-side templating-languages that could compile into something js understands.

Just ranting at this point, but it seems like the ‘best possible solution’ would be if google could just read the json straight out of your api. So if you had:

[{
  "title": "mysite",
  "content": "more of the same",
  "links": {
    "link1": "https://api.mysite.com/blog"
  }
}]

Where a googlebot would know that title is something like an <h1> and content something like a <p>Links could be followed to the next api request. But I dunno, I just made that last part up. Still google’s full of smart people working on this stuff. They will surely figure something out soonish.

Graphic Design: Now in Production exhibition catalog cover

“Designers have responded by becoming more expressive and experimental,” said Andrew Blauvelt, curator of architecture and design at the Walker, who organized the show with Ellen Lupton, curator of contemporary design at the Cooper-Hewitt. “Their work is more conceptual and analytical: a quest for autonomy and alternative modes of practice. We now have the designer-as-author, as entrepreneur, as editor, as producer, as publisher and as curator.”

-from Alice Rawsthorn’s review in the NYT

GM’s latest ad campaign running in student newspapers: “Stop pedaling…start driving.” A remarkably frustrating, poorly thought out communication strategy.

 

“GM, the company that required us taxpayers to bail it out in 2009, is now biting the young people who bear and will bear the environment and health damage of its gas swilling ways.”

-excerpt from a post by Jonathon Maus, editor of bikeportland.org. Read it in full here.

Notable designers, critics and editors offer thoughts on Steve Jobs’s legacy and his most significant contributions to design.

Recently the team here at ID Branding has been working on a new microsite and campaign for our long time client TriMet.

The question the campaign strives to answer is: What Makes This Place Great?

I think all of us here in Portland have our own specific ways of answering that question and thats why TriMet is inviting Portlanders (as well as Portland area residents, former residents, and visitors) to submit stories and photos about what they think makes our region unusually wonderful. We’re really proud of this project and invite you to check out our hard work at WhatMakesThisPlaceGreat.com

Photo by Eric Johnson

Following up on my last post, here is a companion piece that Milton Glaser developed which he handed out during his talk. Where do you land?

Would you:

1. Design a package to look larger on the shelf?

2. Do an ad for a slow-moving, boring film to make it seem like a lighthearted comedy?

3. Design a crest for a new vineyard to suggest that it’s been in business for a long time?

4. Design a jacket for a book whose sexual content you find personally repellent?

5. Design an advertising campaign for a company with a history of known discrimination in minority hiring?

6. Design a package for a cereal aimed at children, which has low nutritional value and high sugar content?

7. Design a line of T-shirts for a manufacturer who employs child labor?

8. Design a promotion for a diet product that you know doesn’t work?

9. Design an ad for a political candidate whose policies you believe would be harmful to the general public?

10. Design a brochure piece for an SUV that turned over more frequently than average in emergency conditions and caused the death of 150 people?

11. Design an ad for a product whose continued use might cause the user’s death?”