Sunrise
Stopped.
Half frozen
Hassenpfeffer. Watching Looney Tunes with the little guy and this popped up on screen. Had to grab a shot of it. #lettering #looneytunes
Enjoyed worshipping this morning at St. Paul in Aiken. Good to see lots of familiar faces.
My best nine. I had forgotten about a bunch of these. #2016bestnine
Palmetto Trail
Focus #grafitti
Bridge
My girls are having so much fun with their Instax cameras… I kind of want one now.
Merry Christmas from Team Wertz!
Foggy morning on the Horseshoe.
My first ever Sketchbook B “retreat.” Yes, there’s only one of me, but time alone to think about what I want to do with all my side projects is sorely needed. Oh, and I’m totally going to see Rogue One.
Braved the weather and ready for @aiga_sc ’s monthly coffee chat, AIGA@8.
Passenger seat.
Columbia.
Letters. #uofsc
What I love about Draplin...
This post was originally posted on November 19, 2016 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.
This man loves to create.
I saw Aaron Draplin for the fourth time on Thursday night when he came to the Half and Half in Columbia. Over the last years 15 years or so, between CCAS, AIGA South Carolina and Converge SE, we’ve had a bunch of awesome designers come through Columbia… DJ Stout, David Carson, Chip Kidd, James Victore, Seymour Chwast, Michael Beirut, Sean Adams, Sagmeister… and that’s a really incomplete, partial list.
But Draplin is one of my favorites.
What I love about Draplin is how much he loves to make things. Other designers are passionate about solving business problems. Or challenging convention. Or tackling large international clients. But Draplin loves to create things. Sure, he solves problems for clients, he challenges conventional thinking, he has some large international clients. But the thing that really seems to drive Draplin is putting things out into the world, which I really do feel makes him unique among the big names in design.
(It’s also the reason why Draplin’s work is known beyond the design world. Field Notes is loved by people all over the world and they love Draplin, too.)
If he comes to a town near you, see him. You won’t be disappointed.
Bob Wertz is a creative director, type designer, Ph.D. student and researcher living in Columbia, South Carolina. His blogging journey started in 2008 with a Squarespace hosted blog.
Draplin.
Formatting a really long web address
This post was originally posted on November 15, 2016 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.
4 steps to simplifying URLs
I was behind a truck in traffic yesterday with an URL boldly printed across the back. And since traffic was moving slowly, I got a nice long look at it:
www.reallylongwebaddress.com/home
Okay. I may have changed the address to protect the innocent. But it was a really long address. And it looked really awkward.
I see addresses like this all the time and I’m not sure why designers don’t instinctively take steps to make these addresses more readable and easier to remember. I’m guessing that designers are simply using the addresses that are provided to them by copywriters and clients, but it really is easy to clean up.
Step one, get rid of the protocol.
You really don’t need to put ““ at the beginning of a URL. It’s called the protocol identifier and if you type the address into a web browser without it, the browser will add it for you. So all it adds is clutter.
So drop the protocol and it’s already better:
www.reallylongwebaddress.com/home
But don’t stop there…
Step two, dump the www.
Most websites don’t need the “www” to take you to the proper address. Again, unnecessary clutter. If your web site does require the www for the URL to resolve properly, you have two options: leave the www. in the address; or contact the person who set it up and have them fix it.
reallylongwebaddress.com/home
Definitely better. But can we make it easier to read?
Step three, do you really need that specific page?
Sometimes, you need to direct someone to a specific page on a site — a landing page or specific bit of content. But if it’s just “/home” or “/index” you can usually drop it:
reallylongwebaddress.com
Just make sure the shortened address takes you to the desired location.
And finally, can you improve it with intercapping or some other design treatment?
Web addresses sometimes have hidden words. And that’s not always good. For example, a reader may not see “Really Long Web Address,” but may instead see “ Really Long We Bad Dress.” Same letters, but completely different. Sometimes, you can insert capital letters into the middle of the URL to help the viewer read the address as intended. Or use color and type weight to make the address read correctly. For example:
ReallyLongWebAddress.com
URLs are not typically case sensitive so the capitalization doesn’t alter the address in any way. It’s just easier to read. The bottom line: Use the shortest URL possible that takes the viewer where you want them to go.
Because it’s easier to read ReallyLongWebAddress.com on the back of a truck than www.reallylongwebaddress.com/home.
Bob Wertz is a creative director, type designer, Ph.D. student and researcher living in Columbia, South Carolina. His blogging journey started in 2008 with a Squarespace hosted blog.