Mobius New Media Wilmington Delaware Design media Marketing Agency

A word or two about designing your own web site.

What happens when a design firm focuses the creative eye on their own in-house web project? Is it more challenging to be creative for your own business than it is for a client?

Mobius’ lead designer Brendan McKeown has the answer, and it’s yes…and no.

Q: So Brendan. Creating the new Möbius web site. Is this like the barber-with-the-bad haircut kind of thing, meaning, the last web site to feel the love is the web site that needs it most?

A: It’s so true. Clients get the love first. But it’s also true that many cool small pieces I’ve created for client work makes an appearance on our site. So the Möbius site design becomes a love-in, so to speak, and a collection of our best work.

Q. Where do you start on an internal project for Möbius?

A. Look at the existing site and make a list of what our goals are with a new site. Obvious changes get me going. I knock around the web, look for inspiration online and off, and start sketching out rough layouts. I literally take my ideas to the drawing board, sketching out rough layouts and visual concepts.

Q: What inspires you to move forward, and what gets in the way when you’re working on a new project?

A: The ability to showcase our new work, which our current site doesn’t do, gets me going. We’ve not only hit our design groove a lot lately, but we’re doing some great work with back-end content management systems (CMS) for our clients, which also turns out to be a great solution for our own website. The new arts and entertainment site is a prime example (www.inwilmingtonde.com). I want our clients, potential clients and friends to see this work right away. What holds me back or gets in the way is…being busy. It’s hard for the company to say no to work that pays the bills.

Q: What’s easy about getting a site together for Möbius?

A: Pulling the content together for our site is the easiest part of the project. In comparison, our clients seem to suffer through the decisions for writing, producing or providing content. I know Mobius very well, so this is a breeze.

Q: Are there any surprises in store for Möbius site visitors?

A: Be on the lookout for the Mö monkey, of course. He is sure to make an appearance somewhere on the site. We’re also working in an endless, moving sky background to support our tagline: infinite possibility by design. But the biggest surprise of all? The fact that we finally launched the site after it being so long in the making!

Prezi Canvas for Mobius Portfolio

Here at Mobius, we are always on the search for new, innovative ways to share our work, and present our portfolio. We have found a lot of exciting new applications that we are integrating into our projects, one of them being Prezi. A few months ago, Jason introduced us to Prezi – a zooming presentation editor. What does this mean? Unlike other presentation tools, Prezi introduces a new way to display information that is eye catching and more interactive for the user. It is a web-based application that uses a single canvas instead of traditional slides, and allows you to zoom in and out, and even flip text upside down, while creating a presentation. Since Mobius has a wide range of projects and services, we needed a way to present our portfolio that would work for all types of media. Prezi works for us because we can embed video, link to websites, and showcase photos and print projects all in one presentation.

Many designers have considered applications like Prezi to be the end of PowerPoint (and other older presentation softwares), since there is much more control and interactive capability with this tool. The main difference between Prezi and PowerPoint, is that PowerPoint limits you to a linear navigation with just one slide after another. With Prezi, there is an infinite canvas to place text, images, and video clips, which you can then arrange by creating paths that link one object to another. The zooming interface allows you to give dimension to your presentation, and keep your viewer engaged and interested.

These tools are exciting, and a lot of fun to play with, but they can quickly become overwhelming if not used correctly. It is tempting to make all of your objects flip upside down and fly across the page, but do not give in to the temptation! Your presentation will become very distracting and will cause your viewer to lose focus. It is important to use the features wisely to get your message across, and to try not to make your viewer dizzy.

So far, we have just mentioned Prezi as being a great tool for design portfolios, however it is used in many ways. Students are becoming aware of the trend, and are creating interactive presentations for school projects and class assignments. It is also becoming a popular way to showcase your resume, and share a little about yourself. Prezi works nicely for these interactive projects, because it allows you to control how the information is displayed, and show your creative side.

So use Prezi for your next presentation, but remember to use it wisely!