Snow Bash! iPad and iPhone App: Protect Ginger Hill from the Snowmen

Enjoy the free iPad and iPhone versions of the award-winning Snowbash Flash app created by Scott Design in 2007. All the fun of the original version, plus new prizes, more animals, and icemen! Download Snow Bash! for your iPad or for your iPhone from the App Store.

3D Fun: Put on your glasses and enjoy some holiday scenes

Grab your stylish 3D specs and enjoy some 3D holiday images. No 3D glasses? Send us an SASE and we’ll send you a pair!

Augmented Reality Snowstorm: A virtual snowstorm using your webcam

Get into the holiday spirit with the Augmented Reality Snowstorm, where you can put yourself or your family in a virtual snowstorm. No webcam? No worries! Just visit the virtual snowstorm, instead!

Special Delivery: Create your own holiday-themed web pages

Design and share your own one-of-a-kind holiday pages in minutes with Special Delivery. You can make a holiday page, send birthday wishes, invite friends to a party, or create a page just for fun. It’s a free, easy, green alternative to traditional cards! Create your holiday greetings.

Snowbash: Can you stop the snowmen?

See how many snowmen your gingerbread man can get without harming the innocent pink bunnies in the award-winning Snowbash game. Play Snowbash.

Snowflake Designer: Design your own beautiful flakes

Select the number of branches, the shape of the crystals and their complexity, and watch as your snowflake grows right outside your window! Make some snowflakes.

Virtual Fireplace: May your days be merry and bright

Just because you’re stuck at your computer doesn’t mean you can’t gaze into the hypnotic flames of a crackling fireplace. Have fun decorating the mantle for the holidays, or just kick back and imagine the warmth! Curl up by the fireplace.

Happy Holidays!

We hope you have a lot of fun and send all our best wishes for the season and the coming year,

The Scott Design team

Back in 1993, Bill Clinton was president of the United States, the first Beanie Babies came out, the first Jurassic Park movie was a hit, and the World Wide Web was born at CERN in Switzerland.

At Scott Design, we were busy setting up shop, already working on projects for technology, venture capital, B2B, and retail products companies. Of course at that time, the majority of our work was on print projects: mostly brochures, flyers, and packaging.

Today, the vast majority of our work is on websites, email campaigns, and online apps, but we have kept our focus for the past 18 years on tech, financial, and B2B clients.

Here’s how some other things have changed in the United States over the 18 years since Scott Design was founded:

Things are up here at Scott Design this year, too. We’ve been really busy on some great projects for new and existing clients, we’ve won a bunch of awards, and we’re looking forward to another successful year. We wish success to all of our clients and colleagues as we cut the cake for Scott Design!

With our best wishes for the season and coming year, please enjoy some 3D holiday images or some of our other holiday games.

Have a joyous holiday season!

The Scott Design team

When we design websites for our clients, we put ourselves in the shoes of potential customers and determine what visitors are looking for on the site. We did the same when we started to redesign hotdesign.com. We figured visitors to the Scott Design site want to know who we are, find out what we do, and get a good look at our portfolio.

Scott Design’s home page features our tagline, a description of the type of work we do, and some information about our history of success. Our Flash-based interactive portfolio is featured front and center on the home page. On one page, potential clients can find out about us in seconds.

The interactive portfolio was designed to allow visitors to watch the portfolio as an animated slide show, flip forward or backward through the portfolio, and open up the window to find out more about individual projects. Updating the contents of the portfolio is easy, as the Flash was designed to pull images from a folder and copy from a simple text file. Changing the portfolio doesn’t require any programming, just a quick update of the contents in the folder.

The home page also includes ways to learn more about Scott Design. There are links to the blog, more information about Scott Design, social networks, and our e-newsletter sign-up form. And every page features a quick contact form so clients can contact us with questions or new projects.

Since we know that folks are often looking for information while they’re out of the office, we created versions of our site for mobile devices. Mobile visitors are automatically redirected to a version of the site that is optimized for their device. And we’ve carried the new look and feel over to all of our online pages, including Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, our blog, and online landing pages.

The process of updating a website is never easy. You must figure out what’s working, what needs updating, and what your site visitors are going to be looking for. You then must roll it all into a clear, effective web design. We think we’ve accomplished just that with the new Scott Design website.

We hope you’ll take a look and let us know whether you agree!

P.S. To see the Scott Design website as it has appeared over the past 17 years, check out our Hotdesign.com through the ages photo album on Facebook.

This month, we’re celebrating Scott Design’s 16th birthday. Launched on August 1, 1993 with a handful of Silicon Valley clients, we’ve grown into a firm that serves businesses across the U.S. in a range of industries.

In celebration of Scott Design’s 16th birthday, we’re going to treat 16 lucky winners to a couple of sweet sundaes at Baskin-Robbins. The drawing is on Sept. 1, 2009, so enter today!

And, thanks for sixteen sweet years!

Scott Design is proud to have received certification as a Monterey Bay Area Green Business for taking steps to ensure that our business

We have adopted policies to ensure that we:
- Reduce, reuse, recycle
- Reduce toxics
- Purchase environmentally responsible products
- Conserve resources
- Educate our employees and clients about sustainability

Scott Design Inc. is committed to creating a positive environmental and social impact by incorporating sustainable design practices into all of our work. We work with our clients to ensure that projects are environmentally and socially responsible, as well as profitable. We hope to help advance the understanding of sustainability issues, and we ask all of our employees to engage in conversation with every client and co-vendor about integrating sustainable alternatives in their work.

The Monterey Bay Area Green Business Program is a successful partnership of environmental agencies, utilities, and nonprofit organizations that assist, recognize, and promote businesses and government agencies that volunteer to operate in a more environmentally responsible way. To be certified “green,” participants must be in compliance with all regulations and meet program standards for conserving resources, preventing pollution, and minimizing waste. The program offers motivated businesses and agencies an easy-to-use framework for improving environmental performance. For more information, visit the Monterey Bay Area Green Business Program website. Scott Design and 37 other Santa Cruz businesses were recognized by the Santa Cruz County Supervisors for going green.

Scott Design is also a member of The Designers Accord and Design Can Change, both dedicated to helping designers promote sustainability practices. You can read more about our environmental commitment and Scott Design’s Designers Accord membership.

One of the main messages at last weekend’s Compostmodern conference on sustainable design was that designers must help make changes to lessen the human impact on the environment through incremental changes as well as systematic changes. These two tactics are comparable to treating the symptoms of a disease and finding a cure. One addresses short-term changes to reduce discomfort, and one removes the problem altogether. Treating the symptoms is valuable, finding the cure is priceless. In this article, I’m going to offer a few ideas about how designers can work to create the cures for some of our environmental problems.

Creativity is a renewable resource.

As designers, we have the power to help those around us find better ways to do things. We are, by nature, creative problem-solvers. We must apply our brain power to finding ways to change perceptions, get things done in ways that do less harm to the environment, and find new ways of doing the things we already do.

John Bielenberg, founder of Project M, likes to encourage companies and individuals to consider whole new “wrong” ways of thinking about solutions. Don’t limit yourself to the first idea that comes to your mind, but instead, keep thinking until you come up with something that is revolutionary. John wears a “LIVEWRONG” bracelet to remind himself to think beyond the first solutions that come to him.

Do it differently.

One of the great examples of a systematic change has been with respect to printing. Designers can now specify recycled or bamboo paper, soy inks, and water-based coatings, and use only printers certified by the Forest Stewardship Council. You can even use EcoFont, which uses 20% less ink and toner to reduce the impact of your printed piece. These all reduce the symptoms of printing’s effect on the environment.

But how about if you don’t print your client’s piece at all? Instead, you can post a PDF file with the same information, send an e-mail instead of a postcard, create a banner ad instead of a print ad, or put the information in a blog post. These options represent an entirely new system of “dematerializing” these pieces of information so they have virtually no impact on our environment. They’re a cure for all the ills of printing, such as the negative impact on forests, water usage, and the waste products of printing.

Sit. Stay.

We create much of the carbon in the air by traveling around. Great ways to reduce the amount of carbon your activities create include using a more efficient or hybrid car, carpooling, riding your bike, walking, or buying carbon offsets for travel.

But, how about no traveling in the first place? Technology now makes it possible to work from home, attend a webinar or webcast instead of attending an event in person, and hold video conferences instead of traveling to a meeting. To encourage your clients not to require in-person presentations, you can even add a line item to your invoices for carbon offsets they’ll have to purchase to offset everyone’s travel to the meeting. It may just make them think before scheduling another meeting.

Speed it up.

Great design can help people find the information they need more quickly. Consider the signage at a drive-through window at a fast-food place. If the sign is well-designed, someone can find what they want quickly and spend less time idling in line while they look for what they want and get out of their pollution-producing car more quickly.

But, what if they didn’t have to sit in line in the first place? What if the restaurant had a website where you could order before leaving home and just sail to a pre-order window to pick up your meal? Designers should be looking for opportunities to help their clients improve in ways they might never have considered.

How else can graphic designers help?

Scott Design is also a member of The Designers Accord, Design Can Change, and The Monterey Bay Area Green Business Program, all dedicated to helping designers and companies promote sustainability practices. Check out their websites for more ideas on going green, and find out if there’s a local green certification program in your area.

The McKinsey Quarterly released a report encouraging businesses to help customers make “green” choices when making purchases. Many people want to make green choices, but don’t know which ones make the biggest impact on the environment. For more information, read the full article, “Helping Green Products Grow.”

I’d love to hear other ideas about how designers can move us closer to a sustainable society. What ideas do you have? Leave a comment or share this article with your fellow designers to keep the sustainability conversation going.

I had the privilege of attending the Compostmodern conference in San Francisco this past weekend. Compostmodern, a product of the AIGA Center for Sustainable Design (CFSD), was a great opportunity to explore the range of design thinking necessary to create a socially and ecologically responsible society. During the one-day conference, we were inspired to think about sustainability, bring about change and activism, fire our passion, and learn how to do something about it. Speakers from multiple design disciplines brought their takes on how designers can change the way our society uses diminishing natural resources, impressing a sense that designers can make a difference, but also, that there’s a sense of urgency about making these changes.

Some designers at a lunch workshop I attended expressed frustration about how graphic designers face in bringing about change because of limits imposed by clients. Allan Chochinov, an evangelist for sustainability in industrial design, offered that designers should acknowledge that we do have the power to change things, that there are consequences (good and bad) associated with what we design, and that we should take the initiative to make changes where we can, without waiting for permission from our clients. As Allan said in the question and answer session after his presentation, “You’re on this planet and it’s falling apart: You have permission.”

Inventor Saul Griffith showed during his presentation how we can’t possibly create enough energy capacity with renewables to replace the energy we currently get from oil, gas, and coal. So what’s the solution? Get people to use less energy. We must help turn the world from waste, design our way out of problems we’ve created, and increase awareness of how every consumer can make changes to turn us away from unsustainable lifestyles.

The conference was a great chance to take time out to work on design thinking. And, after an energizing day, I’m ready to fire up my passion for the environment and do something about it.

Scott Design recently joined The Designers Accord, a global coalition of designers, educators, researchers, engineers, and corporate leaders, working together to create positive environmental and social impact. There are now more than 100,000 members representing 100 countries.

As a Design Accord Adopter, Scott Design is looking forward to working with our clients to ensure that our projects are environmentally and socially responsible, as well as profitable. We’re hoping we can be take part in advancing the understanding of environmental and social issues from a design perspective through our participation in this vibrant organization.

If you’re interested in learning more, visit The Designers Accord website.

Scott Design is also a member of The Monterey Bay Area Green Business Program and Design Can Change, both dedicated to helping companies promote sustainability practices. You can read more about our environmental commitment to sustainable graphic design and Scott Design’s Monterey Bay Area Green Business certification.

Evolution happens when organisms adapt in order to survive successfully in new environments. These adaptations increase an organism’s ability to attract mates, avoid predators, and find food. Animals or plants that don’t adapt must either move out of the habitat or die out.

Adapt or perish

The business climate has gone through some rapid changes over the previous year and, just like animals, organizations must adapt to the new environment or face extinction. Just as organisms must attract mates, avoid predators, and find food, companies must build relationships with customers, beat the competition, and make sales.

Attracting Mates

No matter how assiduously a male bird chases a female, if he doesn’t have the feathers, he doesn’t get the mate. If he has traits that make him attractive to females of his species (color, size, behaviors), he’ll get all the attention he wants.

Similarly, pursuing your customers with letters, phone calls, generic e-mails, and sales calls, won’t get you any closer to building a relationship. Instead, you should attract your customers with online content that pulls them to you. Make sure your website is well-designed, optimized for online searches, and presents your company as you would like your customers to see you. Develop compelling content for your blog and e-newsletters that customers will want to forward to others. When they’re looking for the products or services you offer, you’ll be irresistible.

In the deep ocean where meals are rare and unpredictable, the deep sea anglerfish remains almost motionless and just waits for its prey to be drawn by its irresistible luminous lure. Your job is to create the content that will make your company just as irresistible.

Avoiding predators

Before the web, researching your competition was time-consuming, expensive, and often incomplete. Businesses needed to hire a research team, pay for expensive industry reports, and you still couldn’t get a full picture of your competitors.

You can now find out almost everything you need to know about your competitors on the web: Visit their websites, check out the online profiles of people who work for the companies, and read what their customers say about them online. Get to know all you can about their offers, prices, and services and make sure yours are more attractive and more effectively targeted to your desired audience.

You can also use what their customers say to adapt your offerings and capture new markets you hadn’t previously considered.

What you should not do is watch the wolves begin to circle without knowing what you’re up against.

Finding Food

Back in the day, standard sales tools, such as print advertising, direct mail, sales calls, and tradeshows were developed to get a company’s message across to a wide audience. All of these techniques come with high price tags and have little focus. They’re like a spider’s web that’s spread wide to catch whatever flies by. OK when there are swarms of bugs around, but not so good when they’re few and far between.

Today’s technologies provide ways for businesses to reach directly and cost-effectively tailor their messages directly to the audience. Send personalized e-mail newsletters to a well-honed list, to help you get your message to exactly the customers most likely to buy. Network online to get in touch with contacts around the world that you could never reach through a sales call. And, produce webinars and podcasts to speak to your customers directly without the costs of a tradeshow.

Natural Selection

Making some adaptations might not be easy, and there may be some who want to keep doing things the old way. But, often making a few big changes followed by a series of small mutations over time can evolve your company to a new level. Track the results that each of your adaptations gets. If the change doesn’t bring success, scrap it. And, if something is working, don’t change it.

The key to evolution is the willingness to adapt, survive, and flourish when the environment changes. And,  those that do survive and embrace these adaptations as a permanent part of their company’s framework will be poised to become the dominant species in the new business environment.