Substance

“We Are the Builders”

Stephen Landau — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 19:44:20 +0000

Wilson Miner – When We Build from Build.

I’ve stopped reading marketing and business books.

There was a point in my life and my career when I couldn’t get enough of them. And to give them credit, they’ve helped shape my approach and philosophy to brand building… Adam Morgan’s Eating the Big Fish and Marty Neumeier’s Zag led me to approach projects from a different perspective. Guy Kawasaki’s Rules for Revolutionaries and Art of the Start, Adam Morgan’s The Pirate Inside, and Jim Collin’s Good to Great helped shape the start of Substance.

But over the last few years, these types of books have ceased to make an impression or inspire me. There are a few exceptions (The Green Marketing Manifesto by John Grant, for example), but for the most part I pick these books up, read 10 – 20 pages, then put them down. They all seem to repeat what I’ve already read, or tell me things I’m already doing from a company and/or brand standpoint.

All of this made coming across Wilson Miner’s presentation (above) from the Build Conference so refreshing. Amazing, really. It made me stop what I was doing for 38 minutes and sit, riveted, to what he had to say. It told me something new. It inspired me as a designer. It inspired me as a creator and contributor to our collective society.

Hopefully it will do the same for you. Thanks Wilson for creating something great.

2011 Year End Recap

Stephen Landau — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 18:19:40 +0000

Holy cow. It seems like 2011 just started and here we are in 2012. A lot happened at Substance over the last twelve months, so without further ado, we present the Substance 2011 Year End Recap. (Fanfare!)

Works of Substance

Travel Oregon Food & Drink Mobile Experience

After developing an award-winning site for Travel Oregon’s Food & Drink-inspired travelers, our next task was developing the mobile experience to help travelers in Oregon find nearby flavors to experience.

Bar Gelato

Starting with the brand messaging, we determined what the feel and the voice of the Bar Gelato brand would be. Once establishing that, we brought in hand-drawing expert Mette Hornung Rankin from the Bureau of Betterment to help craft the visual identity. The end product was the creation of the visual language, packaging concepts, the website, and display materials.

Visit the site: bargelato.com // Read more: Truth in Flavor: Bar Gelato

Jeld-Wen Field

Part of going to see a Portland Timbers game involves the “going” part. To that end, we worked with the Portland Timbers to create a site for people coming to Jeld-Wen Field. From game schedules to directions and public transit options to the location of concessions and restrooms, the site is geared around the experience of going to a game.

Visit the site: jeld-wenfield.com

Ride Oregon Ride

Two years ago, Substance and Travel Oregon set the gold standard for cycling travel and tourism with the Ride Oregon website. Since the initial launch we’ve had an incredible response, a lot of great feedback, and the opportunity to evaluate where we were successful and where we could do better. The result is the new RideOregonRide.com.

Visit the site: rideoregonride.com // Read more: Ride Oregon – Lessons Learned and Applied

Timberline Heritage

Visit the site: heritage.timberlinelodge.com // Read more: Happy 75th Anniversary, Timberline Lodge

Arakawa

We love having the opportunity to revisit some of our earlier work, seeing what worked, and what can be improved. This was the case with the Arakawa site that we launched a few years ago. Based on new content needs, visitor behavior and changing business goals, we reworked the site to put the focus on hanging applications and products.

Visit the site: arakawagrip.com

News of Substance

Things happened at Substance this year beyond site launches. We did some thinking and writing on the way we work (Why Designers Should Care About Content Strategy and Interaction is Brand, for example). We were recognized for our work on the Travel Oregon Food and Drink site. We ate some burgers.

2011 also gave us the honor of adding four employees to the Substance team roster in 2011. Without Brandon, Jewel, Nicole and Isaac – in addition to our all star “old timers” Cory, Erin and Eric – there would have been fewer people to congratulate on doing an awesome job and fewer opportunities to go and get burgers with others. Welcome one and all.

The big news from August until the end of December was the Substance World Headquarters Move of Twenty Aught Eleven. It’s true, we moved to a new office space that is twice as big as our old office. Much of our free time has been working on the space over the last months of 2011. Here’s a glimpse into the new SWHQ…

The Future of Substance

Only three weeks into 2012, we’ve already been busy. For one, we added another employee (welcome Shawn!) who just missed the 2011 window. And we launched a new site for Oregon’s Adventure Coast – oregonsadventurecoast.com.

In the upcoming months, we’ll have a bunch of huge projects that will launch before the snow stops flying on Mt. Hood, so we’ll let you know when those are available for public viewing. We’ll also be at SXSW so hit us up if you want to chat in person in Austin – email us at sxsw@findsubstance.com. And there will probably be another office improvement project or two going on at the new Substance World Headquarters.

Last but not least, we will have the distinct pleasure of marking FIVE YEARS in business on January 19th. It seems like only yesterday that Substance was born, and now we’re old enough to head off to kindergarten. More on this in a separate post, but we absolutely, positively, could not have made it to this point without all of you: our friends, family, supporters, co-workers, and clients: thank you so much for being with us.

Here’s to 2012, the next five years, and all the years after that. Do better.

Interaction Is Brand

Stephen Landau — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 19:29:02 +0000

Once upon a time, Marty Neumeier wrote in The Brand Gap that brand is, “…a person’s gut feeling about a product, service or organization.”

I believed and agreed with this when I first read The Brand Gap, and I still believe it. But what has changed are the channels in which this “gut feeling” is influenced and affected.

One of Substance’s founding ideas is that the ways people interact with brands in digital media directly reflects on the perception of – and the gut feeling about – a company’s brand. And with digital interaction, it’s becoming more than a gut feeling. Interaction with brands is full of expectation, reciprocation, desire and fulfillment.

In other words, it’s complicated. It’s a culmination of so many factors extending beyond going to a store, interacting with a customer service representative, or using a product.

Adjusting a web page layout based on your browser size or viewing device reflects on a brand.
Facilitating online rating and reviews reflects on a brand.
Helpful text that guides you through filling out a form correctly reflects on a brand.
Having a broken link reflects on a brand.
Not being able to hover over a secondary dropdown menu in the navigation because it disappears when you move your cursor reflects on a brand.

The list is endless. And these all affect a company’s brand. Sometimes it’s not even the interactions you craft and create that can affect the interactive brand experience, like slow download speeds, older web browsers, or sluggish computers. The failure or success of a digital brand interaction is measured, not in logic alone, but an amalgamation of emotion and reason; device and environment; input and response.

Interaction can generate strong emotions: delight, appreciation, frustration, confusion. It is the culmination of all brand interactions – navigating a site, the functionality of an app, the feedback and result from clicking something, and of course there’s design, user experience, site architecture… along with the product, the service and the organization – that truly makes up a brand.

Does this mean that interactive agencies are the new branding agencies? Those responsible not only for how something looks, but how it works? The future of branding isn’t with the logo designers. And it isn’t with the web designers. It’s with the people who think about and create how we interact with brands. The great ones, the ones who think about why a brand exists, who conceptualize and create experiences, functionality, and designs with brand as the determining factor – not the brand’s look but what the brand is – we’re the ones who will be defining the brands of the future.

Interaction is brand.

Happy 75th Anniversary, Timberline Lodge

Stephen Landau — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 23:26:24 +0000

“Declared a National Historic Landmark in 1977, Timberline Lodge is one of Oregon’s most popular tourist attractions, drawing nearly two million visitors every year. Considered an architectural wonder, it’s still being used for its original intent — a magnificent ski lodge and mountain retreat for all to enjoy.”

In 1937, Franklin Roosevelt dedicated the lodge as a “testament to the workers on the rolls of the Works Progress Administration.” Fast forward to the end of 2011 and you arrive at Timberline Lodge’s 75th anniversary. To celebrate, we worked with the team at Timberline to create an interactive heritage experience, built to educate on the beginnings of the lodge, the disrepair, the rebirth… all the way to the present day. Using photos, videos and stories from the past 75 years, we added a bit of playful parallax-tastic interactiveness to the piece (especially if you use the scrollbar at the bottom of the site/browser window), letting people travel through time and space to further understand why the lodge is so special. Experience it for yourself at:

heritage.timberlinelodge.com

As a secondary part of the project, we’ve relaunched TimberlineLodge.com with the new 75th Anniversary brand identity, created by the talented Aaron Draplin over at Draplin Design Co.

We’re incredibly fortunate to have Timberline Lodge as a client, and the opportunity to take advantage of the lodge and Mt. Hood being 90 minutes from Portland. So happy 75th Anniversary, Timberline Lodge! Can’t wait to celebrate in person with some fresh turns this winter.

Work at Substance: Back-End Web Application Engineer

Stephen Landau — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 17:00:17 +0000

Working at Substance means being part of a close-knit, highly creative, hard-working team. We have an open, collaborative, results-only work environment. We work with some of the most amazing clients in the world like Travel Oregon, Nike, the Portland Trail Blazers, Timberline Lodge, the Oregon Coast Visitors Association, and the Portland Timbers (to name just a few). Along with working with these great clients (and not only do we get to work with them, but we get to understand what their brands stand for through things like season lift tickets, game tickets, and other perks), we offer a benefits package that includes health, dental and vision benefits, 401k matching, and First Fridays Free where the first Friday of each month is a paid day off (if everything is done, of course… see “results-only work environment”).

We’re currently looking for a Back-End Web Application Engineer… could this be you? If it is, email us at: iwannawork@findsubstance.com.

Substance is looking for a back-end web application engineer. You have experience with a variety of CMS platforms and with standardizing deployment practices. You have the experience to make sound technical decisions and follow these decisions up with solid implementation skills. You understand the need to deliver appropriate technology solutions for our clients. You’ve failed hard enough to know better. You’ve developed and launched enough projects to keep your cool under deadline pressure, and you don’t walk away from a task until it’s done. Collaboration and problem solving are amongst your best assets, and you will work as an integral member of a development team to make judgement calls that benefit the project, our clients, and our company. You’re able to explain things to people in such a way that they feel smarter from the conversation. You’re a thinker, a doer, a mentor and team player.

JOB REQUIREMENTS:

Expert on the LAMP stack using PHP and MySQL
Expert with Linux/Unix, bash, Apache
Experience managing web servers, databases and version control systems
Experience working in a team environment on multiple projects
Experience working on production high-load environments
Familiarity with web services (REST/XML-RPC)
Contributor to WordPress, Drupal or similar open source projects a plus
Excellent time management, estimation and communication skills
3+ years of professional experience, preferably working within distributed and cross-functional team environments

Moved

Stephen Landau — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 19:13:22 +0000

It’s official. Substance has moved to our new location: 605 NE 21st Avenue, Suite 200.

We’re still getting situated, unpacking boxes, planning the space, painting accent walls, and building the third Long Table (among other tasks), so there’s a lot left to be done. But we’re incredibly excited to double our workspace and have the room to expand through the end of 2011 and into 2012. And we’ll look to have all of you over in the next few months after we get settled in.

You can also find us on Foursquare in our new location, if you’re in to that kind of thing.

And if you want a sneak peek into SWHQ 3.0, here are some photos by Eric Eaglstun of the move from SWHQ 2.0 –> SWHQ 3.0

Movin’ on Up

Stephen Landau — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 23:08:29 +0000

If you’ve heard the rumors, the rumors are correct: Substance is moving to a new office.

After spending three years in our current location on the edge of Ladd’s Addition, we’re moving! While we’ve loved our current office (especially since we put in central heat last year), we just don’t have enough room to grow. So we’re moving to 5,000 sf in Northeast Portland… enough room to fit the third and fourth long tables, some larger and smaller campfire conversation rooms, two (count ‘em: TWO) bathrooms – one with a shower for our bike commuters, a larger kitchen… room for growth and the future.

We’ll have more information about the space (like the address) in the upcoming weeks as we settle in, and plan to have an office-warming event towards the end of 2011 or around our five year anniversary in January. We’ll let you know as we get closer to that event.

In the meantime, enjoy a Mixtape we put together on the subject of Moving.

Substance on the SXSW PanelPicker

Stephen Landau — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 21:27:29 +0000

Okay folks, here’s a question for you: would you like to see Substance at South by Southwest (SXSW)? Before you shout out “of course,” or mutter “no way,” there’s a better way for you to voice your opinion: the SXSW PanelPicker.

This year we have two submissions to the PanelPicker, and we’d love to have your vote for both.

DAVID LOWE-ROGSTAD PRESENTS

An App is not a Digital Strategy

“You need an app” is not the answer to a digital strategy. When a visitor arrives at your site, they are there to interact with your online brand. Presenting them with a call to “download our app” isn’t inviting them to interact, it is creating a barrier to entry. In this session I will explore the pros and cons of creating mobile web experiences vs. building mobile apps and discuss the advantages to both within an overall strategic framework.

Give “An App is not a Digital Strategy” a thumbs-up on the SXSW PanelPicker

STEPHEN LANDAU AND ERIN KURTZ PRESENT

Why Designers Should Care About Content Strategy

Where is this content coming from? Who is creating it? What is it? How is it relevant to our audience? What happens when it grows or becomes obsolete? Answering these questions directly affects design decisions on practically every page of a website. So whether you’re a designer questioning a site plan or wireframe you’ve just received, or a strategist encouraging a design team to understand the nature of designing for content and visitor tasks, this discussion is for you. Stephen Landau and Erin Kurtz tell tales of success and failure through practical experiences in their journey uniting Concept Development, Content Strategy, UX and Design into the holistic methods used to guide clients and internal processes at Substance. Attendees will be armed with the information to aid them in the fight against poor strategy and forethought, disregard of audience, flagrant functionality, and inappropriate, impractical design.

Give “Why Designers Should Care About Content Strategy” a thumbs-up on the SXSW PanelPicker

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You’ll need to sign up for a SXSW account to vote but that’s easy and free. And you only need to give each panel a thumbs-up once… multiple voting doesn’t make a difference. In addition to your thumbs-up, we’d love to have you comment on our panels to show your support, ask additional questions you’d like to have answered or addressed in the presentations, or whatever else you’d like to say.

You have until September 2nd to get your votes in, so don’t procrastinate. And hopefully we’ll see you in Austin in March 2012.

Winning on the uphills, downhills and flats

Stephen Landau — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 16:58:32 +0000

I’ve been riding my bike a decent amount this summer. I was riding a lot in the spring, training for my first century (100+ mile ride) and in May I rode 104 miles from Beaverton to Pacific City. Since then, I’ve been trying to do at least a 30+ mile ride each weekend. And during all my riding, I kept thinking back to a Seth Godin post from July 2009.

“I look forward to the uphill parts, because that’s where the work is, the fun is, the improvement is. On the uphills, I have a reasonable shot at a gain over last time. The downhills are already maxed out by the laws of physics and safety.”
- from Winning On the Uphills, by Seth Godin

I understand the example he’s trying to make, that improvement is made in the climbing (the difficult parts) not the descents (the easy parts). I’ve even quoted this post a few times at work.

But now that I’ve spent a decent amount of miles in the saddle (I’m still a cycling sissy, but hey), I don’t think the quote is entirely accurate. Yes, you suffer on the climbs, and you increase your fitness and ability the more climbing you do. But there are plenty of improvements you can make on the downhills and flats as well. On the downhills there are things like actually pedaling hard instead of coasting, learning how to corner at higher speeds, feeling comfortable at speed, knowing how to use the brakes… maybe it’s more confidence and control than fitness, but certainly valuable skills to have on the bike. The flats also have something to offer: if I increase my pedal cadence by even a few rotations a minute, it increases my average speed, which increases how long and how far I can ride at a sustained pace. And don’t even get me started about what you can learn from headwinds or riding in a group.

The downhills are only “maxed out by physics and safety” by the professionals of the cycling world. The rest of us have plenty to gain. Everything on the bike is an opportunity for improvement, for gaining knowledge and ability. Just like in business, challenges are a great time for improvement. But when you’re cruising on the downhills of profitability (figuratively of course – not like a descending profitability chart but in the good financial times) there are all sorts of things you can learn from and improve. And as business pushes along the flats, there are opportunities to do that better as well.

Winning doesn’t just happen on the uphills. Winning happens on the entire ride.

Doing Well by Doing Good – in memory of Ray Anderson

Stephen Landau — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 16:29:23 +0000

I didn’t know who Ray Anderson was until I saw him speak at the Forward07 conference here in Portland. Ray captivated the audience with his story, and responded to every question with a thoughtful, insightful answer. I was awed by his ability to draw us in with only his words and his personality (no PowerPoint, no slides, only the man alone onstage). Regarding his story, as one of the world’s largest flooring manufacturers he was presented with a list of things his company (Interface – you’re probably familiar with their modular carpet tiles) had to do to be “environmentally compliant.” As he said in his presentation, “compliance is not a vision.” Instead, he envisioned and championed “Mission Zero,” to have zero waste and impact by 2020. Ray completely rethought how Interface did business: waste management, recycling, upcycling, environmental responsibility. He knew the legacy he was creating wasn’t for himself, but for his children, his grandchildren, and generations to come. But don’t assume Ray was simply an environmentalist. He was a businessman and CEO. In that role he found that his company became more profitable the more sustainable it became. The more efforts they put in to recycling flooring and generating power through waste, the more money the company made. Ray’s vision was that by doing the right things morally, ethically, and environmentally, (not just the compliant things), the company would do well financially. This philosophy was summed up in a statement we have used to guide Substance since we started business, and we quote it frequently:

Doing well by doing good.

On August 8th, he passed away from cancer at the age of 77. Ray Anderson did well by doing good. We can all aspire to leave a legacy like that.

More about Ray Anderson on Grist.org
More about Ray Anderson’s legacy on nterfaceglobal.com