So a few months back the DC chapter of the American Marketing Association offered us the opportunity to do a how-to presentation. “What sort of presentation are you looking for?” we asked.

“Oh, anything you want,” they replied. “Maybe something to do with websites? People always like to learn about the web.”

“Hmm, well there are a lot of crappy websites out there,” we joked. “How about we do a presentation about how to make a website that doesn’t suck?”

We hadn’t quite expected them to say “sure,” but they did, so here we are a few months later proudly inviting you to attend our somewhat crudely titled presentation:

Like all web users, we have extremely strong opinions on what makes a website good or bad. Lengthy Flash introductions, auto-playing music, hidden information… there are a lot of bad practices out there that people can’t seem to stop using. However what makes a site good is often harder to put your finger on, and even harder to create.

So we’ve spent a large amount of time the past few months and a huge amount of time these past couple of weeks trying to define what makes a site “good.” While we’re still putting the finishing touches on the presentation, we think it’ll be a valuable resource to marketers, business owners, designers and anyone else working on a site. We’ll be showing some case studies of good and bad usability and offering some concrete steps people can take to improve their web presence. And what’s more, we’ll be offering lunch!

If this sounds like it might be up your alley, head on over to the AMA DC site and sign up… we hope to see you there!

In other news, we’ve continued working on the super-fun-yet-unreleased-so-we-can’t-reveal-specifics project we blogged about a few weeks ago, though now we’re past business cards and onto interior and exterior signage.

When working on projects like this legibility is super important, especially from a distance. There’s nothing more annoying than waiting in line at a restaurant and not being able to read their menu until you’re at the register because the type is too small. So in order to test legibility we like to print these big ol’ things out and see how they work in the real world.

After printing and cutting out the test board, we taped it all together and stuck it up on the wall. It was legible at five feet, ten feet, twenty feet, thirty feet… and then we ran out of room. But thirty feet should be plenty based on the client’s space, so we’re happy with the results. We can’t wait until the project is launched so we can share the whole package!