So for those wondering, the presentation went pretty darn well if we do say so ourselves! Before we get distracted, we just want to give a big thanks to the AMA team who went to great lengths to make sure everything worked well for us (even going so far as to bring two projectors in case one didn’t work – smart thinking guys)! So thanks Mike, Brian, Doug, Laura and anyone we might be forgetting… you guys rock.

Overall the presentation went very smoothly. Ian talked about user experience, good and bad websites and various user testing and analytics tools and then spent around forty minutes answering questions once the presentation was complete. The crowd was great (thanks guys!) and had a lot of fantastic questions. We’re talking with AMA about possibly doing it again as a webcast, so if this is something you might be interested in, drop us a comment below or shoot AMA DC an email letting them know that you want to know how to create websites that don’t suck!

Below: Ian pontificating about user experience, best practices and sucky websites.

So last week when we were just about finished with the presentation we all sat down to do an internal critique. We do several of these with every single project that goes through the studio – it’s a vital part of any successful creative process. The plus side of critiques is that they always end up improving the final product… the downside is when we decide to make major changes less than a week before our deadline.

And of course that’s exactly what happened last week on Friday. After reviewing the presentation we decided that most of it was good to go, but that the illustration style we were using on a couple dozen slides needed to be improved. So we trashed a quarter of the presentation with only four days to go and started again from scratch.

Bryan developed a new, simple, ripe-like illustration style and proceeded to churn out a slew of new images, finishing the last one the night before the presentation. It was a little nerve wracking cutting it that close, but the result of all that effort was a way cooler presentation with hilariously awesome illustrations of kingly users and runaway brains. A couple of our favorite images from the presentation are below. Good work, Bryan!

“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!

It’s hard to be thinking about marketing yourself in this economic climate — not to mention marketing yourself in a sustainable fashion.  Most firms and businesses seem to be cowering and waiting for the next bit of bad news to surface.  But the smart, pro-active firms are making plans and preparing for a new wave of business to arrive, and when it does, they’ll be ready for it while their counterparts might not.

Marketing firms and design studios can make a positive ecological impact if they have the knowledge, and if their clients are serious about maintaining sustainable design.

At the end of our presentation, we’re going to ask attendees to post any additional questions on our blog.  If you attended our presentation, please feel free to ask us anything regarding green design, marketing, printing, etc. If you can’t think of any good sustainability related questions, ask us something else!  We’re happy to share (some of) our secrets. We’ll answer them in a new post in the next few days.

If you’re holding an event and would like us to come and speak, feel free to shoot us an email at sprout@ripe.com.