[SML] Software to break

[Alex French]

On Tue, Sep 30, 2014 at 10:39 AM, Jerry Durand via Stagecraft
<stagecraft at theatrical.net> wrote:
> Actually, I shrank a huge scan and it didn't seem to fare well.  I'll
> get the right scale out of my wife's CAD system (she drew that by hand
> in the CAD system way back in the dark ages (we HAD moved from the Apple
> ][ CAD system to a Windows 3 system by then)).

If it's something you care much about, the answer is probably not just
to improve the image (and maybe go back to the source and then get it
to SVG), but rather that your current logo just isn't going to work
well on a webpage.

1) The address and phone number shouldn't be in an image at all- even
if it's readable, it won't be copy & pastable, search engines won't
recognize it, you won't get magic (like clicking the phone number to
dial) that different web clients can do with text + contextual
awareness.

2) The proportions of text (Durand Interstellar, Inc.) and the graphic
aren't going to work on a webpage header.  The text will be small
(even if it is readable, it looks like a tiny afterthought) or the
graphic will be huge.  What works on a business card or printed
invoice isn't going to work on a website, and just one version of a
logo isn't going to work in different places on a website.  If you
were working on a Durand Insterstellar-wide branding campaign, you'd
probably have half a dozen slight logo variations intended for use on
business cards, printed document headers, envelopes, and several
different types of website use.

Absolute simplest fix (since you're a high-end, experienced boutique
engineering shop, and the details of your website probably aren't too
important even in 2014), you could just switch from that logo to
"Durand Insterstellar, Inc." in a font that you like, drop the
graphic, and drop the address and phone number (and make sure the
About Us and Contact Us are easy to find).

You're a tiny outfit, and you're expertise isn't in website design, so
most customers won't expect anything too fancy.  But as an engineer,
your expertise inherently *is* in getting details right, so as a
customer I'd rather see limited but clean.

Also, you might look at using an OpenCart theme that is "responsive"
in web-design terms, it looks like there are plrenty of options.
"Responsive" just means that you don't have a special mobile-friendly
website, but one codebase adapts itself to different devices
(primarily screen size).  It's generally done mostly/entirely in HTML
markup/CSS.  Might be an easy way to get a detail right.  Responsive
design is a plenty complex topic, but often not very difficult to get
a big win from little energy, in this case just using a specific
theme.

Even if it isn't *important* for your website to work on mobile
devices, you might see a lot of traffic from iPhones or iPads- a SML
member is catching up on posts on their phone 10 minutes before
curtain and is interested in a product you've just announced.  I bet
the Google Analytics you have in place (or just looking at user agent
strings in your server logs) will show several SMLers hitting your
page on a mobile device today.

Alex French