by guest writer Sheila Wilensky

Nor would they want to, but Steve Jobs knew that words matter in life, and in marketing. You want to help humanity, bring beauty to the world, or provide an invaluable service. You’ve got a splendiferous logo designed by Julie Ray Creative but your copy consists of a wordy bunch of superlatives that don’t mean anything.

What to do? Pay attention to content in your marketing, whether it’s on a flyer or a website.

Steve Jobs said that people don’t know what they want until they see it. Nobody knew what his next product would be until he presented it, explaining  onstage what it could do.

Imagine yourself onstage. Your widget or organization may be the coolest ever, but what may be missing in presenting content?

Surprise:  How can clients offer a service and combine their social activism in a satisfying way that they never considered before?  Maybe shopping local is their thing. How about a new promotion suggestion? Be direct, not:  ”One of the things we may be able to do for you…”blah blah blah.  Let your passion show.

Contextualize. Are your clients visionaries? That’s fine, but details such as Apple’s elegant packaging, set your widget or organization apart. Help them succinctly describe their goals, and focus on a few tried and true ways to make them happen. Give specific examples.

Play with words. Choose carefully. Don’t use the same adjective twice. Cut down on adverbs by using more powerful verbs. In my writing I like flummoxed more than confused, splendiferous more than great. What words do you love? Vary and use.

“Think different.” Steve Jobs and his colleagues decided to use different, not differently. Don’t be pretentious. Big words are fine occasionally but more important is saying what you really mean. Do let your self shine through.

Walktalk. When you walk, especially with a friend, your ideas flow more easily. When Julie and I walk two mornings a week we toss enough goals back and forth to remind ourselves how capable we are. Add a trip to Starbucks and we’re ready to accomplish anything. Take a small notebook to record your idea gems.

Collaborate. Steve Jobs conducted a lot of meeting with colleagues while walking. I knew we had something in common.

Julie Ray Creative collaborator Sheila Wilensky is a freelance writer/editor/consultant living in Tucson. She’s assistant editor at the Arizona Jewish Post, chairs the History/Memoir/Bio author committee for the Tucson Festival of Books, owned the oldest children’s bookstore in Maine, taught high school and college social science, was a research assistant at the Harvard Business School, and has been a political junkie her entire life. Sheila’s latest nationally published article is in Publishers Weekly.

It’s been a while since I’ve blogged and longer since I’ve provided an update on the Tucson food truck scene. Well, there’s lots to report about! A new truck on the scene is MaFooCo, serving Mexican Asian fusion cuisine. The Tucson Weekly’s Food Truck Diaries has an entry about KBORK (possibly the second best Tucson food truck name after Planet of the Crepes), a Mexican truck that parks at Jacome Library Plaza on weekdays.

I’ve heard from Rich Park who is going to be launching Guero Loco BBQ (sounds intriguing, doesn’t it?), and a downtown landowner who is going to be developing an empty lot near Stone Avenue and 5th Street into a food truck court a la Portland.

The fall Tucson Weekly YUM issue features entries from Adam Borowitz’s Food Truck Diaries, including Planet of the Crepes.  Incidentally, Planet of the Crepes owner Jessica Kraus will be one of the women chefs participating in Sizzling Women: The Women Chefs of Tucson on November 13th at Tucson Marriott University Park.

And finally, I am helping to produce Food Truck Roundup – a gathering of food trucks, trucks-to-be, and enthusiasts. The fun will be on Monday, November 14, 2011 from 5 – 9pm at Dinnerware Artspace, 119 E. Toole. If you are interested in participating, contact me at (520) 891-8098 or juliegraphics @ gmail.com.

Audio files are important for band and musician websites, radio stations, and other sites that wish to host podcasts. There are multiple ways to share audio files on a WordPress site.

The first way is is to use the Add Audio feature. Click on the musical note icon above the edit window, choose the file you want to upload and click Open. Next you type a title, caption and description of the file, and click insert into post. WordPress does not embed an actual audio player into the post. Visitors click the link and a new page will open where the audio file can be played. Aloe Blacc – I’m Beautiful

Now, if you want the audio file to be able to be played directly on the page, you will need to use a WordPress plugin. Audio Player by Martin Laine is very easy to use. It adds an Audio Player option to the media library file, which inserts your uploaded mp3 file into the Audio Player. Here a few examples:

Aloe Blacc-I’m Beautiful

Mexican Institute of Sound – El Microfono

There are many more plugins. I asked a WordPress Experts group on LinkedIn for recommendations and here are a few of their responses:

Roy Sivan • There are a few good mp3 players, some are more advanced then others, although flash my favorite has been http://sexywp.com/fmp. It allows playlist and customized skin creation, its pretty nifty, and if you know xml you can create using xml for quicker creation of design and playlists.

Nicolas Bouliane • Blubrry is an excellent plugin if you intend to include audio often. I used it on the site linked below, and it was really easy to use. http://lesbabineux.com/

Garrett Grimm • I like the XSPF mp3 player in a popup so that the music will continue playing even if the user changes pages on the site. I wrote a tutorial on how to do this a while back: http://www.grimmdude.com/how-to-create-a-popup-music-player-using-the-simple-popup-plugin-for-wordpress/

In preparation for a training tomorrow, I am going to set up a few examples of putting audio and video files on a WordPress site.

For video, the easiest method is to embed a video hosted on a video streaming site such as YouTube or Vimeo. The benefit of this is that YouTube or Vimeo is hosting the video, saving your site valuable bandwidth. To do this, you first find the YouTube video (or upload it with a YouTube account) that you want to share. I found an Improv Everywhere video that I find hilarious. I clicked on “share,” then “embed,” and a window opened with code. I cut and pasted the code into the HTML editor of this post and voila!

To embed a video from Vimeo, simply find the video, and click on the embed button on the right side of the video frame. A window with code appears and prompts you to copy the code, which you then paste into the HTML editor.

Way Home from Erick Oh on Vimeo.

An important tip is not to switch back into the visual editor mode because your code will disappear!

A few days ago, I made cupcakes for the first time. For my foray into baking I decided to go all out – butter, sugar, eggs, chocolate chips, the works. This may not raise any eyebrows, but for a girl raised in a largely butter and sugar-free home, it felt like heresy. My mother prohibited sugar cereals and butter on toast and even went through a Pritikin diet phase where we ate frozen strawberries on whole wheat toast – for fun.

Eggs and butter

My logic was that I might as well try the unhealthiest cupcakes – and possibly best tasting ones –first, so I know what to strive for when I inevitably substitute butter and sugar with healthier alternatives. Testing my experimental nature, I wanted to try it all even if just a taste.

Chocolate chips meet batter

I followed the recipe pretty closely, replacing the milk with almond milk, and putting a half cup less powdered sugar into the frosting. The sheer amount of sugar and butter was overwhelming to me. Who needs drugs when you have these ingredients? I liberally tasted the batter – delicious.

Ready for baking

After 20 minutes in the oven, out came 12 beautiful mounds of heaven – light and moist, filled with chocolate chips. And that’s before the frosting, pure chocolate decadence. ONE of those fancy frosting implements would be fun but I did a pretty decent job with a spoon.

Fresh from the oven

My cupcake adventure was everything I imagined and then some. I don’t know if I will now join the ranks of bloggers documenting all things cupcake but I feel so proud of my small domestic accomplishment.

The finished product

And what a balabusta, or homemaker, my mother would say I am!

Bacara Resort and Spa, Santa Barbara

I was fortunate to recently spend a few days with a friend at the Bacara Resort and Spa in Santa Barbara. As a graphic designer, I was intrigued by the font on the front of the building. What was it and why was it chosen? I had just received a booklet from the font design company Emigre on its Alda typeface and saw some similarities in the serifs.

Investigating further, I went to Emigre and looked up Alda. Try using Typetease, which I did, and I quickly realized it was not Alda (see below).  While there are similarities, it is especially clear from looking at the A. The As in Bacara are rounded on top.

Bacara in Alda Regular

So I took it a step further and used the nifty What the Font program at MyFonts.com. I uploaded my picture and it quickly found Mason Serif Regular (see below).  It’s almost the same except for the R so I can conclude that the designer started with Mason Serif and modified the R, a common practice to add a custom element. And guess what, Mason was also released by Emigre!

Bacara in Mason Serif Regular

Mason was designed by Jonathan Barnbrook in 1992 and according to his website, it is “based on drawings made in Barnbrook’s sketchbooks over a number of years with added inspiration from 19th century Russian letterforms, Greek architecture and renaissance bibles. .. It has been used all over the world by companies such as the BBC and Walt Disney to give an ecclesiastical feeling to their graphics.”

Ecclesiatic means associated with a church. I wonder if the Bacara designer or art director had that in mind. A quick glance at the Bacara website states that the essence of Bacara is “Elegance, understatement, complete serenity.”

If you interpret the concept of church as a sacred space that would definitely apply to Bacara, which had a feeling of peacefulness and calm. I felt re-energized and re-focused after coming home to Tucson.

The font is elegant, grounding, and has an old world yet timeless feel, design elements that I won’t soon forget.

The newest foodie gather-rama is part gourmet, part political, and part DIY. The New York Times reported on this Food Rave phenomenon in April. At The Underground Market in San Francisco, folks gather late at night to share their culinary creations in an environment free of the usual health fees and permits. It is an opportunity for entrepreneurs to test out their products without the typical barriers. According to the Times, “..the market organizers sidestep city health inspections by operating as a private club, requiring that participants become ‘members’ (free) and sign a disclaimer noting that food might not be prepared in a space that has been inspected.”

Similar events have cropped up cities like Atlanta and Washington, DC. I think it is a great idea and I’m wondering if this could influence future health policy in cities and counties. Are the current laws and guidelines too strict or are they necessary to protect the public? I’m sure it varies from place to place. What are some examples of challenges and successes in this area?

Last week’s Caliente has a feature story on Tucson’s mobile eateries and it includes a quote by me! “‘We have a food truck culture in Tucson but it’s mostly Mexican food and Sonoran hot dogs,’ says Los Angeles transplant and graphic designer Julie Ray, who occasionally blogs about Tucson’s street food. ‘I’m excited for it to become more happening.’” My efforts to promote local food trucks have not been in vain!

Our modern gourmet scene is slowly expanding. It’s taken a big leap with The Rolling Chef; owner Carlos Aponte is a professional chef, formerly of Anthony’s in the Catalinas, with an equally professional truck. He is committed to being downtown for lunch every week, a great opportunity for downtown-ers to try out his tasty fare. Street Delights was out downtown and on 4th Avenue last weekend and will be out tonight with mouth-watering deserts made by owner Ramon Gonzales. Posted on the Facebook page is tonight’s menu which includes caramel apple pie by the slice, PB and J whoopie pies and cappucino creme brulee. I’ll be there!

I always enjoy coming across good news in the newspaper – a lifeboat amidst the endless sea of war, wildfires, budget cuts, etc. Even though the news stories I am going to share came out in Monday’s paper I read them today, so I can call them part of Good News Tuesday! First up, Pima Vocational High School. A story by Matthew Casey in the Star describes this alternative to the traditional high school as a lifesaver for youth who would have otherwise dropped out. It reminded me of The HeArt Project in Los Angeles, which also recognizes that students need additional social support for dealing with life challenges.

The second story, by Stephen Vargas of the Star, describes the $50,000 “Reinventing the Outdoors” prize awarded to the Sonoran Desert Mountain Bicyclists by one of my favorite philanthropic groups – GOOD Magazine. Brian Vance, the president of the group, is quoted as saying “‘I never considered we might win.’”

Bring on more good news – on Tuesday and everyday!

I love cookbooks and I especially love really wonderful cookbook design. I’m talking luscious photography that makes you want to dive in and devour every morsel. Beautiful typography that illuminates the text. Rich, matte paper that feels weighty between your fingers.

Two cookbooks that fit that description recently made their way into my life. Mad Hungry: Feeding Men & Boys by Lucinda Scala Quinn captured my eye during a recent library visit. While the title would not necessarily compel me, the unique canvas cover with its over sized chunky text convinced me to pull it off the shelf and peek inside. I was not disappointed. Each page drew me in with its elegant simplicity and full-page photos. Later I realized that the design was done by one of my favorite designers (a coincidence? I think not.) who I had lost track of. Jennifer Muller’s company was called Lucky Tangerine Design Studio and I had discovered her website while doing research for my own site a number of years ago. I thought she had disappeared by she had re-named her business Jennifer Muller Design. How lovely to reconnect via a cookbook.

page from Mad Hungry

Super Natural Cooking by Heidi Swanson is the second cookbook. I read about it on someone’s blog (I can’t remember which one) and reserved it at the library. I picked it up a few days ago and was excited to find out that the design has many of the same elements as Hungry Men – gorgeous full-page photography, heavy matte stock, and clean elegant page layout. Super Natural was designed by Toni Tajima of Ten Speed Press, an imprint of Random House. She doesn’t seem to have her own website but I will definitely spend some time on the Ten Speed site to see more of their books.

page from Super Natural Cooking

What cookbooks move you?