We decided about 18 months ago to create a new kind of website here at Hammock.com. As individuals, we were using lots of new online media approaches and technology -- and were incorporating them into work we were doing for clients. Our site, while attractive, was not a reflection of where we are -- as a company or as individuals. So we headed into a new direction.

[After the jump, read more about how Hammock.com is evolving.]

At Hammock, we have a long tradition of adopting early any technology that improves our ability to create media and efficiently manage the production flow of highly complex publishing projects. We're constantly pushing the edge on new ways to collaborate and design everything from magazines to the newest forms of digital media.

But there's one tradition we have here that is extremely non-technical -- and very old school. It's a tradition we'll never give up -- even though we already replicate the process digitally and online.

It's the wall. That's what we call it. And that's what it is: A big wall with strips of corkboard tracking lining it from floor to ceiling. We know it should have a more clever name, but it named itself before any of us could come up with one.

The wall is where designers post proof-spreads of page layouts during the magazine production process. As people walk by the wall, the spreads just beg for comments and so there's always a handy red marker nearby. The pages grow and soon, the wall is full -- sometimes with two or more magazines being produced simultaneously.

At some point near the end of the process, a "Wall Meeting" takes place and the editorial and design team gather in front of the wall for a wide-ranging conversation about the flow and pace of soon-to-be-published magazine. Is something not working? Should something be moved? Is there a gap here? What can we do to make this stronger?

Conversations. Debates. An occasional argument. They're all a part of the wall tradition. It's is a part of who we are and how we work.

We'll never tear down this wall.

How we're using wikis to power knowledge-sharing communities

Okay, everyone knows about Wikipedia, the user-edited encyclopedia (actually, ecyclopedias as there are different versions around the world) with information on just about everything.

However, Wikipedia is not the only website -- nor was it the first -- to utilize the approach of allowing users to both read and edit the content of a web page. That style of website, nicknamed "wiki" after the Hawaiian word for fast (wikiwiki), was developed (and named) by Ward Cunningham in 1994. According to Wikipedia (we thought it only appropriate to cite the source), Cunningham was inspired by software we at Hammock loved back then, as well: Apple's HyperCard.

At Hammock, we love wikis. That's not surprising as we've been creating and managing wiki-like, online sharing communities for clients since the early 1990s. We were even forum sysops on CompuServe, for any of you who can recall that far back.

In 1999, we began the development of what turned into a massive knowledge-sharing user community called SmallBusiness.com. The site was way ahead of its time in what folks now call "social media." While SmallBusiness.com was extremely popular with its nearly 100,000 registered users, the dot-com bust of 2001 nonetheless put our plans for SmallBusiness.com on hold. The overhead necessary to continue developing the proprietary platform on which the site ran proved too challenging during the early 2000s.

However, in 2005, we began to take note of what was happening at Wikipedia and determined that it employed the main principle on which we developed the first iteration of SmallBusiness.com: sharing knowledge at the grassroots level. Better yet, we observed that the site was running on open-source software using the kind of scrappy, low-overhead approach we were looking for to revive the popular service.

And so, in late 2005, we began work on launching a new wiki-powered SmallBusiness.com. We discovered that many of the lessons learned in our earlier experiences with online communities -- or, as we like to call it, "conversational media" -- worked well in the context of a wiki. The dynamics of community-building (motivations, identity, networking) seemed to translate well.

SmallBusiness.com -- in addition to once more becoming the leading online sharing community of content contributed by small business owners and managers -- is an incredible laboratory for the Hammock Team to experiment with ways that wikis can be used in the marketing, customer-care and membership-building efforts of our clients.

For example, in 2007, we created a wiki for the American Watercraft Association that serves as the hub of a wide range of information sharing among their members, owners of personal watercrafts. There's even a part of that wiki that allows their members to share maps of their favorite places to use their PWCs.

While we still love publishing magazines and helping clients build traditional websites, our experience in creating and growing wikis and in helping clients develop engaging, valuable conversational media programs and platforms are also a part of our legacy -- and future.

Coming soon to Hammock.com: Hammopedia: The Hammock Wiki.

Member magazine of the Marine Corps League

OORAH! Always up for a challenge, we were psyched when we learned in spring 2006 that the Marine Corps League had chosen Hammock Inc. as the new publisher of its bimonthly magazine, sent to the organization’s nearly 70,000 members. The publication had been around more than 26 years and needed a fresh look, so Hammock designers and editors drafted a battle plan on how to ramp up from a quarterly to a bimonthly publication and revamp the magazine so it appealed to members and trumpeted the organization’s purpose.

The major challenge to us, as explained by the admittedly skeptical executive director, was whether a group of non-Marine and non-veteran writers and designers could successfully capture the deeply ingrained bond, camaraderie and warrior ethos among Marines.

Defining a rhythm and pace was the first step. The old version lacked organization—it was hard to distinguish a feature from a department. By establishing a clear framework, Hammock helps readers navigate through the magazine. Adding full-page photography in the front and back of the book (an industry term for “magazine”) and sticking with audience-appropriate fonts and colors gave the publication more visual interest.

We spent considerable time talking with the director as well as other Marines and reading widely about America’s premier fighting force. We proposed a bold strategic move: The publication had been called The Marine Corps League magazine—we suggested changing the name to Semper Fi, the Magazine of the Marine Corps League to tie into the Corps’ motto, Semper Fidelis (Always Faithful).

We found ways to hold onto sentimental favorites (such as illustrations used in every issue of the older magazine that were provided by a Marine vet who was a WWII combat artist), while adding fresh aspects that give the magazine a strength it lacked before.

The new design referenced Marine colors and imagery, including its eagle, globe and anchor symbol. It also tapped into Marine Corps terms, such as “Attention on Deck,” “Roll Call,” “Once a Marine” and “Recon” to identify sections and departments. Strong, masculine fonts and an orderly, “squared-away” format gave it a clean, straightforward and contemporary appearance.

Editorially, we included not only a roundup of League activities, but also selected articles about today’s Corps—written by Marines who work for the Corps’ excellent news service—and features on a variety of topics, from personality profiles of Marine veterans to articles on Corps history, to personal recollections of members.

The results have been outstanding—the Marine Corps League reports that its members love the new look and feel, and members continue to send in compliments and rave reviews. We’re satisfied that our work is appreciated by a group of the bravest men and women we know.

Each issue expands our knowledge and increases our already great admiration for the men and women who comprise the U.S. Marines, who are Marines forever. We look at it as our small contribution to thanking all of them for defending this country and the cause of freedom since 1775.

MyBusinessMag.com supports the
design and content of MyBusiness magazine

When Hammock Inc. launched MyBusiness magazine in 2000, we created a website for the magazine, even though the National Federation of Independent Business already had its own site. From the beginning, MyBusinessMag.com has served as a magazine archive, a repository of information for advertisers and freelance writers and a place to offer additional value to print advertisers, with an online package.

Opportunities grew online over the years, and in 2006, we decided it was time to re-launch MyBusinessMag.com, in a fashion that more fully supported the magazine’s editorial mission and continued to offer full archives and advertising information and opportunities.

The new MyBusinessMag.com launched in April 2006, with a daily blog from the MyBusiness editors featuring news, stories and tips for small-business owners. The blog covers politics, business management and unusual stories, and it injects the same personality onto the website that we feature in the magazine.

Traffic to the site has increased 400 percent since the redesigned site launched, a stat we attribute to the new format’s ability to link out to other content and attract significantly more incoming links.

How Hammock.com uses Flickr as a marketing tool -- and a content management system

("How'd we do that?" is a continuing series that examines the creative ways we do things at Hammock. Sometimes, it's hard to make things look easy. Warning: Don't try these at home -- call us.)

By Rex Hammock & Patrick Ragsdale

Back in early 2007, when we started talking about creating a new Hammock.com, we determined that it should be a laboratory in which we would test various approaches and technologies and demonstrate the results -- especially approaches to web development about which we are enthusiastic, but maybe not quite ready to recommend to our clients. That's one of the reasons you will -- if you look closely -- see us constantly adding and removing things from the site.

As part of our laboratory approach, we decided to do two things:

1. Create the entire site using software and development approaches that were designed first for blogging, social networks, and other collaborative or conversational media. Whenever possible, we've opted for open source platforms or freely available (and sometimes free) services. We wanted to display how flexible and adaptive the software can be to a wide array of story-telling approaches.
2. Utilize an approach to creating and managing content that will allow us to tell our story both here at Hammock.com and, simultaneously, at a wide variety of other places around the web. We're constantly telling clients that "there's a big conversation taking place out there and you need to be a part of it" -- but we weren't practicing what we preached. Related to this, we decided to put an emphasis on ways we could streamline the management of content so, whenever possible, content updated on place would be reflected elsewhere across the web.

We'll be sharing several examples of such approaches in future "How'd we do that?" pieces, but it seemed obvious to us that this first look behind the curtain should be at how we're using the photo sharing service Flickr on Hammock.com -- and on Flickr.com/hammock -- in a wide variety of ways that help us tell our story in a creative, efficient and, excuse our boasting, extremely cool way.

First, it might help to explain Flickr and why we chose that service to use in our experimentation. Now owned by Yahoo!, Flickr started out as features that were part of a multi-player online game. It may look like a place simply to post photos, but the service's DNA is all about community and sharing and story-telling and discovery. We started using Flickr early-on. Blogging pioneer Rex was enthusiastic about the blog-like approach the service used to re-think how a photo-sharing service can work (reverse chronological display, commenting and RSS feeds were conventions Flickr launched with). The photos Rex hosted on his Flickr account -- like, for instance, his photos of Nashville Greenways -- have been viewed over 200,000 times.

At the same time, Patrick became a student of the way in which Flickr allows its data to be accessed and displayed in a wide variety of ways utilizing RSS feeds and (sorry for the geeky acronym) third-party developers who use Flickr's API. For those not schooled in web-tech alphabet soup, that simply means Flickr allows its users to pull data (i.e., the photos stored there) and to display that data on other websites. The more open a service's API, the more creative a web developer can be with data from that service. And Flickr is a good service when it comes to allowing a developer to build on its API.

Here are just some of the ways we're using Flickr:

We're hosting many of the photos seen on Hammock.com at Flickr.com/hammock. Typically, a web developer places images in a file, hidden away on a server somewhere. We decided that we wanted to use Flickr.com as another platform to show off our work and people and so, when you visit Flickr.com, you can browse around and get a good look at hundreds -- and soon to be thousands -- of images. In almost every instance, those images are also used here as part of our galleries or, well, almost anywhere you click.

We not only pull photos from Flickr, we pull text: We decided to use Flickr.com as a content management system (CMS) to handle the names and captions that accompany photos on Hammock.com. In other words, rather than entering text twice -- on Flickr.com/hammock and on Hammock.com -- any person on our staff can name and describe a digital photo, then upload it to Flickr. By utilizing Flickr's APIs, we then display all of that information whenever a user clicks on a photo. Also, by thinking of Flickr as an easy-to-use content management system, we've now got a way that everyone -- and we mean everyone -- who works at Hammock can manage photos that appear on their people page. No one has to give any photos to a webmaster (what's that, anyway?) to post or know anything about posting to their page. By just dropping a photo in a set on Flickr, their photo automagically appears on Hammock.com.

We decided not to reinvent the slideshow wheel. On the last iteration of Hammock.com, we had areas where a user could view our work as a Flash slideshow. We're not big fans of having Flash all over a website, but we know, used correctly, it is a great story-telling tool. Because we were in the mindset of utilizing the tools already baked into Flickr, when the topic turned to displaying our work in Flash, we decided immediately to skip building out that feature ourselves.

There are a few other Flickr tricks sprinkled throughout Hammock.com -- and we're adding more all the time. In the future, we'll use another "How'd they do that?" to review them.

For now, just smile and say cheese.

Hammock Inc. re-envisions the DAR member magazine

The National Society Daughters of the American Revolution has published a member magazine in several different forms since July 1892. At that time, DAR had only recently started its work as a patriotic women’s organization, dedicated to its three guiding tenets of education, historic preservation and patriotism. As an internal publication, the magazine was sufficient for the membership, but generally did not reach out to communities not yet touched by the DAR.

In 2001, some 109 years after its inception, the DAR magazine underwent a radical transformation. The magazine was split into two separate publications: Daughters newsletter, which focused on NSDAR news and notices; and American Spirit, a 52-page glossy, bimonthly full-color publication.

Hammock Inc. was hired to produce American Spirit in July 2002. One of the first things Hammock’s editorial and design team did was try to define the audience and the mission for the magazine. One thing we all agreed on—American Spirit should be the kind of magazine you’d want to leave out on your coffee table. The design should rival any commercial magazine, the articles should be intriguing and informative, and the writing should be fresh and vibrant.

Since the revamped American Spirit was intended to reach out to potential new members, we had to make some assumptions there—concluding that this group would likely be younger, with careers or families or both, and were probably accustomed to brightly designed magazines with a variety of topics.

Originally, American Spirit’s editorial lineup called for articles on women’s health and financial affairs. The more we talked with members, the more we felt readers could, and should, go elsewhere for that information, to magazines that exist to focus on those topics. American Spirit should focus instead on the National Society’s core concerns: history—especially women in history—genealogy, education, patriotism and preservation.

More than focusing on the details of long-ago battles, the magazine strives to tell the American story through the women and men who lived this history. Beyond Revolutionary history, American Spirit shows the human side of American life from Colonial times to the present, with articles ranging from features on historic homes, collectibles and Americana to regular articles on historic travel, timeless crafts and preserving family history.

In the past few years, we have changed the editorial mix in response to reader feedback. Under the current DAR National Magazine Chair, Denise Doring VanBuren, we have increased the focus on DAR goals of education, patriotism and preservation. We have also added more articles about individual members and the DAR itself, including departments such as:

• Today’s Daughters, which spotlights a daughter who is making a difference in her career and community. We want the readers of American Spirit to value the courage of those who came before them, while keeping an eye on the future.
• National Treasures, which spotlights the amazing and priceless items in the DAR Museum collection.
• More focus on the preservation of historic homes or properties owned or managed by DAR.
• Educational departments like “History 101” and a column called “Class Act,” which highlight creative ways of teaching history.

And Hammock is always searching for even more creative ways to reach the dedicated members of the DAR, and spotlight the myriad ways they enhance their communities and their country.

Official magazine of the American Watercraft Association

Until 2003, the American Watercraft Association published a magazine known as Jet Sports. Professional watercraft racing enjoyed a boom in the early 1990s, and racing provided much of the content. By the end of the 1990s and early into the 21st century, racing had considerably diminished. PWC had come under attack from environmentalists, and the downturn in the national economy exacerbated a drop in sales.

AWA asked Hammock Inc. to redesign and relaunch the magazine from stem to stern. The design was dated, the photography and production values mediocre, and the magazine said little about recreational riding.

This sport is about fun, Hammock’s writers and designers said, so let’s make it look like that. Also, PWC can be used for touring, fishing, snorkeling and diving, even scientific research (and delivering pizzas, we learned later), so let’s talk about that. And let’s give it a new name that embraces all these things—why not just call it Ride PWC Magazine? It’s a noun and a verb, and a command as well—go out and Ride!

Drawing upon surfing and boating magazines for inspiration, yet recognizing that our readers ranged from 20-somethings to 80-plus, we designed a publication that looks like it’s at full throttle there on the coffee table, with clean lines and a shipshape distinction between departments, features and association news.

We applied nautical terms, such as “Waterfront,” “ShipShape” and “Wavelength,” to departments and gave them a distinctive black frame to set them off from features. Editorially, we mapped out five primary uses for PWC—family togetherness, performance, racing, escape and utility—and through the course of a year, we plot coverage of each of those areas.

Since relaunching the magazine, we have added a section for first responders who use PWC in rescues. We’ve also added profiles of corporate and dealer sponsors of AWA, whose support enables the association to continue its mission.