88 Vitaly Friedman: How to Stand Out From The Crowd in a World of Templates

*English version This podcast is brought to you by Banca Transilvania. The web that we’re used to is changing, whether we like it or not. It’s fairly known by this point that we’re living in the content marketing era. Everything around us is content-focused and everyone who wants to stay in the online game has to find ways to stand out from the crowd. If you think about it, this could be a pretty easy job, given the fact that we’ve standardized things and normalized our experiences – thus creating a world where many of us are using templates, where everything is similar and where everybody is doing the same mistakes. All we have to do is not to follow what the rest is doing, and that is easier said than done without having the luxury of time to test and to figure out something entirely different. In today’s episode, Vitaly stresses the importance of having a personality for your website and creating a connection with your users by being original to some extent, and he shares some principles that every developer and marketer should follow if they want to reach the proper audience.   Meet Vitaly Vitaly Friedman is the cofounder of Smashing Magazine – an online magazine for professional web designers and developers. He loves beautiful content and doesn’t like to give in easily. When he is not writing or speaking at a conference, he’s most probably solving complex UX, front-end, eCommerce UX, and web performance problems in small and large organizations. Through the Smashing Magazine, Vitaly and his team deliver reliable, useful, and practical articles to web designers and developers. They focus on the things that work or fail in actual projects, and not necessarily on the trends in the industry – and they’ve done a great job for the past 14 years. I invite you to listen to this episode to learn how to stand out from the crowd and design your website with your user in mind so you can better connect with your audience and have greater results for your business. I was curious to know: * From your perspective, where was the designing industry 10 years ago and where it’s headed now? (06:06)* Do you have an example of a company that can communicate with its users very well? (12:37)* Can we create content without thinking about design? (21:03)* What’s your take on the theory that anyone can design? (22:05)* What do you observe now, that maybe will be relevant in 10 years? (30:06) In this episode, you will learn: * How Vitaly and his team managed to create a remote work environment. (01:52)* What communication methods they use. (05:29)* What WeChat is and why this app is a “full-option” medium for communication. (09:31)* How booking.com has managed to create a personality that resonates with its users. (16:34)* The thought-process behind redesigning Smashing Magazine. (18:30)* Some evergreen principles of good web design, that have stood the test of time from 2008 until now. (23:51) Connect with Vitaly: * Smashing Magazine Website* Twitter* Instagram* LinkedIn This episode was recorded on