Observed

As a business writer, I like to think I'm a LEED-certified Dunkin' Donuts. I want to make my customers feel welcomed and engaged...and eager to come back.

What kind of building are you?  Or, better said, what kind of architecture best represents the way you express yourself — particularly in business communications.

I got to thinking about this after I recently wrote an article about a new Dunkin’ Donuts store in Louisville’s vibrant and upmarket Highlands neighborhood.  (Really.  I’m not kidding.)

The Dunkin’ is a descendant of the street-loving polemics pioneered 50-plus years ago by Jane Jacobs.  It’s the kind of building that does a great job of connecting with its surroundings, including the tons of people walking up and down Bardstown Road, the commercial heart of the area.  The new Dunkin’ fits in while a few of its neighbors — including a nearby Dairy Queen from an earlier generation of commercial architecture and urban design — step away from street like little islands in an asphalt pond.

So, think about it.  Are you inviting in the way you write?  Do you engage your readers in the way a doorway or porch might invite a building’s users to come in or to set a spell?

Or, do you surround yourself with stiff and difficult words?  Do you present a turgid monolith or long, dense blocks of copy, or do you format your content to be more accommodating?

Just wondering.

Even the most creative force in modern architecture admits to having little if any idea how he creates. Gehry seems to understand, however, that it helps to bring his fears out of Shadow and put them on the tip of his pen.

At the beginning of Sketches of Frank Gehry, the director, Sydney Pollock, asks the great architect a great question.

“Is starting hard?”

Gehry replies.

You know it is.  I don’t know what you do when you start, but I clean my desk.  I make a lot of stupid appointments that I make sound important.

Avoidance.  Delay.  Denial.

I’m always scared that I’m not going to know what to do.  It’s a terrifying moment.

And then, when I start, I’m always amazed.  ‘Oh, that wasn’t so bad.’

How true.

Selling intangibles is hard work. A lot of architects, lawyers and other professional service providers have Web sites that make it even harder.

This clip outlines seven common weaknesses of such sites and offers suggested remedies. It’s based on an article originally published by MarketingProfs.com.