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Defining our industry's methodologies, standards, and culture have long been a part of Happy Cog's values.

We started Cognition as a product to offer advice, create a dialogue, and serve our industry and clients to help them with their goals and aspirations.

Learn more about Happy Cog at happycog.com.

  1. Rwd limbo

    Avoiding #RWD Limbo

    Headshot of Chris Cashdollar

    4/10/14

    by Chris Cashdollar

    Almost four years ago, I wrote a Cognition post about my Rule of Threes. In it, I explained that pushing a design effort far enough often resulted in stronger, better-conceived, and more thoroughly vetted solutions. If you didn’t read the article, let me give you a quick recap:

    At the conclusion of the information architecture phase, multiple designers worked in unison to evolve three unique design concepts. Each effort was aimed at different, but agreed upon goals. By varying art direction, user-interface interpretation, and content prioritization, the Rule stressed designing a “range” of static mock-up solutions to present to a client. Whichever concept garnered the most attention became the “base model” that was iterated on and drove the overall look and feel moving forward.

  2. Handcrafted kk

    Creating Things Just for Fun

    Headshot of Katie Kovalcin

    4/3/14

    by Katie Kovalcin

    It’s easy to get caught up in the daily grind of researching and strategizing wonderfully thought out websites. Sometimes, it’s nice to cut loose and create things just for fun, away from the computer screen. Thus, our monthly Happy Cog Handcrafted Challenge (HCHC) was born.

    February was its inaugural month, and I led the effort. I wanted to take things back to elementary school and do an anonymous valentine exchange (though, I used the term “valentine” loosely—really just any card stuffed in an envelope would do).

  3. Fruitful

    Fear and Fruitful Projects

    Headshot of Brenna Heaps

    3/27/14

    by Brenna Heaps

    Off the top of my head, I can tell you that I’m afraid of flying, public speaking, and savory foods that contain hidden fruit. I’m also afraid of starting a new project. But, I dive into new projects just like I risk biting into mango every time I go for the summer roll, because I know that fear of the unknown isn’t a bad thing.

    Fear is a natural reaction to the unknown, but as a society, we don’t really like to talk about it. Not many people will openly admit they’re afraid, because, well, it’s uncomfortable. Admitting your fears makes you vulnerable. It also makes you human. When it comes to the world of digital projects, admitting fear is sometimes likened to admitting defeat. It’s not. It’s a normal reaction to the various unknowns that exist at the start of a project.

  4. Roundtable 002

    Cognition Roundtable

    Headshot of Greg Storey

    3/20/14

    by Greg Storey

    We’re back with another Cognition Roundtable—a casual conversation about process and the web industry recorded by Happy Cog folks. This time, CMO Greg Storey leads a discussion with designer Sophie Shepherd, developer Brandon Rosage, and VP of Technology Ryan Irelan about how and why we’ve started experimenting with a more development-focused project process. In under a half hour, they cover topics like:

  5. Healthy website

    A Healthy and Balanced Website

    Headshot of Yesenia Perez-Cruz

    3/13/14

    by Yesenia Perez-Cruz

    Do you ever overcompensate? Maybe you’ve gone on an “unplugged vacation” to combat device addiction or embarked on a juice cleanse after an indulgent weekend. I’ve been there often.

    I’ll spare you the details of my “10-Day Sugar Detox,” but I can share a little about how I’ve overcompensated in my design work. You see, my early designs were chock-full of inconsistencies—every style I created had a unique embellishment. One day, I became fearful that I had become one of “those clueless designers” that frustrated developers write scathing articles about.

  6. Styleguide ypc

    The Scoop on Our Benjerry.com Style Guide

    Headshot of Alison Harshbarger

    3/5/14

    by Alison Harshbarger

    The web has been all about style guides lately. Everyone from the BBC to Code for America to Yelp released their guides to the public, and style-guide-automating tools like KSS and Hologram are becoming increasingly popular. At Happy Cog, we’ve been making our clients’ style guides more interactive. Our newer style guides go beyond documenting the design systems we’ve established; they take advantage of their living in the browser to dynamically show how a system’s pieces are built, how it responds at different viewport sizes, and how users can interact with those pieces.

    For the recently launched Ben & Jerry’s website redesign, we created one of these “interactive style guides.” It covers everything related to building out and maintaining the new website: design components, page layouts, and even content creation. I chatted with a few of the Cogs responsible for the Ben & Jerry’s style guide about how it came together.

  7. Jquery cf

    You Might Need jQuery

    Headshot of Cat Farman

    2/27/14

    by Cat Farman

    jQuery: Maybe you’ve heard of it. If not, may I welcome you to the internet and introduce you to some cool websites? jQuery is a hugely popular JavaScript library that gives you an API to manipulate DOM elements easily, handle events, AJAX your content, and create all the other cool features that make the web go ‘round. The scale of jQuery’s popularity is incredible; it’s used on over 80% of the most trafficked websites, and its CDN serves up over 500 million files a day.

  8. Craft sh

    About That Craft CMS

    Headshot of Sam Hernandez

    2/20/14

    by Sam Hernandez

    Times are changing in the PHP world. Some call it the PHP Renaissance. PSR standards are bringing interoperability between frameworks and unity to coding standards. Composer offers access to an array of best-in-class components and a simple way to integrate them into your applications. There are some great, new PHP language features showing up like Traits and more. A new breed of frameworks and content management systems are getting on board. It’s a great time to be a back-end developer!

    In a world that requires specialized Drupal developers, Wordpress developers, ExpressionEngine developers, and other pre-renaissance CMS developers, Craft CMS gives me hope for a day when being a PHP developer is enough.

  9. Rdio web

    Did Rdio Throw the Web Under the Bus?

    Headshot of Brandon Rosage

    2/13/14

    by Brandon Rosage

    Rdio announced last month that its music service would be available “free in the U.S. on the web.” The service is still accessible on desktop web browsers with Flash installed, but the site instructs users on smartphone and tablet browsers to access its service via native applications. So, is Rdio’s use of the term “the web” faithful to its technical implementation? Our own developer Brandon Rosage debates the issue with his brother Tyson, a software designer at Treehouse.

  10. Recruit

    Recruit the Recruiters

    Headshot of Joe Rinaldi

    2/6/14

    by Joe Rinaldi

    Business development in a client service organization is a complex responsibility. Each approach is different from the next, but good salespeople share core competencies. I’ve talked to dozens of agency owners at Owner Camp, where the importance and role of business development is a popular conversation topic. Salespeople can be found in all walks of life. But, more than a few great ones I know were formerly recruiters, and here’s why.

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