Welcome to the Winter 2008 edition of Marathon, Run Web Design's own webzine.

This season, I've scanned the breadth of the journalistic world to bring you two of the finest writers of the post-modern period... Well, actually, that's not 100% truthful. What I did was asked my sister and a close friend to see if they could put something together on their fields of expertise... over a year ago. But I am extremely proud to be able to bring you some fantastic articles that add a bit of flavour to this edition of Marathon.

First up is Lynda, a close friend that has been working as a Personal Assistant for almost 20 years in various workplaces and for a number of different bosses. I asked her to write this article initially because I was taking on an administration assistant at the time and I thought that the insights would be useful for me, but my selfishness has somehow proved fruitful on this occasion, and what has resulted is a great article that any boss with a PA should read.

Following that, I am proud to introduce my sister Elizabeth to Marathon's readership. Lib is a qualified Remedial Massage Therapist, and one that couldn't help but learn as much as she could about the human body along the way. She's saved me hundreds of dollars in physio bills over the last couple of years, and I'm confident that if you take her advice, she can save you some physical and financial pain as well.

Lastly is an article I wrote after working through a website overhaul with a client. I has put together some concepts for the navigation which were based on the existing website's menu structure with some usability improvements. However, upon reviewing them, we decided to go a different direction entirely, as we realised that a good percentage of the target audience of the site wouldn't follow the breakdown of the menus, and some wouldn't even understand the terms we were using. So we started from scratch, building a navigation system that is focused on the user, not on my client. This article is an exploration of the idea that we should build websites based more on our visitors than our businesses.

I hope this edition of Marathon proves good reading for you all, please feel free to provide feedback as always, I look forward to hearing from you.

Cheers

feature articles

Help Me Help You - Lynda Rule

Lynda takes a light hearted look into the role of the Personal Assistant, and speaks to all the bosses out there, offering some advice on how to get the best out of your sidekick.

Pain in the Neck - Elizabeth Harper

Part one of a series about healthy workspaces that will continue over the next couple of issues; this article takes a look at the basics of office ergonomics.

The Customer is Always What?! - Jason Harper

When was the last time you thought about your website in relation to a clothing store? Never? Well, in this article, that's exactly what we do as we explore the adage 'The Customer is Always Right'.