If you’ve read any of our posts or pages about brand, you’ll know that we consider a brand to be a lot more than just a logo. But your logo (or brand mark), typography, colours, and strapline are still very important elements of your brand — they will often be the first aspects of your brand a prospective patron sees, … Read More
What makes a great website?
For most people, their first point of contact with your organisation will be your website. Consequently, it will be at the core of communicating your brand’s story, and will be the hub around which much, if not all, of your marketing and communications will flow. It’s essential that your website tells your story effectively, and creates a good impression of … Read More
Calls to action
If you don’t ask, you won’t get. We received a few questions on the subject of calls to action (or calls-to-action), so we thought we’d cover them in a little more detail. With thousands of businesses (and individuals) vying for your customers’ attention, it’s a tiny miracle whenever you connect with someone who is interested in your services. For a … Read More
Forget about SEO
Search Engine Optimisation? No, thanks. As a small business owner, it’s likely that you pay a fair bit of attention to Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). You’ve no doubt read stats that tell you things like the first search result gets a third of the traffic, and that the tenth only gets 2.4 percent (and if you haven’t, I’m sorry you had … Read More
How the chain came off Surbiton Cycles’ recent ad campaign
Surbiton Cycles — Ad Campaign Analysis We’ve previously written about how Evans Cycles effectively targeted their audience through clever placement and timing of their advertising — their flyers hooked to the handlebars of bikes in the racks outside Waterloo station was a perfect example of “talking to your customers where they live”, and timed to coincide with the beginning of Spring … Read More
The constraints of user experience design
I often find user experience design to be a profession abundant with idealism. Many of us preach about the importance of making websites and web apps that cater to user needs, and we rally behind usability tests, interviews, surveys, content audits, heuristic evaluations and expert analyses, because they help us design systems that bring us closer to the best user … Read More
The Brand Identity Ecosystem
The World Wide Web has come a long way in the last decade. As a species, our drive to connect, communicate and explore has given rise to a number of revolutionary online environments that have allowed people separated by thousands of miles to communicate at any time of the day, and with little cost. Facebook and Twitter are currently the … Read More
The EU Cookie Directive — an update
Following on from my recent post about the EU Cookie Directive (and an email my agency sent to clients in the run up to May 26th) I thought I would update readers on changes in the Information Commisssioner’s Office (ICO) approach to enforcement. On May 24th, just two days before the compliance due date, the ICO changed its position regarding … Read More
BBC’s The Apprentice is hurting design and branding professions
I have watched BBC’s The Apprentice for quite a few years now. I enjoy the problem solving aspect of each episode, perhaps because it mirrors the brief-to-solution journey we undertake in design, and I appreciate, much like any user experience designer, the feedback and analysis that takes place in the boardroom at the end. The case of Everydog and how not … Read More
Don’t make website errors your user’s fault
Error pages. What are they good for? We all know that the perfect website is an unachievable goal. Sometimes what a user is looking for just doesn’t exist, sometimes servers and systems fail, sometimes a bit of errant code gets into the page and causes an error — in the words of Osgood Fielding III, “nobody’s perfect”. For that reason … Read More
The EU cookie directive — unnecessary and futile, but it’s the law
On the 26th May, Article 5(3) of the Directive 2002/58/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 12 July 2002 concerning the processing of personal data and the protection of privacy in the electronic communications sector (amended December 25th 2009) — more commonly known as the EU cookie directive — will come into force in the UK. This … Read More
Why we can learn a thing or two from the Government Digital Service
Exciting things are happening over at Government Digital Services (GDS). They are revolutionising the way online services are being delivered to UK citizens, and their approach to this mammoth task is spot-on.They are tasked with slowly transferring the Directgov information portals to a single domain website at gov.uk, and redesigning the user experience to better deliver all the vital information to the … Read More
One Web, Multiple Experiences
The whole industry seems to be neck deep in responsive web design at the moment, with sites popping up all over the place. It’s been almost 18 months since Ethan Marcotte’s infamous introduction to the concept, and the launch two weeks ago of the Boston Globe responsive site is its first real test on a high-traffic, high-powered content management system. … Read More
