Archive for the ‘Creative’ Category

Season’s greetings from the Design Inc.

21st December 2009 by Dan Gilbert

You may have recently received our Christmas eNewsletter. If not, please click here to view what we have been up in the last stages of 2009!

Each quarter we will bring you news of our proudest moments, they may be strategic, creative or technological as well as updates on what is going down at the office. This issue, as well as a gallery of glorious festive designs, we are introducing our Incorporating process, how we approach all projects, combining our 3 core skills and targeting the brief. While we are talking about briefs, a big thank you for all the briefs from clients old and new this year and we look forward to moving into the new decade together in January!

You too can receive regular Design Inc news updates by signing up on our website.

Happy Christmas from the team at Design Incorporated.

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Is it REALLY a brochure you need?

15th December 2009 by Frank Norman

Design Inc receive many requests for brochure design. This is down to two main factors:

  1. we are specialists in brochure design
  2. we invest in SEO, specifically for ‘brochure design’ and for ‘website design’

One interesting statistic however is that approximately 50% of people requesting brochure design do not actually need a brochure. They may want one to be designed, but they certainly do not need one. It just may be it’s the first thing they thought of.

One of the first questions any design & marketing agency should ask the customer here is “What do you really want your brochure to do?”

Of course, there are many answers including;

“…to bring business in.”

“…advertise a new product range.”

“…provide a back up to our sales force.”

“…inform my customers about the company.

The team at Design Inc delve further. We want to work out whether the brochure route is the most appropriate for the campaign. This research includes finding out about:

The recipients – is there a suitable list to send the brochures to? What sort of companies/people are they?
The industry – what approach is expected? What is frowned upon?
The competition – what is the competition doing? What makes our client different?

From here, we can work out the true options for our clients. Don’t get me wrong, often a brochure is the correct medium, but sometimes alternate approaches may be more appropriate:

  • - direct mail
  • - website
  • - SEO / PPC campaign
  • - advertising campaigns
  • - leaflet design
  • - exhibitions
  • - sponsorship
  • - face to face presentations

Check out our portfolio to see these alternatives.

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The lie of the land

4th December 2009 by Dan Gilbert

The science of experience
Whilst every brand is unique, navigation of the market landscape in which a company operates will always benefit from familiarisation. Picture for a moment the rallying co-driver shouting instructions to their driver so that he can concentrate on driving – what they do best, according to what’s around the next corner. And not having to look at the map!

Working with an agency that has driven the course before has many benefits. No nasty surprises. No schoolboy errors. No time wasted on duplicated briefing. The agency adds value in terms of experience – what works, what doesn’t in that specific market.

These learnings are applied to the strategy, the creative as well as the delivery and measurement mechanisms of a project. Allowing greater focus and genuine innovation within the experience-based parameters of what will work and what won’t or can’t.

Our portfolio pages now group together some of our main market specialisations:

Posted in Client Work, Creative, Design & Artwork, Print & Production | comments icon Leave a comment »

iPhone Apps for the Creative Designer

25th November 2009 by Frank Norman

Many designers – both Mac and PC based – have been taken with Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch.

iPhone for Creative Designers

iPhone - iDeal for Creative Designers

There is no denying that there are many different applications for the iPhone and iPod touch. But how many of these are useful to those of us involved in the creative industry?

Below we feature four iPhone apps that may be of use to graphic designers and those in creative industries. Some looked to be useful organisational tools, others we thought might help inspire or motivate creativity, whilst others we have included simply because captured our imagination.

Whilst researching this, in many cases we found that there was more than one App which performed a similar function. We have simply listed the ones which appealed to us most. So it may be advisable, when at the iPhone App store, to do a search for similar Apps, as there may be one which is better suited for one purpose over another.

Anyway, in no particular order, here are four design Apps that we liked the look of from the iPhone App Store.

Palettes is an iPhone App for creating colour schemes. With Palettes, it is possible to sample colours from websites, iPhone photo album images or other colour schemes. It will import and export colour palettes to and from Adobe Photoshop and supports a number of colour modes, including RGB, HSV, HSL and CMYK.

There is also a Lite version of Palettes, which does not cost anything, but has some features removed (such as importing and exporting palettes from Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro and other programs.

Another colour-based app, which functions by providing a swatch library and interactive colour wheel to help enable creatives to select, showcase and identify colours. Colour Expert includes various Pantone swatches, web safe and HTML colours. It is also possible to add custom colours and email Adobe Swatch Exchange (ASE) files.

PhotoWizard is a photo fixer. It can auto fix the under exposure photos taken from iPhone camera. A manual tool is also available to manually adjust brightness, contrast and color saturation. This App supports  five filters;

  • oil paint effect
  • fish-eye & anti-fish-eye effect
  • sketch
  • block waves
  • monochrome

We know there are many more useful applications and new ones being created every day. We would love to hear from other designers regarding any other apps they think worth mentioning.

Posted in Creative | comments icon 2 Comments »

Philippe Starck goes with the Flo

18th November 2009 by Jon

Congratulations to Ilsa Parry for winning a six month design placement with Philippe Starck’s design agency following her outstanding contribution on Starck’s BBC TV reality show Design For Life.

Ilsa is a 3D creative and Director of REthinkthings product design agency. She is also Course Leader for 3D design at Liverpool Community College.

Philippe Starck is the world famous French product designer behind some of the most recognisable product design of our time. From motorbikes and watches to toothbrushes and lemon squeezers, Starck knows no limits.

Flo

Ilsa Perry's Flo design

In this latest reality TV show, he set about unearthing the best of British design and invited open applications from UK designers for a place in his Paris school of design. Hundreds applied but only 12 were chosen based on the quality and creativity of their designs. Following the same format as The Apprentice, the fortunes of the 12 candidates were then followed over a ten week period. Each week Starck set the students a series of creative challenges, with the weakest being eliminated.

Ilsa won the show with her innovative Flo design. An inspirational & unique walking aid device that gave an insight into Ilsa’s design thinking, observation and understanding of how design affects everything around us.

One entry on Ilsa’s blog says it all… “Ilsa, I always hoped that designers would remember that older and disabled people needed products that would express how they feel. The aids out there are miserable and ugly. Thank you for having the courage to think differently about an often neglected market.”

Ilsa, we salute you.

What do you think about the Flo, we’d be keen to hear your views.

Posted in Commercial Thoughts, Creative, Design & Artwork | comments icon 3 Comments »

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