Being a web designer is a tough job. “Oh give over!” I hear you cry, and you wouldn’t be the only one. This misconceived view is justified by the general lack of understanding as to exactly what a web designer does. Okay, being a good web designer...
Read the full article »Who said that adverts had to be directly relevant to what a company does or provides. At the end of the day, everyone knows who McDonalds are. A billion pound marketing budget couldn’t make them any more well known.
So what’s wrong with making people smile?
A couple of great articles I’ve stumbled on recently that focus on the essence of new media design. 10 logo design tips from David Airey which might as well be printed onto stone and regarded as the 10 commandments for all I’m concerned. And a nice post from Tracy Grady that tackles common misconceptions about design and designers – What Graphic Design Isn’t.
Great advice all around!
Oh, and where are my posts you ask? Yeah I know sorrrrrry been reallllly busy but will honestly get some chunky tasty lick your lips content up here soon. Promise.
Imaginative title.
Yep, I was there last week. Had a great time but decided to write about it on the Flame blog instead of here, sorry loyal readers!
It was great to meet some new people and some familiar faces (although some of them from only a small Twitter avatar), the event itself was good, inspirational fun and the after party topped everything off nicely!
Some other reviews can be found here:
This list has been buzzing round the ‘net recently. If you’ve got a few years to spare you might as well check it out, there are some of the best up there (including me hehe!)
- The Bigest Ever List of Graphic Design Blogs?
Until a bigger one comes along 
Want to make an impression? That can be hard when you’re applying for work on the other side of the world. Greig Anderson compiled these extremely effective brochures containing his CV, personal information and examples of work and acclaim to send in the hope of getting noticed and bestowed with work when he moved over to Sydney for a year.
As far as I can gather, it worked!
Next time you knock up your CV in Word, really consider whether it will make any difference. The paper bin is only a short distance away. Give potential employers a reason to sit down and indulge you, astound them, show them what you’re really capable of.
More pictures of the Effektive CV/Poster Mailer.
Crunchy credit’s getting people down, and it’s really beginning to hit home. Friends and family are getting laid off left, right and center. And it’s getting harder and harder to find new jobs, regardless of your skill set, qualifications and dedication.
A lot of lay-offs and cut-backs aren’t currently necessary. Companies are protecting themselves, trying to increase cash flow and clamp down on expenditures as we hit more turbulent economic times. It’s understandable, but not always sensible.
We happen to be in the business of digital marketing. We create conversations, we help to establish a postive dialogue about our client’s and their businesses, and we do it well. However when it comes to cutbacks, the marketing budget is often the first to be roped in. What a mistake.
Recessions are quite possibly the most important time to continue to define and promote your brand. Letting people know that you’re still there, working away, persevering and sustaining your promises and presence to consumers. You stop marketing, you stop advertising yourself and building great conversations about your brand – there’s a chance you may slowly start to fade away. Especially in the fast paced digital world of today – it doesn’t take long for people to forget who you are.
Use times like this in the market to solidly define who you are and continue to build brand recognition and credibility. This will be massively beneficial post-recession and in the long-term, as brand-building is a long-term strategy. Short-term tactics (promotions, ‘credit crunch deals’, making redundancies, cutting back on training etc) may help to ease current cash flow but may possibly be detrimental to your brand identity over the coming years.
But it seems everyone’s cutting back. Consumers are becoming choosier about what they spend their money on, which brands they align themselves with and who gives them a sense of security. However, we’re still a consumer nation. Hiding in the shadows, hoping the recession will shrink away soon will do you no favours. Let people know that you’re here and you mean business. If anything, you should be increasing your marketing budget. Marketing is an investment, not an expense.
OK, so everyone else is cutting back. Big chains and established brands are going into administration. They’ve stuck with the status quo to long, they’ve been too scared to make a move that may seem a tad risky. Now’s your time to pownce.
The stronger companies, the clever minds and the well-thought-out marketing strategies will push to the front of the pack, the weaker competitors are going to fall out of the race.
And with everyone else slashing marketing budgets, there’s less noise and clamour to be heard over, making it easier to improve your brand recognition – it’s quite possibly the best time to establish your identity. Be heard.
Although the above is true, it’s not simply a case of allocating more capital to the marketing budget. You need to re-evaluate strategies and your message, make it apply to people today. We’re not in the business of ramming information in people’s faces, we’re in the business of crafting stories, spreading ideas and engaging consumers in interesting, authentic conversations to establish a level of recognition and trust.
Stick with the status quo, get left behind. If you’re prepared to change, prepared to take some risks and make some important choices – you might win.
Hey folks,
My words have found their way to print, along with 99 other people. “Connect! Marketing in the Social Media Era” is now available to purchase through Blurb. I talk about how we can use Twitter to build more personal connections. But that’s all I’m telling you – you’ve got to buy it to find out more!
The book is a fantastic collaboration of 100 authors from the marketing/new media/design industry that discuss current trends in social media and how we can harness the power of the social web from a marketing perspective to create my dynamic, personal consumer relationships.
Even better, the book is purely none-for-profit. Besides educating and inspiring, the aim is to raise money, and awareness for Susan G. Komen’s campaign towards the cure for breast cancer.
It’s a great book, it’s for a great cause. Please help out by grabbing a copy, it’s totally worth it.
Thanks to all the other authors, and thanks to the editor Jeff Caswell for making it possible.
Nathan x
It’s almost a social expectation in modern society that after high school (or the American equivalent…) you must go to college or University. In England, to go to University (for world-wide readers this is generally 3-4 years from the age of 18/19) costs money, generally a lot money. But of course you come out at the end with a degree, woohoo!
But is studying necessary? Don’t get me wrong – life is all about learning, but is it essential to take a 4 year chunk out of your life for the benefit of a qualification? The other option is to go straight into work; you will start lower in the food chain but will be earning money instead of spending it, whilst still gaining experience.
At the time of writing this article I’m 19. I pretty much wasted 2 years at college studying subjects that haven’t seriously contributed to my current career path. Whilst at college I started studying web design in my spare time and balanced a part-time job at a local media company. Shortly after leaving college I left the media company and went traveling for a while, returning home at the end of 2007 to try my hand at freelancing and build up a portfolio.
University was seeming a less enticing proposition now I was earning off my own back. When, after a few months freelancing Manchester based digital agency Flame Digital got in touch looking for a new designer. To cut a long story short – I got the job, am loving it and no longer have any intentions of going to University. I’m think I’m learning far more by working in an environment among other professionals, working on big projects, expanding my skill set every day. I’ve chosen my path, but this isn’t the path for everyone.
Despite my bias, I know that University is great. Most of my friends there are loving it, making plenty of new friends, learning and having fun. From what I can gather, some of the benefits of getting an education:
There’s undoubted benefits to a good education. But how does the other side of the coin fare?
Looking at the new media & design industry, straight-to-work generally means getting your foot in the door at an agency at a very low level position, as either an intern, runner or junior and working your way up. It can seem like a more scary and demanding choice originally, but you may reap the rewards in the long term.
All fun stuff.
I wouldn’t claim that either studying or working really demonstrate any major negatives. University costs money – but it’s money you’ll earn back with that handsome degree! It’s an investment. An investment that pays off with good education and a great experience. A downside of going straight to work is that most of your mates disappear to Uni, but everyone has to move on at some point.
There isn’t really a debate. The choice is down to each individual. Both require a level of independence and a strong head. Both display great rewards and ensure a productive start in life, depending on how much your willing to put in – that is the essential point.
Regardless of which path you choose – you will only benefit from how much you put in. And it’s never too late to try something else, neither option is definite.
It’s the first time I’ve done this, but I decided to turn to Twitter to gather some other opinions from those far more experienced than myself, here’s a taste:
matthewknight:
“Go to Uni, but I’d say it’s as much for the life/social experience as it is for the knowledge. I did theoretical physics.”supersy:
“self-taught FTW. I did a placement last yr at an agency & found that to be more valuable than my course.”will_j:
“I guess Uni is useful for learning how to think and work, any practical skills you learn (in tech) will be old when you leave.”LucPestille:
“Personally uni was a waste – I think for media jobs, it’s about what you can do, not a piece of paper. 16 or 37, don’t care.”MarkJWeston:
“Be very careful! I’m about to grad – my course has done NOTHING for my web/new media skills. Too techy. Easy to teach yourself but a good degree with good content is well worth it – especially with a high grade! My uni has redesigned their content to be more applicable to current times – uni’s can be a bit slow on changing curriculums etc.”paulmsmith:
“Uni 4 me was about life lessons than technical ones. Pretty much self-taught, font tags, tables, etc still being taught at unis”
wiggy5:
“I’m earning more now than anyone I know who went to Uni, also mostly debt free as a result. Experience beats qualifications.”darrenturpin:
“What you demonstrably do is far more important than what you theoretically know. But I don’t regret my 3 years at Uni at all…”
Thanks to everyone for their comments.
The general opinion seems to be that, particularly for new media/design and development jobs, University can’t keep up and a self-taught approach is better. However, no-one seems to regret their time at University and a high value is placed on qualifications.
I will most likely be looking more into this topic in the future as it’s so widely debated and is growing ever more important in an age where there are so many resources online to teach yourself. Will the education system evolve quickly enough to adopt this? How different will media courses be in 5/10 years time? How will online and self-taught education evolve?
Questions for another day. Thanks for reading x
A little story.
I recently ordered a book from Amazon. Actually, it wasn’t recently, it was before Christmas but due to popular demand it sold out and I had to wait till late February. No problem. The book came, and with it a voucher for £40 off Virgin Wines online. I’m sure many other people have received this flyer as well. At first, it sounds nothing out of the ordinary.
Instead of simply throwing it in the bin I decided to visit the website.
Step 1 – I’ve visited the website. Fair enough. That doesn’t have to mean anything.
I decided to go through the instructions on the voucher, register, enter the code and voila! My account has been credited with £40.
Step 2 – I’ve signed up, I’m establishing a level of trust and beginning to lower my guard. I’ve been rewarded for this.
I don’t know the first thing about wine. I enjoy it but wouldn’t know a Shiraz from a Chardonnay. So after a swift perusal of the site, I leave and forget about it.
About a week later I received a polite email from ‘Jay’ at Virgin Wines’. It wasn’t pesonal, although it tried to be, but I didn’t mind, there was still some thought there. Jay kindly explained that because I hadn’t yet bought anything, they weren’t doing a good enough job. So he offered me a deal I couldn’t refuse. Plenty of wine, free glases and a fancy bottle opener for only £48. Considering I already have £40 credit to play with – that would mean spending £8 for a lot of wine. Bargain.
Step 3 – Sweetening the deal, offering me more for little in return. I decide this is something worth telling people.
I’ve yet to buy any wine, I may wait till someone’s birthday crops up. But at work today I told 7 people about this episode, and tonight, at the pub, I may decide to tell my mates.
The moral of the story:
The £40 credit is not £40 to Virgin, it’s perhaps £5-£10 at most, before their markup. That may seem like an awful amount of money to waste on one person. But if the people I told at work, and the people I’ve yet to tell, and you reading now decide to investigate a bit and end up buying some wine for yourselves or continue to tell other people… well – that £5 Virgin spent on me may become £50, £100 + profit through other people buying wine through their site thanks to the power of word of mouth marketing.
Now would that money have been better spent on a few clicks of a tacky banner ad, or a stack of throwaway flyers that will be read by practically no-one?
Through the flyer I recieved, Virgin can monitor (to some extent) the impact by how many people have registered on the site and entered the offer code, and how many people have spent that free credit. What about the option to recommend the offer to others? Or for every bottle of wine you buy you receive a free £5 off voucher to send to a friend of choice?
I don’t mean to sound like an Apple fanboy but once again they’ve managed to surpass my expectations and slap big fat smile on my face. A couple of nights ago, in the early hours of the morning whilst very tired and in desperate need of sleep for work the next day, I decided to download the iPhone app ‘Bloom’ by Brian Eno and Peter Chilvers. Which, by the way, is fantastic. But somewhere along the line I successfully managed to clear off all the apps on my iPhone, and I was not happy.
I’m not one for customer service emails or calls, I have no faith in that system. If something breaks, I throw it away and buy it again. But I decided to give iTunes the benefit of the doubt. I sent a rather rude, demanding email that was very unlike me and can only be put down to how tired and annoyed I was at the time.
Less than 4 hours later, which didn’t bother me as I was in bed, I received this response:
Dear Nathan,
This is Sasha with iTunes Customer Support. I would first like to thank you for inquiring about the App Store. I understand you are concerned that you lost your App Store purchases. I will be happy to help.
App Store purchases may be downloaded again at no charge, either from your device or using iTunes on your computer. Be sure that you are signed in to the same iTunes Store account that you used to shop from the App Store, and follow the steps to purchase any missing content again. You will be notified that you have already purchased the App and can download each missing item again for free.
For more information, please visit:
App Store FAQ
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/ApplicationsFAQPageIf you have difficulty downloading any applications, please reply to let me know or consult this article:
Troubleshooting applications purchased from the App Store
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1702Sincerely,
Sasha
iTunes Store Customer Support
Which is fair enough. A straightforward reply in a professional yet friendly and personal tone. I liked that. So I deided to email back and apologise for my initial arsey email, only to receive another response from Sasha only minutes later:
Dear Nathan,
You’re very welcome. No need to apologize. I know how frustrating these kinds of issues can be. I’m just so glad to hear that you were able to get your purchases back.
Nothing makes Apple happier than to hear that we have pleased our customers. I hope that you continue to enjoy the iTunes Store.
Remember, if you have any further questions or concerns please let me know and I will be more than happy to further assist you.
Have a wonderful day!
That really pleased me.
Why is this such a big deal? Because in this fast-paced world where huge companies spare no time for individual customers willing to dish out £1000’s on their products and services, the fact that someone in a service center on the other side of the world took the time out to craft a dedicated, friendly response goes a long way.
And personally, I feel it’s these touches that put Apple ahead of the rest of the game.