Search results matching tag 'design'

Creative thinking within Advertising...

2419340 — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 09:00:00 GMT

The main skill in advertising is creative thinking, is that all that matters? (in regards to design skills)

How to win business pitches......

2621936 — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 11:00:15 GMT

For most of us, the opportunity to communicate, to impress and to really sell oneself and services doesn’t come along every day. So when an opportunity does knock it’s difficult to understand why there is such a lack of thought and effort put into so many presentations. An engaging PowerPoint presentation can be the winning factor in delivering a business pitch.

In economically challenging times, ask yourself, can you really afford to stand up in front of a captive audience and then waste that audience’s time? We’ve all been there, sitting in a boardroom, a conference or sometimes even at an event watching painfully while one lost soul proceeds to point aimlessly at a PowerPoint presentation. Mind-numbing stuff, they read off the first slide and then every slide after that, there is little imagery – if any, and one has to wonder, do they even realise that they have an audience? Opportunity lost.

PowerPoint can be an amazing tool if you know how to use it, or it can be the death of you and your audience if you don’t. But if you’re one of those trying to blame the software then come on people, wake up and smell the coffee and get some help.

Any more thoughts?

Article 10 is the UK's leading presentation company undertaking the full range of creative presentation services. Whether you require business presentation design, a simple PowerPoint presentation template or a full production with video and animation for maximum impact, our presentation help will get your message across in the most effective way possible.

Visit www.article10.com

Raindance/Mastercard TV ad competition

2627184 — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 18:54:07 GMT

Hi all, I'm new to blogs and communities.. but it's time to try i think. I recently entered a competition to interpret Mastercard's new advertising on TV. The Big Lunch one. If you watch it, i would appreciate your hits and feedback. (the hits, so i could maybe win £1000! (I'd love it but i'm so far behind.. and the feedback to perhaps create a discussion about advertising itself) (i'd always want to talk about the power of image and sound with any who do too:) Thanks everyone, peace Oliver http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5KQ1cceTes

Complexity Is Good, The World Is A Complex Place, Embrace It.

809378 — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 12:34:00 GMT

We were fortunate enough to attend the sell-out ‘UX London’ conference at The Cumberland Hotel, Marble Arch this year. It was the first conference if its type here in London aimed at user experience practitioners and there were some big names in attendance – both lecturing and running half-day workshops. The conference ran over three information-filled days. Day One was lecture day, with inspirational talks from the likes of Peter Merholz, Luke Wroblewski, Dan Saffer, Jared Spool, Jeffrey Veen and most excitingly Don ‘The Don’ Norman.

Days Two and Three went into much greater detail, with interactive workshops covering all aspects of user experience practice; from sketching lessons to learning how organisations can make better decisions through design. In fact there were too many fantastic workshops to get around all of them and there were no “fillers”.

One of the highlights for me however was hearing Don Norman speak on Day One. The author of seminal books such as The Design of Everyday Things, Things That Make us Smart and more recently The Design of Future Things, Don is well known to all user experience architects and designers alike. The fact that his comments were Twittered with the hashtag ‘#TheDon’ just goes to show the affection and regard in which he is held. Often the contrarian (“When everyone is asking for something, I tend to take the opposite approach”), Norman has recently caused minor storms by arguing that simplicity is highly overrated and that complexity is good thing. At first this approach feels wrong: as usability people, we are often in the habit of trying to make online experiences as simple as possible. Surely complexity can only harm the experience and put customers off?

Norman offers a familiar example of simplicity: the Google search homepage - often quoted as the epitome of the simple. Without a doubt, Google is by far and away the most popular search engine. And yet Yahoo! have the most popular homepage and it’s packed with information. Yahoo! is optimised for exploration, with Google it takes a little more work. You might argue that these two homepages are different products but the sheer popularity of Yahoo! goes some way to show that complex pages are popular.

Another example: the iPhone is often touted as simple and consumer-friendly. And yet with a new software update, Apple has added 100 extra new features. How is this level of complexity compatible with the idea of a simple product? One might argue it’s because users have learnt how to use the device and are now demanding more advanced tools (like Copy and Paste).

There appears to be a fundamental conflict here: when asked, people will demand simplicity (“Why is it so hard to use?”, “Why can’t products be simpler?”) but when you watch these same people comparing products side-by-side, it is the number of features that sell a product. People want more features even when they realise this must complicate the product. People believe that as you add features you add capability, thereby making more feature-laden products more desirable. However, as user experience professionals, we believe adding more features decreases usability. Both positions, Norman argues, are wrong. “We must distinguish complexity from confusion, perplexity, and unintelligibility. The goal is complexity with order, lucidity and understandability.”

People prefer complex things. If it’s too simple, it gets boring. Once a user gains experience with a product, the user moves into a new role; that of the Intermediate and suddenly their perception of what is complex changes. An aside. Roughly speaking, there are three classes of user: the Beginner, the Intermediate and the Expert. If we plot the number of people against perceived skill level, like most population distributions we get the classic statistical bell curve, with most users situated in the middle of the curve at ‘Intermediate’.

It stands to reason therefore, that these are the users we should spend the most amount of time designing for. And yet it’s often the Beginners and the Experts who get the most attention. The Product Manager demands the Beginner must be able to hit the ground running and yet the engineer or developer, if left to their own devices, designs for their own skill-level – that of the Expert.

So how does Norman suggest we solve the complexity problem? Unsurprisingly the first approach should be through well-researched design. By modularising actions we can contain the complexity and by teaching users as they go, we can help them manage complex interactions.

I’ll leave the last word to The Don himself: “Why are things so complex? Because the world is complex. Our tools must reflect reality. Complexity can be good, leading to a rich, satisfying life, filled with rich, satisfying experiences.”

This blog post was written by the Creative Director of Aardvark Media, Tim Minor.

Re: Could Crouch End be the new creative hot spot?

2596415 — Thu, 21 May 2009 18:01:31 GMT

Well the area has a lot of potential - i have been living here (crouch end) for 6-7 years and i have seen it change loads just in this short time. I cant say it has really benefit from new money flooding into the area. as this has made it more difficult for bohemiansand creatives to afford to live here. However, it has allowed other benefits to develop like better restaurants and bars and shops... and best of all (shameless plug) the area can again boast a College.

http://www.crouchendcollege.co.uk/#

Feel free to drop in and check it out.

Sponsorship urgently required for visually impaired exhibition

958989 — Fri, 01 May 2009 07:48:28 GMT

Creative Touch is an inclusive exhibition that will showcase art and design for the visually impaired and the non-visually impaired. The aim of the exhibition is to allow every participant to be able to fully experience art.

The exhibition will be held over 17th - 20th June and will exhibit work created by both visually impaired and non-visually impaired artists. It will be an opportunity to bring together people who can appreciate art and design inclusively.

Sponsors are urgently needed for the exhibition to cover marketing costs and expenses for the private viewing.

Please contact creativetouch@london.com for any further details.

A digital blog from Bristol? WTF!

2304524 — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 14:57:00 GMT

This is supposed to be a blog about digital creative from Bristol. Yet, I’m sitting on a London bound train, about to see one of my design heroes, Jonathan Ive from Apple based in the US of A. Oooh, the ever so slight irony of it!

Hello! I’m Jon Waring

Vital stats: 43, 6ft 2, 11 stone, 1 wife, 3 children, 1 ludicrous mortgage and 2 cats. I’m more of a dog person, but was out voted. Having 3 children IS a mistake, you’re out numbered and end up with cats instead of dogs.

Perhaps a more vital stat: Creative Director at 3Sixty, a digital marketing agency based in Bristol in the UK.

I am planning to showcase some of the great digital work that comes out of this wonderful and diverse city, plus the broader South West. Before I do, I thought I’d set out my stall by defining what I consider to be the criteria for great digital.

Judging creative work can be a subjective affair. I’m no exception. Years of hard earned experience as a traditional graphic designer with a passion for typography have chiselled and etched me into the old git I am today. Luckily, digital work calls for a slightly stricter criteria than some creative disciplines as it blends communication, aesthetics and technology. Here’s just a few:

Information architecture, user research, a great idea, original visual treatment, typography, colour, composition, clean accessible code, to name a few. It strikes me, that one very important consideration is frequently omitted…

‘What’s the point?’

I’m not trying to be existential, just clear. What do we want the user to do or get out of the experience.

It doesn’t take a designer to recognise good design, it feels inevitable, why would it look or function any other way. In fact, we probably only notice bad design. It gets in the way and feels extraneous at best or indulgent at worst.

Let me give you a couple of examples:-

Google

Remember search engines before Google? They called them portals, a litter of seemingly random things, check weather, stocks, shares… all stuff they wanted you to do or see. Then Google came along with a solitary search box. They got it, they understood the point of a search engine. That was as much choice as a person could need.

Apple

Their user interface (UI) design is so intuitive you barely need a manual. The iPhone is not strictly industrial design so much as user interface design. The actual object only has 4 physical buttons. The real beauty of its design lies in the UI.

You might be thinking ‘yeah, but that’s not creativity.’ I disagree. Both these examples have something in common. Simplicity. It seems to me they understood the point of the project, what people wanted from it. Then designed, something innovative, removing anything that didn’t contribute to its primary objective.

Yes, the form follows function to a degree. It’s not that I don’t understand the need for pure play, passive enjoyment of largely aesthetic or entertaining stuff. These things can stir emotions, a powerful marketing tool for sure, but, ultimately they’re transient.

For me, the really creative, hard working and profitable digital work is based on a good idea, simply executed.

How can you bring people together to re-imagine a better future?

209478 — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 10:15:00 GMT

Think like Marc and Sara Schiller.

They are the founders of 'Meet at the Apartment', who realised that there was a need for a dedicated space in New York where creative and business executives could gather to re-imagine a business, re-invent a product or pitch potential clients.

Advertising agencies, top consumer brands and television networks are among their enthusiastic clientele.

(Thanks to Alex N.)

http://www.welcometomeet.com/

For a creative within the advertising industry are DESIGN SKILLS a necessity or an added bonus?

2419340 — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 16:53:44 GMT

Are design skills needed for a creative, or will a stick man sketch do? Does this differ from larger agencies to smaller agencies? Has the credit crunch effected this?

Sir John Sorrell speaking

767600 — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 18:22:00 GMT

Sir John Sorrell, the chairman of the London Design Festival, speaking at M&C Saatchi's offices in Golden Square.

Sorrell said: "'Creative Britain' is, I believe, the way we should position ourselves [as a nation] and I also believe we can live up to the title."