And, so to ensure this post isn’t seen as just a thinly veiled excuse to show off our tree, it seems like the perfect opportunity to wish all of you a Merry Christmas and a happy new year!

Modernising the Eura Conservation website to provide an engaging and easy to maintain web presence for the company.

The objective for this project was to modernise the Eura website and create an impactful website which accurately reflects the scope and quality of services provided. The previous website was near a decade old, it was built on an system difficult for those without indepth know how to maintain and had been scarcely updated since.

The main purpose of the website is to highlight previous work, establishing quality and building credibility. The natural solution was to build a fresh new design on a user friendly content management system which is made from the ground up to showcase projects in a way which is both engaging and easy to update.

Each project page provides a description of work undertaken and allows the audience to see before and after shots, restoration details, the location and any other related work undertaken. All projects are structured in a clear hierarchy, built around a naming convention based on key word terms and featuring dynamic landing pages to help boost Eura’s search engine rankings for the relevant restoration services. Naturally, all pages also include prominent call to actions encouraging prospective clients to get in touch for a quotation.

The website is now regularly updated and, following the revised hierarchy and new structure, has seen a significant improvement in search engine rankings and organic web traffic.

www.eura.co.uk

Like it or loathe it, the Olympics are here again and with London hosting the games it’s impossible to ignore. Here’s a special blog post to celebrate by taking a look at the Olympic games from a design perspective; the good, the bad and the ugly.

The good: The Olympic rings

Designed in 1912 by the founder of the modern Olympic Games, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the image of five interlocking rings has become synonymous with the games and has stood the test of time to become a design classic.

Created with a theme of unity and coming together in mind, the rings represent the five continents of the world with the colours being selected on the basis that they would include at least one element from the flag of each participating country.

The Olympic rings are simple yet impactful, easily reproducible yet distinctive. They conceptually embody the ethos of the event it represents and are an all round excellent example of everything that a good logo should strive to be.

The bad: London 2012 logo

Tragically misunderstood or deliberate marketing stunt? The ‘distinctive’ London 2012 design certainly succeeded in becoming infamous around the globe, however when almost 50,000 people sign a petition to have the logo changed within just 2 days of it’s unveiling that’s usually an indicator that something has gone wrong.

To its credit the logo design did an admirable job of bringing together cultures, even if it was only in their mutual hatred of the design; a Jewish viewer wrote in to complain to the BBC that it looked like the Nazi SS symbol while Iran threatened to boycott the games because from a certain convoluted angle it spells ‘Zion’.

Perhaps it’s greatest strength and biggest flaw is that the abstract design is so open to interpretation, although we are far too professional to discuss that here.

The creative process to ‘produce’ this logo took over a year and cost in excess of £400,000, a figure which would seem obscene if it wasn’t a relative bargain compared to the overall cost of hosting the games. It was intended to encapsulate creativity, energy and an edgy London attitude but has instead become something of a joke.

At least it managed to make people laugh, which is more than can be said for the official mascots.

The ugly:

Would it be unfair to bring up the London 2012 logo again? Did I mention that the mascot is a terrifying one eyed monster?

Ok, let’s focus on some more positive trivia; famously originating in Greece, did you know that the Ancient Olympic games and their associated events have also given us many words that are still in use today?

For example, the first recorded Olympic games only consisted of a single event – the Stade – which was a footrace named after the period of measurement for the distance run (about 600 feet). Since the track for the event was (obviously) a stade in length, and purpose built for that occasion so that people could stand and watch, it became known as a Stadium.

The word Gymnasium also comes from the Greek root ‘gymnos’, meaning nude; athletes in the ancient Olympic games would participate in the nude and the literal translation of ‘gymnasium’ is ‘school for naked exercise’ – a fact which is entirely unrelated to the title of this section or my long expired gym membership!

I hope this has been educational, here’s wishing Team GB the best of luck and if you want to go for gold with logo design then get in touch – we specialise in delivering professional and effective branding solutions which make you stand out from the crowd and generate more business, plus it won’t cost a six figure sum to do it either!

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”

The electric fan hasn’t fundamentally changed since it was invented in 1882. The materials of its construction may have been updated, there are new speed selectors and styling, but at its core it remains the same; electricity feeds a motor which causes fan blades to spin and direct air towards you.

When is a fan no longer a fan?

An engineer at Dyson decided that the buffeting effect caused by fans chopping the air was unpleasant and called for a redesign. While the official marketing justification may be dubious the end result is still impressive; they noticed that when pressurised air is passed over an airfoil-shaped ramp it get amplified, drawing in the surrounding air through a magical processes known as ‘inducement and entrainment’ (the same principle which keeps aeroplanes in the sky). Somebody had the bright idea to take this knowledge and apply it to build a better fan.

The clever bit…

The Dyson fan actually has a conventional (yet highly refined) fan hidden within its base which is used to suck in more than 20 litres of air per second. This air is then channeled up through the body and out over the ramped edge where, due to inducement, it is amplified 15x to produce a whopping 405 litres of air per second. The result after hundreds of iterative tests? Beautifully smooth air flow, no visible blades and a design which makes it dramatically different from any other fan on the market. The Dyson Fan Dyson Air Multiplier was born.

While the Air Multiplier is undeniably beautiful it’s unique industrial design and clever technology aren’t the greatest inspiration here – it is the ongoing pursuit of innovation, the outside the box thinking displayed by Dyson which allowed them to develop this product in the first place.

Our search for something a little different led us, based on the recommendation of a helpful client, to the e-Innovation Centre; a building offering serviced office space based on the Telford campus of the University of Wolverhampton. Not only is this new location situated in an picturesque area of Priorslee but it also has a great community and exciting opportunities resulting from close ties with the University.

It also didn’t hurt that the building features state of the art facilities; the combination of super fast broadband with a clean, modern design featuring large open spaces and dramatic lighting combined with an iconic concrete finish clearly influenced by the work of Tadao Ando was simply too good to resist! As designers we find the architecture incredibly inspiring, but don’t just take our word for it – the building was voted ‘Best Designed Place’ by the Building Design Partnership in its 2006 Annual Review.

The e-Innovation Centre was originally conceived a way to help graduates set up their own businesses within the technology and IT sectors, a noble goal which has since evolved into an ideal location for SME’s within the Telford area to operate surrounded by like minded and technologically forward thinking companies. Obviously we like it here, and if you would like to see it for yourself then please stop by and say hi!

‪P.S the office is also less than a 10 minute walk to a very nice local pub according to Google maps – personally I think we can make it in closer to 5, but this in no way influenced our decision to move in!

Synaesthesia is a relatively rare yet harmless condition which allows a person to interpret sounds, colours or words with two or more senses simultaneously. In Kandinskys case, colour and texture triggered particular sounds or musical notes – literally making the the process of creating a painting more akin to composing a symphony.

Image source: WebMuseum, Paris

The correlation between sound and colour was a lifelong preoccupation for Kandinsky, starting as a curious hissing sound heard when mixing colours in his paintbox as a child and leading to a dramatically moment of realisation during a performance of Wagners opera, an experience which moved him to say “I saw all my colours in spirit, before my eyes. Wild, almost crazy lines were sketched in front of me.”

Looking at his body of work it is easy to see how this unique background led to such distinctly abstract art. Despite lacking the familiar features of a portrait or landscape his work possesses a beauty of its own, focusing instead on balance, tone and the interaction of shapes.

A true master of composition, Kandinsky’s unique vision pushed the boundaries of the visual arts – and that is why he truly inspires us.

His work is often characterised by three signature elements; creative use of natural light, designs which compliment the contours of the surrounding landscape and extensive use of a building material traditionally viewed as crude – exposed, cast in place concrete.

When conceptualising his structures Ando took inspiration from Zen philosophies as an underlying constant, with the interplay of nature and artificial structures often resulting in complex interweaving three-dimensional designs that come together to form large geometric shapes which transverse both interior and exterior spaces – intended to represent the dual nature of existence.

Ando’s mindset of respecting the world around us and living in harmony with nature has inspired a generation of architects who are taking design to its natural extension of environmentally friendly designs. Even former England football star Gary Neville is onboard with this philosophy, having recently commissioned a custom carbon neutral mansion built into a hillside to avoid detracting from the surrounding rural landscape.

It’s an open source system, meaning that a community comprised of hundreds of volunteers are responsible for maintaining and updating the core software. The upside of this is that it’s managed by people who are truly passionate about using the system, so bugs and security issues are quickly patched out and it has quickly evolved into one of the most user friendly systems available.

There are also literally thousands of additional plugins available which have been created by developers to add specific functionality to your website from shopping carts to booking forms and photo galleries – making for an incredibly flexible development platform.

The main thing about WordPress is that you don’t need any technical knowledge to use it, so we’re usually able to get clients up to speed and editing their own pages within 10 minutes of showing them the backend system.  Oh, and did we mention it’s free to use? That’s sure to help keep costs down too, something that our clients appreciate too!

www.wordpress.org

Being an inflatable product meant that a puncture was inevitable at some point and this is at what is truly special about the Blow chair; they embraced this and it was released as a relatively cheap, disposable item which was intended to be fun and ran completely contrary to the traditional view of furniture. This attitude shift, combined with the ability to use it outdoors, led to it being enthusiastically adopted by the youth of the time and cemented its place as an iconic piece of 60′s design.

The blow chair itself may have ultimately been little more than a novelty but the concept behind it’s construction inspired others to create a wide range of inflatable products which have transformed the landscape of beaches and pools worldwide.

If that’s not a convincing enough case for why the blow chair is important then ask yourself this: would you rather be on a luxurious leather sofa indoors or on a cheap inflatable chair on the beach in the glorious sunshine? That’s what I thought!

The main aim of this project was to provide a clean and professional design which would give an at-a-glance overview of the courses main benefits along with booking information and the upcoming dates.

For the front of the flyers we used slightly abstract imagery that is conceptually linked to the course, resulting in a visually striking design to catch the eye of potential customers.

This was surrounded by a standardised frame featuring the MacBrac branding along with other important company details that could be retained for future flyers to maintain a consistent look and feel.

The bottom of the flyer is intentionally blank to allow for upcoming course dates  to be over-printed after the initial print run – extending the life of the design and making for much more cost effective printing. This flexible area also opens up the possibility of adding the latest offers and promotions without requiring a redesign.