by lelo | Mar 24, 2016 | muse
Easter – a time of hope and renewal, and of course chocolate
That got me thinking…
Ideas are just like chocolate…
- An idea can be moulded and remoulded
- An idea can be eaten away at, but still be good
- An idea can be filled with extra delicious ingredients and become a great idea
Do you have an idea that needs a creative team to help you to shape it, and make it great?
Call or email us, let’s make something great (and delicious) with your idea!
Remember – chocolate, like budgets, can also melt away from one tax year to the next!
Oh – and … Happy Easter!
All I really need is love, but a little chocolate now and then doesn’t hurt! Lucy Van Pelt – Peanuts
by lelo | Jan 11, 2016 | linkedin, muse, top tip
I first looked at IFTTT – ‘If This, Then That’ when a fantastic plugin I used called ’LinkedIn Include’ – which pulled your articles (not your profile or stream) from LinkedIn onto your WordPress site – was eventually blocked by LinkedIn (hey –ho!).
I discovered that IFTTT is quite frankly – brilliant!
IFTTT has a bank of prepared ‘Recipes’ you can use, or you can make your own. A Recipe is a connection between products or Apps. Recipes come in two types: DO and IF. DO Recipes run on your device triggered by personalized button – you can do things like; trigger a call to get you out of a meeting (US only); email someone to let them know you are on your way home; turn up the heating for when you get home! IF Recipes run automatically in the background and are connections between Apps, If this (ie a Twitter action), then that (ie a Dropbox action).
I wanted to do more on Instagram, and I’m not a great self publicist, but I am working on a long-term project for myself I’ve called #treetwoproject so that seemed the perfect way for me to use IFTTT. So I take a picture of a wonderful Oak tree on my morning walk – which I will eventually present animating to show how the countryside in that snapshot changes. From Instagram I run three IFTTT ‘Recipes’, one posts the picture I have taken as a native Twitter image (everyone should do this), one sends the posted image to my Dropbox, the last puts it onto Pinterest (this one is a bit flaky).
OK – that’s good, but what else can it do?
Well, pretty much anything when you have two Apps that are connected to you! For example:
- Collect Tweets or blog posts from a particular user to a Google spreadsheet
- Set up a Twitter search for key phrases like ‘I need a designer’
- Your Google Calendar appointments can be sent as text alerts
- If you are following a particular hashtag, when it’s used have that user added to a Twitter list
- Send your WordPress posts to LinkedIn
- Create scheduled and recurring Trello cards
- Unmute your ringer in the morning (oh yes!)
LinkedIn in only works one way, so I cannot replicate LinkedIn Include, but I have streamlined a lot of my day!
@angiefuz
by lelo | Jan 11, 2016 | design tip, muse, top tip
Colour is an important part of how we express ourselves. Colour can make us feel more comfortable, more assured, more attuned.
First impressions count, and colour is the first thing you notice in a logo or visual footprint – 80% of visual information is related to colour* – it does so much work to tell your story before even getting to your logo, typography, image style, use of white space, your tone of voice, and use of language.
You may not like pastels and they may not be appropriate for your business, but each year there are trending colours. I tend to stay away from pastels as they are notoriously hard to colour match on-line and in print (your logo colours should always be colour matched to appear the same on-line in RGB, and when printed as Pantone and CMYK), but if you are a fashionista, ‘Rose Quartz’ and ‘Serenity’ are the trending colours for 2016 from Pantone.
Two colours were selected this year, which is a first for Pantone. They were chosen to connect with the zeitgeist for gender blurring, along with the idea that using two colours reflects ‘a soothing sense of order and peace’ (Leatrice Eiseman/Pantone). What do you think – did they hit the mark? Is your colour palette colour matched for use both on-line, and in print?
2016 will see a move towards logos that lend themselves to animation, as video content becomes a more important factor on websites and social media (think of the new Channel 4 graphics, rather than the new BBC 3 logo!). For example, take a look at the logo Angie designed recently for the Milner Therapeutics Institute. It’s based on the idea of a Möbius strip with a bit of Escher influence – a three dimensional structure with two ‘faces’ that are separate but inter-dependent, representing the symbiosis of research and industry facilitated by the institute. With its building block, three dimensional form, it’s perfect for animating. The colours represent the mix of creativity (orange) and stability (dark blue).
How is your company logo standing up – does it still match your business purpose? Does it need refining? Is your colour palette working for you? Does it need a seasonal tweak? Or consider adding some accent colours. I’m not saying go pastel! Have a think, and then contact us to discuss!
This is how Instagram tweaked its logo and added colour
More reading on logo colour
by lelo | Oct 22, 2015 | linkedin, muse, top tip
One of things we quite often get asked for, is help with a PowerPoint presentation. This can vary from setting up a template that reflects our clients’ – quite often new – look and feel, or translating complicated slide content into something visual and easy to understand, to transforming a ‘death-by-PowerPoint’ presentation into something the audience would find engaging. We have been given raw presentations of 50 plus slides (no kidding!). The client knows this isn’t looking right (thank heavens!), so comes to us for help. More often than not, the detail can go into the notes (or the bin). We then go back with a stripped down version – but all the creative writing the client has done is hard to let go, so we will end with a compromise. But – Hurrah!! – the audience gets to stay awake!
How to make a better presentation – think differently!
For those of you who write PowerPoint Presentations, have a look at
PechaKucha – it is how you would want a PowerPoint presentation to be if you were in the audience. PechaKucha is a format
devised by Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham of Klein Dytham architecture, and has grown virally into a global social phenomenon.
The idea is simple – the PechaKucha 20×20 format – 20 slides, preferably as visual as possible, with an end-to-end story delivered by the host, each shown for 20 seconds. It is engaging and captivating. Go to the site and check out a few; PechaKucha, it could change the way you construct your next presentation!
Do you need help with your PowerPoint presentation? Does your PowerPoint template reflect your company brand? Having trouble distilling information into a graphic – for PowerPoint or anything else? Get in touch if the answer is yes!
> See more posts on LinkedIn
