The Escape Blog...

This is a statement I know too often to be true. You would think after a few bad experiences I might have learnt my lesson. However in times of financial strain we all tend to try and cut corners or perhaps the more appropriate phrase would be ‘take a risk’.

A flyer came through my door a few weeks back. It was from a girl who had set herself up selling Bio-sculpture Nail Services. Bio-sculpture is a clear gel that basically strengthens the nails and allows them to grow. As I looked down at my chubby digits with thin brittle nails I though “why not, it won’t break the bank and I can’t afford to go to a beautician this month so I will give her a call”. After an hour of mindless talk and a set of incredibly tacky solid white tips, covered by very messy gel I gave the girl the £22 and said my goodbyes.

After she left, I tried to battle that sinking feeling that you get on occasions such as this. For at least 20 minutes I tried to convince myself “oh it’s not that bad for the price really”.

Well actually, it was that bad, it was really bad! Instead of my usual ’slightly masculine’ looking hands, I now had slightly masculine looking transvestite hands! Oh yes –  it was as though Vicky Pollard herself had given me her hands in her last will and testament and I HAD to wear them!

It got me thinking about how it relates to ‘almost’ all of our choices regarding services… whether it be builders, kitchen fitters, hairdressers, mechanics and so on and so on. This includes the industry I work in. Nothing angers me more than seeing some ropey piece of design or artwork that has clearly be done by someone who hasnt got a clue, but probably ‘pedals their wares’ as an experienced pro.

We are often questioned on cost in our industry because there is usually someone’s ’son’s, friends, brother’ who has just discovered Photoshop for the first time and has promised a 20 page brochure for a packet of Marlborough Light’s and fifty quid. My Dad has always said “you get paid for doing something that not everyone else can do”. This is true, and it also comes with years of experience and knowledge passed on from other professionals over the years. I think that generally applies to whatever industry you choose, so long as you have a good mentor. This is what you pay for right? A job may ‘only take’ 2 hours to amend, but it takes two hours and 15 years of experience and skill. I read from David Thorne’s website, a designer who cleverly and funnily puts this point across (see Link) http://www.27bslash6.com/p2p2.html.

I think he hits the nail on the head. There is of course nothing to say that there aren’t people out there who do a good job for a good price, but I would say there is a difference between a good price and a incredibly ‘cheap’ price. If the brochure prints with pixelated images, grubby colours and inconsistencies, then not only does this reflect badly on you (the client) as a person and your business interests….  you then have the stress and conflict of either trying to get your money back or pay someone else to do it again. If you have a website built where you have more chance of navigating your way around Spaghetti Junction then the pile of confusion on the screen, then it is not exactly doing the job you had in mind.

I suppose it’s up to you whether you are happy to ‘take the risk’ in life. I certainly won’t be taking any more risks with my nails and will stick with the tried and tested skills of the girls at Beauty Box in Basingstoke from now on!

This weekend, I finally made the trip to the cinema to watch the much-hyped Avatar in 3D, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Having seen a couple of the latest generation 3D films as well as the classic ‘old style’ red & blue lens 3D in my childhood, it got me thinking about where 3D has come from and what the future is for it.

Way back in 1894 William Friese Greene discovered and filed a patent application for a new technology that would change the way we see motion picture. That technology was 3D, three-dimensional motion picture that provides the illusion of ‘depth’. However, although revolutionary, it had never been able to remain a constant fixture in our cinemas, getting killed off before once again returning like a classic horror movie bad guy, having comebacks throughout the 20th century as technology evolved.

But is our latest & current fascination of 3D just another stint or is it here to stay - a happy ending for 3D? I think a key part of it’s survival is for it to break out of the cinema & become more involved in our everyday lives. Let’s face it, back in the 60’s most people would have thought that a 3D tv would common place in every house by 1990, let alone by 2010 (not forgetting living our lives like the Jetsons, flying round on spaceships). The big players in technology have made 3D tv sets for domestic use & more studios are now shooting in both 3D and 2D as standard which would suggest that this may not just be another fad. Also without film studios capitalizing on the dvd market, it maybe difficult to sustain. It’s not just movies that will be hitting our tv’s in 3D, with BskyB launching a dedicated 3D channel this year, beaming a wide range of 3D tv straight into our homes from Swan Lake, to Premier League football. This of course will require a ‘3D ready’ tv for the end user reap the benefits, but it’s another strong indication that 3D will become standard in homes in the near future. It was trialled for the first time this weekend by Sky, in a handful of pubs across the UK, showing Arsenal v Man United with that extra dimension (However, even 4D would not have made that game the slightest bit enjoyable for me, being an Arsenal fan).

This doesn’t just stop at the movies and TV either. The gaming industry is at an all time high, if not bigger than the movie industry - so it looks increasingly likely 3D will be adding a whole new dimension to the way we play games. Can 3D become part of our working lives too? Will brands start manufacturing 3D monitors? As a web designer, will we have to take a new dimension into consideration when creating a website for a client?

I guess only time will tell if it will be a happy ending for 3D.

Jason, our resident, all-round techie guru, sometimes referred to as ‘Technical Director’ here at The Escape has become the newest member of the GN Netcom Global Web Team.

The arrangement is a strategic, external partnership to help our client to quickly, efficiently and cost-effectively update and enhance its portfolio of on-line portals mainly through a custom-built, CMS front-end.

The good news is that Jason and his team actually know what it all means as well as how to do it!

As part of this on-going arrangement between the two businesses, Jason will also be attending the annual team meeting event held in Copenhagen. Naturally, he’s also been tasked with bringing back a truck full of Carlsberg for the rest of us.

The Internet is still growing at a jaw-dropping pace. The number of published websites have increased massively in the last decade with conservative estimates now putting the figure well in excess of 200,000,000 (200m) sites.

For a commercial organisation, this will almost certainly mean increased competition. So today, a web presence alone may not be enough to drive business growth. So what’s one of the simplest and most effective ways to deliver what your customers are looking for? Well, it’s not an entirely new concept by any stretch - it’s blogging.

Now blogging has had a bit of a rough ride over the last year or so with many ‘power’ bloggers deciding to throw the towel in citing a number of reasons including the meteoric rise of its sister platform - the micro-blog - and Twitter in particular.

But should we be giving up on the trusty old web log? Well, there are a number of compelling reasons why we should persist.

Firstly, blogging still remains one of the principal conduits to driving quality web traffic directly and indirectly. Recent statistics have revealed that the average blog attracts 55% more visitors and gets indexed 434% more by search engines than a typical website.

Secondly, if blogging was on the slippery slope that some would have us believe, this doesn’t explain the continued investment in blogs by the majority of the mainstream media who clearly believe in the value that blogging brings. Granted, in a media context, blogs are very informational in their nature with content that would typically include commentary and opinion but still remains a central part of syndicated news content.

But remember that a blog is about more than simply pumping out words. Blogs need to have an element of planning and strategy behind them to deliver measurable results. Done consistently well, a blog can still make a difference to your marketing effort in an attempt to attract new customers, build brand awareness and inspire your prospects to buy.

In summary, there’s still plenty of evidence to suggest that, as far as the humble blog is concerned, “rumours of its death have been greatly exaggerated!”

So if you’re no longer blogging or have reduced the rate at which you’re contributing to your blog, you may just want to look again.

Diesel, the well known Jeans manufacturer has dived into 2010 with a new message for its admirers and onlookers. Be Stupid.

Campaigns like this always intrigue me. Is it a little stroke of creative genius that gets bods like me talking about it, or is it… well… just stupid?

For me, I like things that capture my attention because they are ‘different’. If we always do what we’ve always done, frankly the world (and our individual lives) would become very boring in a short amount of time. For this reason I quite like Be Stupid. The fashion industry does have a habit of disappearing up its own backside sometimes, using imagery of pencil thin glamour pus’s, scowling at a camera, with no message, just the designers brand identity. Sometimes thats enough, but I for one quite like being made to think… so long as its easy enough to come to the right conclusion, or the conclusion the campaign is meant to help you arrive at. I think we’ve all been in that position where you look at something and think to yourself “I just dont get it”.

According to Diesel, being stupid is basically being brave, being individual… doing something you might not normarily do. I guess this campaign is summed up with their creative for this. Its very different from any approach they’ve taken before. You cannot miss it, it leaps out at you, whilst ensuring you still see product and the brand. The approach to the advertising is playful… cheeky I guess, which is the tone of voice the brand wants their customers or potential customers to ‘get’. It may just be that this approach will diversify their customer base because it appeals to a different bunch of ‘crazy’ denim buyers, whilst retaining the existing customer base who buy into the brands comfort, quality and stature.

I dont doubt there will be many that will find it easier to knock this brave approach, probably because its scares them a little. They have probably always bought their Jeans from Next and will continue to do so… ‘because they fit right’. If thats the case then fair enough, but I like the fact this is just a little daring.

It could just be the type of personality the fashion market needs.

I think its fair to say that time will prove how successful this turns out to be. Successful campaigns have to evolve and I think this is a prime case in point. This could start to get a little tiresome if not enough humour and variety is brought into it.

I’d like to think the guys at Anomaly will ‘go’, and ‘be’ Stupid and give this the crazy marketing legs it needs to have some longevity.

When I was explaining this in the office, Tony asked if this was a real word. “It is now” I confidently replied. The truth is,  colorstrology has been around for about 6 years. Most of us know that colour influences our emotional and mental state.  Yellow is often associated with sunshine and optimism, blue with relaxation and peace, red with passion and excitement and so on and so forth. Pantone and Michele Bernhardt got together and created a site that tells you your birth colour.  According to Michele…

“Your personal colour is a key to your inner world, your personality and emotions. It is designed to honour the real you”.

So it’s kind of mixing astrology with colours. They assign a colour to each day of the year, with three specific words that apply to the person born on that day and a little write-up about your personality in relation to those three words.

I don’t care if it’s BS or not, I like it, it’s a bit of fun and we all need a little bit of fun to brighten the day along with the colour.

Turquoise.

Although the gang in the studio will know it as Pantone 15-5519.  Turquoise is a slightly greenish shade of Cyan and is based on the gem of the same name.  The name itself originates from the French for Turkish.

Pantone say that

“Turquoise inspires thoughts of soothing tropical water and a comforting escape from the everyday troubles of the world, while at the same time restoring our sense of wellbeing.”

Sounds good to me.

With many months already spent at the development stage, Google is set to release the latest and possibly one of its most influential updates to the world’s most popular search engine so far.

Code-name Caffeine, there is much speculation as to what impact this next-generation architecture will have on the online community, especially those who depend on good organic rankings to give visibility to their businesses.

According to Google, Caffeine is “…the first step in a process that will let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions.”

It’s not clear whether the full extent of Google Caffeine has been felt as yet although there are signs that some of Google’s data centres have begun kicking in the new Google Caffeine indexing system.

A rich blend

So what will it all mean to webmasters and business owners?

There is strong and increasing evidence to support the following possibilities:

• Video may no longer be a way of helping push a top search placement quickly.
• Social media websites such as Twitter could begin to provide better levels of good quality traffic.
• Listings on ‘authority’ websites may present much improved SEO opportunities.
• More emphasis on a ‘keyword-heavy’ domain name may be of some help with ranking.
• Single keywords (as opposed to keyword strings) may begin to reduce results as a source of search visibility.

Also stirring in the Caffeine pot are other ingredients that include a big push towards ‘real-time’ search which will be a huge asset to social media sites along with domain age which could very well become more important after Caffeine is fully rolled out so it’s probably a good idea to seek links from older, more established websites.

All in all, the extent to which Google Caffeine will have an effect remains to be seen  - but we surely won’t need wait too long now.

It’s fair to say that the weather is a bit extreme and now the Health and Safety Executive rule our lives and our businesses, people are unable to get in.  Rest assured though, Operation “Day After Tomorrow” was put in place yesterday and every Escapee is still working on our client projects.  In case you do need to get hold of us, the best form of communication during this freaky weather is email.

Stay safe everyone.

It’s very common for a creative brief to contain a footnote from the client that stipulates something along the lines of, “Oh, and can we do something original?”

On the face of it, this isn’t an unreasonable request. Here at The Escape, originality is always one of our principal aims. The notion is simple, to develop and nurture an idea into a deliverable that adds tangible value through implicit inventiveness and execution. The benefits are two-fold. It sets apart our clients’ product or service offerings as well as being a differentiator for us as a design agency.

In reality, however, originality is rarely as straightforward as it sounds. For example, if a wheelwright was asked to produce a wheel but to “do something original”, I’d guess it would still end up being fairly round in shape.

Therein lies the challenge for all creatives.

Occasionally, we encounter something that, while broadly ’round in shape’, does deliver a departure from ‘the norm’ (whatever that might be).

The following images are ingenious extensions of a long-established advertising medium - the advertising hoarding or billboard. The clever bit, however, is by applying another dimension - literally - to deliver a more life-like effect.

This generates significant appeal and becomes much more ‘natural’ or ‘real’ since we all experience our world in 3D rather than the more conventional 2D approach to on- or off-line advertising.

Have a look at the following and tell us what you think.