New website due late summer

Mark posted in Studio News on 26 June 2009 - 0 Comments

Over the summer we will be working on our new website. With so much to shout about it seems we have outgrown our existing one.

With amazing growth over the last 6 months it looks like things are only getting better for Bourn and our clients. With little more than word of mouth and very well executed website marketing we have grown from a team of 4 to a team of 7.

We have taken on a new account handler. We will be introducing Cate to new and existing clients over the next few weeks. Cate has worked with some of the biggest and well know brands and will bring a wealth of experience and enthusiasm to the studio.
The recruiting process was a real eye opener and we were shocked by the high standards of the candidates. The number of good people applying for the position was a sure indication of how much the marketing industry has been hit by the recession. We would like to thank all the applicants who applied and came for an interview. It was incredibly close, and in the end, it was a tough decision for myself and Ciaron to make.

So what has been the secret of our success? One word RESULTS. Our clients have been reaping the rewards of incredibly effective marketing initiatives and as such we have retained over 90% of our clients. Our staff have grafted and made the studio a very inspirational place to be. It goes to show - if you work hard - it really does pay off.

Where to put those buttons?

Ciaron posted in Web Design on 25 June 2009 - 3 Comments

After a long afternoon designing web forms with fellow studio geek Terence, we struck up a healthy debate on the position of form buttons.

One form in particular required a cancel and a continue button. We both agreed that the cancel button was a negative action, and the continue button was a positive action. To illustrate further, I have put together a quick list of negative and positive actions.

Negative actions

• Cancel
• Don’t Save
• No
• Previous

Positive actions

• Continue
• Save
• Yes
• Next

Where we failed to see eye to eye was the position of these buttons. My preference was to place the positive button on the right, and the negative button on the left. This is based upon my instinctive expectation of expecting the Continue or Save button on the right.

Another view, strongly supported by Terence, was that the negative action should be placed on the right, with the positive on the left.

After debating the issue for all of 10 minutes, we decided to look at why Terence’s expectations differed so much from mine. After a bit of head scratching and a strong cup of tea, it dawned on us, an epiphany if you like - I had used a Mac for for last 20 years, whilst Terence has used Windows.

We took a look at dialogue panes generated by the 2 operating systems, and lo and behold, Windows displays the positive action on the left, whilst the OSX displays the positive action on the right.

So, we got to the bottom of our difference of opinion and conflicting expectations - but where does this leave us in terms of best practice?

I still stand firm in my belief that the positive action should always be placed on the right. But what it is also important to remember that we should always consider user expectations when developing any kind of user interface elements. This underpins our approach to all of our design projects - whilst we always try to push the envelope (did I just say push the envelope?) in terms of design, we always take in to account user expectations, and best practice procedures.

Let us know what you think. Are you a Mac or a PC user? Would you expect to see the positive action on the left or right?

Space invaders QR Code hijack

Mark posted in Graphic Design on 24 June 2009 - 0 Comments

I knew these reminded me of something. Consider your blog 'Space Invaded'.

Blackhat in the mainstream media at last

Terence posted in SEO on 24 June 2009 - 2 Comments

We're often warning people of the dangers of Black Hat SEO (traditionally spotted a mile off with tactics such as inappropriate keyword spamming spamming spamming keyword) both on this blog, and on the phone when someone has been guaranteed a number one position by someone who works for Google (we get the same calls ourselves).

For anyone still in doubt of how these quick 'guaranteed' campaigns can backfire badly though, spotted on the rounds today was the following news article:-

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8116869.stm

Yes, the latest internet social-networking trend Twitter has introduced a new potential avenue of abuse for Black Hat marketers, namely with the use of their own hashtags for tagging and linking people to theoretically appropriate content. Whilst the fact this is readily abused isn't surprising, it's certainly surprising for such a topic to make it into the mainstream media.

Somehow, I'm not surprised Habitat would rather not name the company involved in their marketing...

QR Codes are everywhere!

Matthew posted in Graphic Design on 23 June 2009 - 0 Comments

A couple of weeks back, (as part of the Eurocultured weekend), artist Yuri Suzuki created “Graffiti Radio”.  Dotted throughout the city, 2D graffiti QR codes (unusual square shaped barcodes) were sprayed onto any available surface with s stencil.  People who find the graffiti around the city can take a snapshot of the code on their mobile phone which then triggers music - in the form of an internet radio stream created by the artist.  The idea was to musically map the city of Manchester by using this informative form of graffiti. 
“Yuri is interested in a connection between graffiti and pirate radio. Both are creative expressions that hack into public facilities. In the case of graffiti, the hacker uses the wall. In case of pirate radio, the hacker uses public radio waves illegally. It can be said that pirate radio is sound graffiti and Suzuki proposes to combine these two methods of graffiti.”

The technology has been used in numerous advertising campaigns.  In 2007, posters of QR codes were used to “Spread the virus” for the DVD release of 28 Weeks Later.  Recently Editoras Online bookshop used the format to create “The Living Book”.  And glancing over my desk this morning I I spotted one on Dave’s Pepsi bottle.  QR codes are everywhere!