RIAS yearbook 2009

EC Design and Marketing are very proud to have been commissioned for the 3rd year in a row to design and produce the RIAS yearbook. RIAS are a leading over 50s insurance company and the yearbook is used to highlight key information and successes to staff and stakeholders alike. It is also used as the main document for the Insurance Times Awards, which RIAS has again been nominated.

Lloyds 'Living the Dream' Magazine

With much passion we have now released issue 22 of Lloyds 'Living the Dream' Magazine. This is a lifestyle property publication aimed at high networth individuals. We we especially pleased to feature in this issue Christina Aguilera modeling Stephen Webster exquisite diamond jewellery.

We also featured the Lamborghini Murcielago LP 670-4 SuperVeloce an awsome supercar with only 350 cars built with a price tag of £220K and with a top speed of 212mph. Lamborghini were so please with the feature that I was invited to Millbrook test circuit last Friday and got to finally take one out of the show room and onto a test track! - It took a while to get used to the 'Formula 1' style paddle shift gear change, but a few wheel spins later, no words can describe taking this beast from 0 - 190mph on the track straights, with gear changes at 8,000 revs!...

The Christina Aguilera photoshoot and Lamborghini features can be viewed on the online version of the magazine at: www.lloydslivingthedream.com

UP Premier - we 'raised' stacks of cash!

EC Design and Marketing are proud to announce that over £2,000 was 'raised' on the night for Tenovus Cancer from the charity premier night of the new Disney/Pixar movie UP. Tenovus is the charity of choice or EC Design and Marketing and we carry out numerous fund raising projects for them.

Disney/Pixar - UP movie

After the successful premier of Narnia Prince Caspian last year which we marketed, EC Design and Marketing have been asked to manage the charity advanced screenings of the new movie UP from Disney/Pixar. This is a charity event co-ordinated through our client Tenovus. All money raised will go towards this cancer charity. Keep an eye on our blog for dates and ticket prices, they will go 'up and away' fast!

Big Fish, Little Fish

We our pleased to present ‘Big Fish, Little Fish’, which is our summer themed game. We have had a great time building and testing it, having found it very addictive to play, so we hope you also enjoy having a go. So far our highest score in-house is just shy of the 3000 mark… why not see if you can beat it!?

www.ecdesignltd.co.uk/summergame/

Fortis Newsletter

We have just designed and produced the first edition newsletter for all Fortis Insurance staff in the UK. It was a very enjoyable and interesting project for us to take on. It was an opportunity for EC Design and Marketing to give a new direction to their monthly publication but still giving it the Fortis brand feel.

Fortis are running a competition to give the publication a name. And we look forward to receiving their suggestions

We are looking forward to putting together the next issue and our agency projects from financial sector continues to grow.

Lloyds Living the Dream Magazine

EC Design and Marketing are producing the Lloyds Living the Dream Magazine and not BH Publications - we are producing issue 22.

Lloyds Living the Dream

We are very proud to have been appointed to produce ‘Lloyds Living the Dream’, magazine, the ultimate lifestyle publication for the affluent and discerning. We reflect and showcase the best in luxury living, from homes and travel, fashion and trends, motoring and boating, capturing all that’s aspirational and must-have for our exclusive, high net-worth readership. We are not only producing the magazine but we are also managing all the media and articles. I have shown here a couple of sample spreads...we aim to take this magazine much more upmarket than previous issues with a set of exclusivity deals on advertising, coupled with an on-line directory.

‘Lloyds Living the Dream’ works for advertisers because it is a magazine of the highest quality, whose readers have the necessary income to buy the goods and services featured within its’ pages. Couple this with a distribution consisting of 15,000 copies being delivered directly to an ABC1 readership within Sandbanks, Canford Cliffs and surrounding areas throughout the region, plus a mailing list of exclusive Dubai and Russian contacts. This culminates in a readership of over 40,000.

Editorial content for the previous issue included George Clooney, Lamborghini, Dior, Danny Cipriani, Ferrari and Jumeirah Golf Estates in Dubai. Advertisers included, Bentley, BMW, Jaguar, Bang & Olufsen and Rolex.

Our first edition is due shortly...

The website we have just launched can be found at:
www.lloydslivingthedream.com

W3C - The Right Web Standards

A website that looks good on the surface, may not have been built in such a
way behind the scenes. If the HTML code has been built poorly or is
out-of-date, it will affect your search engine rankings and could
cause major problems with future Internet browsers.

A good web designer or agency like us, will build a website that complies
with the standards set out by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The W3C
are trying to get everyone to build to a set of rules, which will ensure
clean, precise and proper code. This should eventually solve the issues of
websites looking dissimilar in different browsers, as they will all be able
to process the code in the same way.

Search engines will naturally favour websites using the standardised code
and thus rank them higher.

To see if your website validates according to the standards, you can type
the URL of the website into the W3C’s validator. Alternatively, why not give us a call?!

http://validator.w3.org

Tips for building a Show, Exhibition or Expo website

We have just launched the new website for The British Leisure Show, a brand new outdoor leisure show hosted next year at the Royal Windsor Racecourse.

We had a large amount of crucial information that needed to be presented to users in a clear and concise, yet fun way.

These type of Exhibition websites are aimed at three main user groups, all with different requirements:

• Visitors to the show, especially families, who need to be persuaded into buying tickets by the quality of events, exhibitors, highlights or celebrities attending


• Potential exhibitors, who need to be attracted into buying stand space by the quality of the show, the other exhibitors, sponsors, venue and packages on offer


• The media or press who need to be convinced to promote the show through their media channels.

Designing a website for three different user groups will always be a difficult task.

We split up the website's navigation into these unique user areas, so users know exactly where to look for the information they require. Although some information (such as travel directions) is repeated, users do not have to leave their "area" to find any extra details.

The design, which utilises a colourful palette but with a basic white background, appeals to all users and ages without being too childish or too corporate.

It is also essential these days to market a show website via Web 2.0 technologies such as social networking sites, bookmarking sites and forums. We have offered all users direct links to some of these channels on every page. There will also be a Community area launched soon promoting the Blog, Facebook Group and Newsletters.

As many exhibitions or expos are fully accessible to disabled visitors, it is very important that websites are accessible and follow the WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) to ensure the website complies with the Disability Discrimintaion Act. We made The British Leisure Show site follow all of Level A, and a large number of Level AA guidelines.

View the British Leisure Show website at www.britishleisureshow.com

Report and Accounts - a labour of love

We have just recently designed and produced the Annual Report and Accounts for Teachers Building Society and it has been a real pleasurable and satisfying job to work on. It has been a while since I have designed my last Report and Accounts and I forgot just how typographically demanding they are.

Any designer who has produced a R&A will understand ‘tabs’ are crucial and accuracy of lining up text, numbers and brackets. Hours were spent agonising over column widths, lining up text and making sure ‘feed’ and ‘number kerning’ was consistent throughout. Our designer Wesley again excelled in producing highly accurate and consistent page layouts. Timescales were demanding as the final figures to be set were only released a few days prior to our print deadline, a challenge, but one we just thrived on!

I have just re-discovered my love again for R&A’s and the client was a pleasure to work with, which made the job even more satisfying to work on. We hope to get the opportunity to produce more R&A’s for other clients over the next financial year. If I was not a designer maybe I should have been an accountant…not!

Internet Explorer 6 - Why Upgrade?

EC have noticed that 10-20% of our website users are viewing the site on Internet Explorer 6. With Internet Explorer 8 in beta stage (soon to be widely released), and other browsers such as Firefox or Chrome increasing in popularity, are there any benefits to using IE6 and why should you upgrade?

IE6 was originally released in 2001, and therefore in many ways the browser is 8 years out of date. Not only does this have an effect on the speed of browsing the Internet, the look of websites and website compatibility, but there are also major security issues. IE6 is still potentially only able to cope with with virus, malware and other security threats circa 2001-2003, and therefore it does not always have the capacity to deal with the modern, more complex threats that the newer browsers do.

Other criticisms of IE6:

• It does not support new web development technologies so web designers must use workarounds for IE6 to display web pages correctly, costing time and money in the process
• Any new websites not taking IE6 into account, may be displayed incorrectly or not work properly
• It tends to crash easily
• It takes longer to display webpages, as the software which takes HTML code and outputs it visually as a website is out of date
• It does not use tabbed browsing so a new window has to be opened for every website being viewed, and this may slow down the users' computer
• It does not 'anti-alias' text on webpages, which means fonts looked ragged at the edges
• It has always been very unpopular, and was voted the 8th worst technology product of all time by PC World in 2006

EC will continue to develop IE6-compatible websites until the software is obsolete, however if you agree with any of the criticisms, or are concerned about the security issues, it might be time to upgrade your browser:

IE7: www.microsoft.com/windows/downloads/ie/getitnow.mspx
(or through Windows Update)
IE8 beta: www.tinyurl.com/cwk87j
Firefox: www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox
Google Chrome: www.google.com/chrome

Are you a freelance web developer/programmer?

EC are looking for developers/programmers to work freelance for us on a number of varied and interesting web-based projects.

Freelancers should have:

- Excellent PHP and MySQL skills in order to build web applications and back-end website systems
- Experience developing websites within CMS frameworks such as Drupal or Joomla
- e-Commerce experience, such as setting up/building within Actinic, other shopping cart software, or building their own small shop management systems

They should also have some experience with building valid, accessible XHTML/CSS websites. Some ASP and Javascript knowledge would also be a bonus.

If you are interested please send your details, examples of work and hourly/daily rate to jodi@ecdesignltd.co.uk

Implementation, Rebranding and Design

The majority of UK companies see a successful rebrand as a key way of weathering the recession, according to new research.

Implementation, Rebranding and Design, a report commissioned by branding consultancy the Principle Group, surveyed 250 marketing directors of blue chip companies and UK business owners and found that the majority recognise the importance of rebranding in a downturn and acknowledge the role of design in assisting business recovery. A few that is shared here at EC and the brands that we represent.

85% said that design can play an important role in generating a recovery for some brands. A successful rebranding was seen by 64% of UK business leaders as a route to gaining a competitive edge. Similarly, 63% agreed that a new identity signified a ‘bold embracing of change’.

“Any brand with the appetite to develop its identity in a recession demonstrates a willingness to challenge the market and a commitment to its businesses, services and products”.

The report shows a number of examples that includes Tesco retaining its ‘Every little helps’ approach and Aldi actively marketing and advertising its core ‘value’ proposition to a new audience of middle-class shopper. Also this month Citroen launched a new identity and according to Citroen Communications Director: “At a time when the bulk of the automotive industry is suffering a loss in confidence, we’re using the opportunity of a difficult climate to change the relationship with customers and show them that the company is reinventing itself”

In-fact in a way, us the designers should be communicating the strength and power of good design, its value and relevance to success for business owners and in this report 76% agreed.

Source: Principle Group

The top 5 Recession busting must-have website features for 2009

1. Blog - with RSS/Atom feeds
They’re quick and easy to update, can be informal and can develop a large user base if the right content and appropriate sharing mechanisms are used. A blog can also be a way of encouraging two-way communications, engaging the user by giving them the ability to comment on posts and providing a research resource for consumers. All of this of course providing sound commercial benefits which may include an increase in website transactions and enquiries – and remember it is search engine friendly. You can also allow users to subscribe to your news and blog feeds via RSS/Atom, which not only helps to establish you as an authority in your area of business, but also encourages repeat visits and increased brand awareness and loyalty – all contributing to increased levels of sales.

2. Regularly updated content
One key factor in SEO is frequent updates to your site’s content – search engines will love you for it and this will certainly help your overall SEO strategy and rankings.

3. Customer reviews/testimonials
Taking the communication one step further and enabling customers to review you, your products and your service can open a valuable communications channel, whilst increasing customer confidence. Don’t be scared of bad reviews, they give you the chance to react and the opportunity to improve your service.

4. Offer something for free
Letting users access useful and interesting content will increase visits and may even encourage a viral buzz about your website on forums and other social networking sites. Informative articles, glossaries, help guides, downloadable PDF print-outs and so on can help to build brand loyalty with customers.

5. Newsletter sign up area
Your website could offer the functionality to allow visitors to sign-up for email newsletters quickly and simply. Users who have signed up can then be targeted about new products and services, which will increase repeat visits. By including deals and offers in these newsletters, it may also encourage users to forward them on to friends and family, promoting awareness of your brand.

What will 2009 bring?

In the latest edition of Design Week it made interesting reading as journalists predict how our industry will fair in this recession. Plenty of advice but there was an article that caught me eye which was a ‘Vox – pop’ of opinion from our industry leaders. The question was ‘What do you hope 2009 will bring?’ I am inspired by the following responses.

“There is a great line by Woody Allen that goes ‘I’ve got my principles and if you don’t like them there are plenty more where they came from’ This coming year will need self belief and an absolute focus on which opportunities are the right ones, belief in what we do best, why we are doing it and who we should do it for”

My favourite was from one of my ex bosses – “2009 is going to be extremely tough, but I hope it will bring braver designers and even braver clients”

We hope 2009 will be a profitable and focused year. We will continue to deliver strategic quality brand marketing, good strong clean creative solutions for our clients to help them compete their way through the recession.