Wildlife Photographer of the year Exhibition

In the weekend I went to go and see the Wildlife Photographer of the year exhibition at the Auckland Museum. What an amazing exhibition!! Firstly I was impressed at how well the Museum has done to organise and set up such a glorious space to display the artworks and secondly by the amount of talent some kids have!

A piece from the under 10's

The whole gallery wasn’t children’s work, it was mostly professional photography, but there were a few sections dedicated to teen work and another section to under 10. Just incredible! I did wonder how much their parents had to do with the image though, the cameras they were using were an easy $5,000 – I don’t consider my childhood to be overly under-privileged but there is no way my mother would have bought me a $5,000 “toy”.




I was also impressed by the stories told behind the photo, so many photographers put their own life on the line for a good shot. There was an incredible image a heard of bison storming through the snow towards the camera, the photographer was out shooting wolves at the time and something startled them and they began to run towards him. Instead of ditching the camera and running for his life he was adjusting saturation and lenses!! Another, the winning shot was a Polar Bear, half in the water half out. The man who took this shot was in the water with a snorkel and fins only, tied to the boat by a rope, this bear swam up to him and patted his camera with his paw… WITH HIS PAW!!! It then swam away but not before giving an award winning masterpiece. Was it worth it? It appears so…

Possibly the cutest thing I have ever seen

We started to discuss how much image alteration is allowed before it becomes graphic design instead of photography. Am I just being a cynical designer here in assuming every image I see released professionally must have had some Photoshop work done to it? If these images truly are untouched and this is the raw photo taken, then I am even more impressed!

It has definitely inspired me to take up photography myself, and I’m not ashamed to admit my early photography WILL require the use of Photoshop I have no doubt in that. As I have done a bit of photo work already for clients building websites who need product or shop photos done before, I think it is time I invested into an SLR camera. If anyone has any recommendations please let me know, there are a couple that have been suggested to me already so I’m going to look further into the Sony Alpha A290, Canon EOS 1100D and the Canon EOS 60D.

If you live around the Auckland area and are looking for some free entertainment, definitely go check the gallery out, you won’t be disappointed. Be warned this also appeals to families, and screaming children also come with the gallery.

How to create content for your first website

So you have decided your company needs to be online. Congratulations – go you!
Deciding what you should put online is the hardest part of all. Writing web content is different to writing print, people engage differently online than they do in person or on paper. You have less time to grab and hold their attention and more things to worry about like usability, design and structure.

Starting to create content for your first website is the main concern most clients I have worked with have; usually I would sit down with them over a cup of tea and discuss their requirements, competitors, and details of their business – who they sell to, who they would like to sell to and what other marketing they have running currently (but today I am writing it down for you). Once you have a gauge on who your business is/ who you are - you are half way there! Figure out your unique point of view, what makes you different to your competitors and what do you believe are your best assets?

Start with a brainstorm, write down all of the assets your business has:

• Location
• Staff experience
• Qualifications
• Products
• Ingredients/tools/suppliers

Now write down everything you can think about who might be looking at buying what you have to offer, your target audience:

• Sex
• Age
• Monetary status
• Their fears / concerns (this one is important)
• Lifestyle

The aim of your website should be to address and answer any questions your customers might have. You want to inform them of everything you do, think about what could go wrong in your industry; these are the fears your target audience have. Now think of what you can do to address them and put at ease any concerns your customer might have over using you. 

As an example, a construction company wanted to address the fear they found a lot of their customers had that construction companies are always late and don’t finish projects on time. So they introduced a guarantee policy on their website where for every day they were over due on a project they would pay the customer $100. If you were looking for a construction company and you saw one offered this deal and a competitor didn’t, who would you trust? People are more trusting of you when they see you are human and have something to lose if you let them down. No one wants to part with $100 so I’d believe they are going to finish on time!

Once you have the direction your website is heading, you’ll need to think of how many pages you’ll need and what should go on them.

Home Page

This is your landing page, the page that people will go to when they first click on your site. You need to grab their attention immediately and let them know what you do.

Include a catchy heading that sparks interest (make sure it is keyword rich). Follow this with a brief paragraph about 200 words and nail out exactly what it is you do and how you can help them. Do you find this tough to write? Think about your location, what you sell, what you believe in and how you can improve a customer’s life. You don’t have to go into too much detail, take a look at other websites (particularly your competitors) and see how they do it. Don’t copy it now, you’ll never win. As being the newer of the websites Google already has you at a disadvantage. The longer you are online, the better you rank. So you had better find a point of difference if you want to overtake and start pinching some customers.

Other pages you might like to include (industry dependant)

About Us Page

Go into great detail who you are, where you came from, what you believe in. If you have staff you might want to include their profiles. People are more trusting of using companies with a face. So don’t be shy about having yours on display. Keep your content to 300-600 words, and break it up with sub headings and bullet points. Google loves lists, and so do people reading off a screen.

Products and Services

What do you have on offer? Clearly set out what you sell, its benefits (remember answer queries and fears people might have) and include a price list if you have one! So many companies feel shy about including prices online, which is stupid. The prices aren’t going to change when someone rings up to ask are they - your competitor can ring up and ask just as easily so what are you hiding from? You need to make the decision for customers to come to you as easy as possible so don’t hide anything – customers will smell a rat.

Why choose us page

This can be multiple pages and doesn’t have to be titled as such; these are pages for you to gloat about what you can do for them. Can you get testimonials from your previous clients? Great! Definitely include them and any success stories and images you might have from past projects. Start a gallery – people love looking through photos and videos. Include any press releases, advertising or special deals. These are the extra pages people will filter around to find out more about you. Word of mouth is strong advertising, so why not be the mouth? Show proof of your success and what you have done for other people so far.

Contact

Always let people know how they can get hold of you. Include any Social Media or Blog sites you are linked in to. Put in an address, a phone number an email address, try and include something like this on every page if you can. You never want someone to have to click more than once before being able to get a hold of you.

This is the best compassionate photo I could find,
it made me all smooshy inside so had to be included. Naaw

The best advice I can give for creating content is be real. People want to interact with human beings, not machines. So add a personal touch to it. Don’t speak in marketing gibberish - it is obvious you want to sell them a product, sell to them through stories and life events, be compassionate in your writing and the tone will set itself.









Good luck! Any questions give me a shout!

Click here for more information on how I can help you get started.

Getting you in the mood

Mood boards are a great way to get a feel for the industry you are working for. As a graphic designer who will work for any industry you can throw at me, you can’t expect your style to suit everyone... so as chameleons of the creative world we have to adapt and a great way to start the change is with a mood board.

What is a mood board?

It probably means different things to everyone, but for me it is a page with a collection of different images, fonts, graphics, colours and anything I can find that fits in with the style they are after for their target market.

How do you start?

I start with a brainstorm first, write down as many buzz words as possible to do with that industry. Then on to Google. God I love Google. What did Graphic designers do before the internet?? I use the images tab on Google search and start typing in buzz words at random, you’ll be surprised at the amount of content that comes up. Sometimes it isn’t much help other times it leads you to more buzz word ideas.

Start copy and pasting these images on to the page. No matter how random if what you see makes you feel like it is related it is worth putting down. Mood boards are an emotional response to what you are designing; they set the tone for the rest of the brand to follow so if you are feeling it, it’s working. FYI - we aren’t going to steal any work we find, we are using the images we gather to inspire a new design.

Here are 3 mood boards I have created for a new mountain biking website. The style was to be young, tough, and urban and more importantly nothing about this brand must say it is for road cycling. Road cyclists and their spandex are not the target market; this site is for rough, dirty, grungy extreme "sportists". The brand has to have many elements so it can be used on clothing as well promotional material and sports gear.

You can see I have used existing brands that appeal to the same target market Fox, Red Bull and Monster Energy and found other sports the audience might be in to – Skating, Snowboarding and Motocross. I love the sketchy, graffiti style mixed with dark greys, dirty oranges, whites and a bright colour to make it pop - I will probably look at using these styles and colours as a base for my design too.

I love mood boards, not everyone needs them, but it gets me excited about what I am about to create. I am about to venture into the new mountain biking brand from these mood boards so watch this space to see the result!

Again with the obvious

I had to share with you the mere I had with my computer last week.
I was trying to install a new copy of Microsoft Office (for the 2nd time as I had messed up the 1st time), only instead of being a simple download, a number of errors kept occurring, before the CD failed to respond at all. Now I should tell you I had already been having computer problems this week so my technology stress levels were at an all time high breaking point.

I feel like I go through the five stages of grief throughout this whole experience.

• Denial. It’s not broken, it’s brand new it can’t be broken. I just have to double click it again, or right click instead, or open it through the computer tab instead of autorun. Or perhaps if I stand upside down on my head... I got creative.
  
• Anger. The cave woman in me starts to roar, when I try really hard to fix something and it doesn’t go to plan it's hard not to stomp my feet as the bottom lip pouts out.
  
• Bargaining. But wwwhhhhhyyyy, wwwhhhyyyy are you doing this to me?! I actually start talking to the computer. I’m glad I work alone the sound of a grown woman whinging to herself would be quite horrifying. Especially in the whiney voice I have adapted, something of a dolphin cross hyena.
  
• Depression. Head buried deep in my hands. Life is over. As a web and graphic designer the computer is my life line, my existence... Maybe a tad dramatic? Don’t push me, I’m on the edge!
  
• Acceptance. Ok it’s broken; I admit I can’t fix this. I thought I could. I was wrong, for the first time in my life (ho ho ho) I am wrong. I’ll call IT.
  

So I ring the IT helpline and the conversation goes something like this:

Filipino guy: “have you tried restarting your computer”
Me: “are you serious?”
Filipino guy: “yes mam’, please restart your computer”

.... some time goes by

Me: “oh for @#$* sake. Thank you.”

Font Fashion

Like fashion, fonts have appropriate uses and go out of style. There are two fonts in particular you should NEVER use number 1. Cooper Black and number 2. Times New Roman. I will use Times New Roman as the base for this blog, otherwise my rant could go on far too long, and it’s Friday, you can’t be too negative on a Friday.

I recently had a client come to me asking for a logo, after providing a number of different concepts to choose from they picked an icon they loved and sent me their current logo asking if I could make it the same. It was Times New Roman and I nearly threw up on my keyboard. Please, please don’t make me use Times New Roman I begged them. They found it quite humorous and insisted I do it. Well I didn’t, if after 4 years studying at Uni and a whopper student loan my lecturers saw me produce a logo in Times New Roman they’d hunt me down and punch me in the throat.

Not wanting to risk my throat I sent back concepts in various serif fonts hoping this would satisfy both parties. They loved it!! Success! Turns out when they say “Times New Roman” they really just mean serif. Serif is OK, we can work with serif; there are plenty of beautifully designed serif fonts out there without having to resort to Times New Roman.

“Why can’t we use Times New Roman, we are just simple tradesmen” they said. No, no, no, please don’t ever think of your brand as being simple!! Maybe that is what you are, but dress for success guys! Times New Roman is old, dated and belongs in the newspaper scripting various tragedies around the globe, not as the face for your brand. It lacks character and there is a dullness about it that just drains the life out of the word it crafts.

They still think I am crazy for being so passionate about not using a font, but when you see the before and after shots I’m sure you’ll agree, Times New Roman had to go. All they wanted was little feet and hats on their letters and that made them happy in the end – which is what really matters.

Blue

This is an ode to blue.

It must be the newest fashionable colour, especially that bright greeny/blue teal colour I have been seeing popping up everywhere (luuuve it, it makes me happy inside). To be honest every new client I have had recently wants work done in blue; various shades of blue whether it tints towards grey, purple or green, but blue none the less. My portfolio is almost completely the same single colour - thanks a lot guys; you make me look like I am the one with the obsession!

You know why I think people like the colour blue? Apart from it being an all-round stable colour let’s say the “golden retriever of colours” - It’s safe. You can’t go wrong with having a blue logo, right? 

Business owners (in New Zealand) I think don’t like to branch out too much, especially with new company branding – I don’t blame you, it’s your baby! They are worried if they pick another colour it could symbolise something un-known to them or they might miss a chunk of the market who don’t relate to that colour. When you first start out branding, you might not even know exactly who your market could be (who would have thought blue powerade would end up being the drink of choice for hung-over youth, I would have thought athletes were their target.. or maybe it’s a steady favourite because it’s blue… sigh) so you want to target everyone and I think that is what makes blue so attractive - it doesn’t hold any particular strong connotation to it so you are keeping yourself open to everyone. Nice. And. Safe.

Pink is flamboyant, purple is too, red could be too aggressive, orange and yellow are so playful, white doesn’t show up enough, black is so in fashion it is out of fashion, green… well maybe if I make it an aqua or teal shade of green it could be ok… wait. That’s blue in disguise!

I don’t have a problem with blue, I guess this is sounding like more of a blue bashing than an ode, I just think to get noticed sometimes you do have to take that chance; that maybe you need a different colour to stand out from the crowd. Best idea I can think of is look at everyone else in your industry, what colour are they using? Blue? Well it works for them of course it would work for you… That may be true as long as you have another point of difference, but if you don’t or you can’t show people until you get their attention anyway you might want to differentiate yourself immediately. Otherwise your branding could just end up reinforcing theirs and they have already got that market. Think about it.

Happy colour picking!

That first step - Conquering the blank page

Getting started is the biggest challenge of any job I am doing. “Just do it” pops into mind when I stare at a blank page on my computer screen for too long. I wonder if that is how Nike came up with their slogan? Note to self Google later. There is nothing more depressing than a blank page; I have my brief, I know what the client wants, but that blank page is showing no inspiration.

Brainstorm! One of those amazingly dull exercises I was made to do in school has actually stuck with me so far in life. I apologise for any attitude I gave my previous teachers of this being “dumb”, turns out I was wrong – you do know what you’re doing. I jot down a few buzzwords that spring to mind from my own knowledge of the industry, but if it is something new, it can be quite limited so I move on quickly.

With my new found buzzwords, I find researching my subject to be a massive help to getting over the hump. So I flick off the blank page and jump on Google to start searching the industry of the client I’m working on. I look at examples of their competitors what they have done and start thinking about how I can do it better, (That’s the best thing about being second or freshening yourself up; your competitors have set a bar so you know what you need to beat). Researching the industry helps me to understand who this company is, what they do and the people they are looking at selling to. There is nothing more important than knowing your company and who they work with when working on their design.

After seeing who is already out there and what they are doing this gives a good indication of what I should be aiming for, so I start now researching into great ideas for the project. Whether it is a logo, business cards, a website, brochures or anything else; type it into Google and see what comes up. Often the best of the best does which gives great inspiration!

Now that I know who the company is, what they do and who they are after; I know their competitors and have seen some great examples of design work thanks to trusty Google, (I do read reference books I swear, but Google is just so readily available it would be a crime not to check it first) it seems a lot easier to overcome that blank page now. Even if I am just making colour swatches or drawing doodles at first; things start to develop and after milling over and over, a final design that sings off the page finally comes to light.

Once you start the creative juices flowing it is hard to stop… So on to the next project!