Last week some exciting news was announced about our Creative Director, Tom and our Studio Manager, Rob. In a moment of complete madness (or excitement and confidence), Tom and Rob decided to offer themselves as speakers for a new web conference.

The idea was Tom’s, and as a man with many valid opinions and a wealth of knowledge to share, I can’t think of anyone better to take to the stage than him. It’s his first ever gig speaking at a web event though and as Rob has been toying with the idea of public speaking for a while it seemed like a good plan that they team up and give a joint talk… providing moral support for one another.

The conference is being held on May 25th here in Newport! It’s called Port 80 and is a first for Newport, so major hat tip to conference organiser Joel Hughes.

Tom and Rob will be talking about personality on the web. By deconstructing websites, copy and brands they will be revealing why it is important to find your personality and how to communicate it effectively online and offline to your target audience.

Everyone at Bluegg salutes the guys for taking this brave step and we’re super excited to be there and support them on the day. With their combined knowledge and charisma they are sure to knock ‘em dead and wow the crowds (or something like that).

If you’re interested in finding out more about the conference you can visit the site here or follow it on Twitter here.

If you’re planning to go to the conference, feel free to let us know in the comments below!

Break a leg fellas.

I had high hopes for Designing for Emotion before I had even opened it. The subject matter was one that interests me greatly and any book that discusses the psychology behind design is a must read for me.

Not only did the book live up to my expectations but it exceeded them. Author Aarron Walter has crafted a well researched and enjoyable read that is the perfect length to digest in a few hours but also a handy reference that I will come back to time and time again.

One of the first things that hit home for me was the importance of longevity in our designs and somehow creating an experience that people talk about long after they have moved onto the next website.

This industry changes quickly and it can often be a struggle to keep up, so whilst we are focused on making sites responsive or adopting a content first approach, it won’t be long before something else will be the focus. What Designing for Emotion makes clear in the foreword is that by ensuring there is an emotional connection between users and the websites we create, we are creating work and experiences that last and that keep people talking about them.

The book continues to discuss a wide range of topics but always links them back to main subject. Craftsmanship is one such topic and here Walters discusses how those who craft something, anything, leave a bit of themselves in their work. It’s about adding the personal touch and being passionate about what you do.

He goes on to say how we are more connected today through the web, social media and technology but not necessarily more connected in an emotional way. I completely agree with this sentiment. If anything social media is making us more anti-social, with superficial friendships and weak emotional connections between one another. With the importance of offline relationships clear, Walters believes we can bring some of that emotional resonance online and his book tells us how.

At Bluegg we focus on personality and the best way to communicate this through the designs we craft for our clients. It was great to read that Walters also sees this as being an important part of design, to show the humans behind the website. He also encourages us to keep things simple. Sure the sites we create have to be usable but that usability doesn’t have to come at the expense of pleasure (or emotion).

The book states that to make experiences pleasurable we have to look at storytelling, the attention to detail and (dare I insert a blow-my-own-trumpet plug here to my own book) the value in designing the invisible. I couldn’t resist -sorry.

As for the psychology behind design, Walters talks about the relationship between emotion and memory. He shares some great real-life examples with us throughout the book including when we hear songs, when we smell certain things and when we taste incredible food. Recall is improved when we have an emotional connection to something. There’s no need for this not to be true with websites.

Another theme in the book that is close to my heart is audiences. Walters states that ‘when it comes to emotional design, we need to tailor the personality to the content and audience’. He also says that ‘by understanding our audience we can better address their needs’. Again I completely agree and would also add from my experience of working as part of an audience research team for the BBC that there is a big difference between knowing your audience and understanding your audience. It is this understanding that brings with it more insight into those you are targeting, an insight that will allow you to create designs that they can relate to emotionally.

Having a keen interest in all the topics neatly sewn together in this book means that it was unlikely I wouldn’t like it, but that’s not to say that my enjoyment was guaranteed. Walters has written a book that all those in the industry should read, it won’t take long but the knowledge he shares and the inspiration it yields is invaluable. It’s certainly got me thinking and I’m going to make sure all those at Bluegg read it too.

Have you read Designing for Emotion? If so, why not tell us what you thought of it in the comments.

We seem to have a lucky knack of attracting clients who give us a lot of creative freedom and truly value good design. Taxdoctor is one of those clients who wanted to relaunch themselves with a refreshed logo and completely redesigned website. They had very firm ideas about what they wanted, but we were able to work together to bring plenty of personality to a service seen as being stressful and confusing – self assessment tax returns.

The old Taxdoctor prior to the Bluegg redesign

Taxdoctor wanted to keep the basis of their current identity so we recreated the logo by updating the overall shape, typography and colour. This helped define the colour palette and design style for the website.

New refreshed logo and the old logo

A key part to the project was to change the view of the whole tax return service. Taxdoctor are a personal, informal and friendly company and this needed to be reflected in the tone and design of the site. They also wanted to make dealing with tax return information much less formal, less intimidating and as smooth as possible. To help introduce this style we used bespoke illustrations of a Taxdoctor character and his clients. These are featured throughout the site and are complimented with bright colours, a clean design style and a well structured navigation. We also introduced clear call to actions to help users find key information and increase sign up numbers.

The new Taxdoctor homepage featuring bespoke illustrations

The site content is controlled by WordPress as a CMS to give the team control and allows for flexible management. We built a bespoke plugin to allow Taxdoctor to add customised landing pages for an increasing number of third party partners. The site also integrates with a CRM so all enquires, forms and sign ups are captured and stored.

In addition to the website, we also created a range of exhibition banners and leaflets to help support the brand offline. These also featured the illustrations style ensuring consistency across all materials and bringing out the friendly side of self assessment.

James from the Taxdoctor said:
“We’ve never worked with a design agency before as we choose to use freelancers, we knew that this had to change though and as soon as we met the Bluegg team we knew they were the people for us. From day one they understood our idea, philosophy and just got “the Taxdoctor way”. Communication is fantastic and the creativity and ideas have been invaluable. After just finishing our busiest month ever we know we made the right decision and we look forward to our next helping of Blueggness.”

Have a look at the site at www.taxdoctor.co.uk and as always, we’d love to hear your comments below.

Last week I contributed to a series of workshops that were being run by our client Honey Fizz.

Honey Fizz train medical professionals on new techniques in the field of non surgical aesthetic procedures (that’s Botox injections and stuff to you and me!). On top of that they also advise these newly trained experts on how to kick start their business including business planning and marketing. I was asked to deliver workshops on branding.

Now, I think I’ve got a long way to go in my career before I’d feel comfortable walking around wearing a big ‘Expert’ badge, but the experience I’ve gained in the 10 years of running Bluegg has given me enough information to at the very least form an opinion.

I’ve been fortunate enough to deal with a big array of businesses and business sectors, who are all at very different stages of development but who all strive for the same thing; increase sales and awareness through various forms of communication. They all aim to portray a certain ‘brand’ to their customers hoping that there are mechanisms that will connect them and draw them in.

Now, we all hear the term ‘brand’ banded about a lot and am still surprised to hear what the term means to professional business owners, so the basis of my workshop was to get people to understand what I believe is the essence of a brand and how that applies to all businesses, big and small.

The discussion started by questioning what the term ‘brand’ meant to individuals. I wasn’t surprised to hear the response “a familiar logo” or “a nice advert and leaflets that are all the same”

This, I believe is the biggest misconception, especially in the world of SME’s (and one of the reasons why Bluegg is going so strong). People are getting the term ‘brand’ confused with ‘communication’. They were highlighting the mechanisms but not the reasoning. Not understanding this is where a lot of companies trip up.

I believe (and this is nothing new!) that a ‘brand’ is the whole experience of a company, from the connection made in an advert to the reassurance felt in a handshake or phone call, or the initial impression of looking at a business card. This carries through to the feeling of delight and satisfaction at a job well done and the thought of “they really looked after me there” (hopefully).

All of this can be achieved by any sized company by simply offering a service that lives up to their own expectations and here, I believe lies the problem. Too many businesses and business owners forget what it’s like to be a consumer. They struggle to remove themselves from their stressed filled offices to recall what would be their own perfect experience of buying their product or using their service. They need to almost have an out of body experience.

This is a technique that designers and brand experts have mastered through years of training and experience, which is why we say things like “that’s way too much text” or “the logo really doesn’t need to be any bigger” or even “please don’t say the words clip art again”.

It’s because we’ve learned to remove ourselves from your business and look at it subjectively. With enough research on your target market, you will learn just what makes them tick, which will help you understand what they consider a great experience, and encourage them to return.

How does this then become a brand? Well, that’s where communication and design plays its small but important part.

So the key areas of advice I gave were:

• Try to recall your what you would consider to be the best ‘brand experience’ you’ve received.
• Break that down to the parts of the service that really impressed you.
• Use these insights to create your own ‘brand statement’ or company ethos and then strive to emulate and deliver those key elements.
• Be true to yourself by developing an image that represents your personality.
• Look at your communication streams and deliver continuity in design and tone of voice.
• Incentivise your employees to connect with the brand that they too represent. Their connection with a customer is as important as your own.
• Believe in what you’re offering.
• Always keep an eye on the brand statement.

In conclusion: There’s a lot that we can all do to visually deliver beautiful looking messaging, but if beyond that there is a bad experience that doesn’t match up then you’ll always be fighting a losing battle to build your brand.

I’d love to hear your views on branding (even if they’re different to mine!) so if you’d like to add anything please feel free to comment below. Of course if you’d like to talk more about your brand, please get in touch.

The Aesthetic Academy name and logo lacked any personality so a new name was needed

Over the years we have gained a reputation for producing work with bags of personality. We call it the Bluegg way. It’s pretty rare that we get asked to do something so off the wall that it stumps us, but we recently worked with a company that thought we’d be up for a challenge. That company was Aesthetics Academy, a non-surgical cosmetic training organisation. They are now called Honey Fizz. Here’s the story how.

The Aesthetic Academy name and logo lacked any imagination or personality and was being used by a number of competitors. The logo of two needles making an ‘a’ was both appropriate and a bit scary at the same time. It got across the idea of administering fillers and Botox, but it was too obvious and too medical. The same would be said for the colour palette of light blue and grey. Director Chantalle wanted a name that would get people thinking and was unrelated to the services, it had to be quirky and different. Honey Fizz is all of those things!

In order to name any company you need to understand the business, its customers and its values, as well as the wider industry. And in the case of Aesthetics Academy, we had to quickly learn to ignore much of that and look at the surreal. Having picked Chantalle’s brains and embarked on a research phase, we gathered the team and started to come up with names. We decided early on that we wanted two unrelated words to combine to help create something unique. Our ideas session led us from snakes to colours and from fruits to sweets!

After a while, we settled on Mint Cherry, something fresh and unrelated, but even this was considered too serious. After more research, we started looking down many random avenues including different languages. One such ‘language’ ended up being cockney rhyming slang, which turns ‘face’ into ‘boat race’. This got us thinking and after much searching we found a famous boat from the 19th Century called ‘Honey Fizz’.

The old website was too clinical and looked to much like a generic template which lacked personality

Once the name was agreed we set to work on the visual identity. We experimented with typography and ended up developing a logo which uses ITC Souvenir as a base font, which has been customised. Part of the customisation was a ligature joining the letters ‘n, f and i’. This helped form a smooth shape that we used to create a subtile ‘honey dribble’.

We opted for a strong yolk yellow and black colour palette, a nod to bees of course. We also introduced a secondary colour of blue to act as a way-finding tool by using it for links and clickable content on the website.

The new Honey Fizz website introduces a consistent brand style, and a simple, bold colour palette

Once the identity was agreed and the stationery had been designed we moved onto a CMS website. Again it was key to inject as much personality as possible into the pages, without distracting from the content. To achieve this we created bespoke illustrations for each of the top level navigation pages, and small hand rendered touches around the site.

The whole site is managed by WordPress to allow the Honey Fizz team to add and edit content whenever they like. We also hooked the site up to a CRM they already had set up, so all enquires are stored and available for use later on.

Quirky illustrations help add character and personality

Chantalle said “Bluegg have delivered a design exactly as I imagined, there were no templates and the visions of the brand we clearly discussed all the way through. Their clear organised manner really appealed to me, as we had meetings set out as the project progressed. I’d highly recommend Bluegg to anyone who wants to stand out from the crowd and get their business vision across to their customers. A great company to deal with, who are fun, contemporary, yet very focused on getting the job done properly!”

We’re really excited about the future of Honey Fizz and proud to have been involved in such a radical brand overhaul. Take a look at the new site here and come back to let us know what you think in the comments.

And there goes another year! It seems to have flown by quicker than Vettel on his way to a 2nd F1 World Championship! There’s been a couple of pretty big moments. There were highs as the whole nation held its breath as Wales did us proud in the Rugby World Cup. And lows as the tech world mourned the loss of a true pioneer.

For us, it’s been another bumper, action packed year, despite the economic issues that haven’t exactly made life easy! We met a whole bunch of fantastic new clients as well as (hopefully) doing our existing ones proud. We started a new networking club which now has almost 100 members and will see its 4th event in January. We’ve had a good bit of press too, with yours truly and Rob appearing in Computer Arts, .Net magazine and Web Designer magazine. Mike did a bike ride. And most importantly, we’re all still here and loving (virtually!) every minute.

We’ve got some really exciting times ahead in 2012. And some pretty big plans too. For now, we bid you farewell, Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year. We’ll see you on the other side!

Opening Times

The studio will be closing at 5pm on Wednesday 21st December and we’ll be back, refreshed, bright eyed, bushy tailed and ready to take on the world at 8.30am on Tuesday 3rd Jan 2012.

It only seems like yesterday when I was sat in a packed room trying to understand whether my perception of graphic communication was actually going to take me anywhere. Being a student isn’t that easy, especially when it comes to figuring out your career after graduating from the protective and experimental university environment. I remember how helpful it was to speak to people from within ‘the industry’ and get their opinion of what I see as being the correct solution for a brief and now, 10 years on, it’s my turn to guide and advise where possible.

Visiting local universities is always an uplifting experience for me, it’s something that I find nostalgic and hugely important. If I can share my tips, experience and expectations to guide students in their journey then (calendar allowing) I’m happy to take part.

This month I took part in a Portfolio Clinic at the University of Newport where 2nd and 3rd year students presented their portfolio of their best work.

There were a couple of things that struck me that focussed around the incredible facility and equipment that the students have at their disposal. Wonderful natural light, modern surroundings and an abundance of top notch Macs that would make most commercial agencies envious. This kind of environment can be such an important factor when harnessing creativity and it shone through when seeing the students work.

Overall, it was a great experience where I saw an array of strong ideas presented in a number of ways. As always there were ‘stand out’ students that will always do well but even those that fell a little short demonstrated a clear thought process that, with the right guidance will develop into very able creative thinkers. Yet another batch of newbie’s that will keep us oldies in the commercial world on our toes!

Photography by Alex Lloyd Jenkins

It’s a little over a year since we launched our new website and throughout the year we’ve made some nips and tucks to smooth off a couple of edges. In the summer we decided that we needed to make some slightly bigger changes, both on the surface and under the hood. Finally, after months of fiddling, tinkering and fine tuning between client work we’re pleased to say that we’ve finished! We’re calling it an early Christmas present to ourselves!

So what’s new?

Under the hood
Even though much of the site looks the same, we’ve done quite a lot of work in the engine room. A lot of time has been spent streamlining the markup and we’ve introduced new semantic HTML 5 elements where possible. We’ve used WordPress as our CMS for a number of years. Constant, regular improvements to this system mean we can now create and use ‘Custom Post Types’ for each major area of the site. This helps both from a maintenance and usability point of view and makes keeping the site regularly updated really simple.

Our new site is adaptive, so it changes depending on the device it

It’s now adaptive
If you’re reading this on a mobile device such as a smartphone or tablet, you will probably have already noticed the biggest change. Our website is now adaptive (or responsive). This means that the layout and form of the site changes depending on what sort of device you’re looking at it on to provide a better user experience. We’ve also made the site adapt its functions to fit the device. For instance, our numerous slideshows throughout the site change from a ‘click to scroll’ function to a ‘swipe to scroll’ function when viewed on a touch screen device. We’ll be writing a lot more about adaptive design on our blog in the coming months, so make sure you check back soon.

We've improved the typography, which is now using Museo Sans, served up by Typekit

The devil’s in the detail
Since we originally launched the site, we’ve had nothing but good feedback so never intended for this to be a redesign. More of a realignment really. That said, virtually every pixel has been looked at, critiqued and polished. The main change (although still pretty subtile) is in the typography. Since the site was first built we’ve been using Typekit to serve up a fine selection of fonts for our websites. We thought was about time we practiced what we preach, so have moved from our old favourite Effra, to our new font Museo Sans. We’ve also added some new content to the ‘meet the team’ part of the About section which gives a bit of an insight into each member of the team.

Our services page has finally been given the little bit of love and care it deserves!

The biggest visual and content change is in our services page. We were never 100% happy with the old one and really wanted to, not only bring more vibrancy to the page, but to also offer much more information about what we actually do. We decided to split our services in to two types each containing 6 parts. For each of these parts we wrote a small bite size piece of copy and created custom illustrations and graphics. Take a look >

There’s also been a couple of other tweaks, but we’ll let you discover those for yourself. Why not have a look around the (mostly) new (and hopefully improved) site and let us know what you think in the comments. Enjoy!

It’s been a busy couple of months here at Bluegg HQ so we thought it was about time we told you exactly what’s been keeping us occupied.

Sneak peek of a recent branding and website project for a botox training company

We’ve made some fantastic progress on some website projects including one for a new Fish and Chips restaurant, an organisation in Dubai, a botox training company and a company that helps with tax returns. That’s a pretty mixed bag but that’s what we love about what we do. We’re also about to complete an iPad app project and we have been hard at work rebranding a high profile charitable organisation.

Sneak peek of a recent branding and website job for a Fish & Chip restaurant

The start of the month was also the third Fiftyone3 event which was a great success and the networking club for under 35s has really blossomed into something special so naturally we are proud to be involved.

Liam, Gareth and Paul take on the Movember challenge

November has also seen a few strange new looks develop in the studio as Liam, Gareth and Paul have all taken part in Movember – growing moustaches in order to raise money for charity. We use the word moustache loosely when referring to Gareth’s attempt but he does get full marks for enthusiasm and effort. Other studio news includes the arrival of Modern Warfare 3 which has pretty much dominated lunchtimes for the last few weeks. We consider ourselves to be a close knit team who genuinely like each other, we’re all friends… except when it comes to MW3! A few of the team have walked out mid-game but we won’t name and shame them here as they know who they are, don’t you Tom, Gareth and Paul!

Sneak peek of a recent branding and website project for a company who helps with tax returns

It has been a little over a year since we put our new website live so as an early Christmas present to ourselves we have been working on some updates to the site, there’ll be a separate blog post about that when we’re ready to go live this week! Speaking of Christmas, the secret santa draw has been made, the meal booked and much to Tom’s delight December the first will see the annual dusting off of the studio Christmas tree.

So that’s what has been happening. With things looking like they will be full speed ahead for the rest of the year we’re very thankful to be kept busy doing the things we love for people we love working with. A busy Bluegg is a happy Bluegg.

One of the many reasons that we love what we do is the variety, which as they say, is the spice of life! One day we might be creating a responsive website for a networking club, then it’ll be illustrating for a printed brochure for a housing association or creating bespoke Facebook pages for a logistics group.

In the summer of 2011 we were delighted to be commissioned by a church! A whole new sector for us.

Christchurch Newport approached us to redesign their website, a site which by their own admission had become out dated, too dark, no longer reflective of their personality and didn’t offer the functionality they needed.

The old Christchurch website and branding

At Bluegg our approach to design is all about personality, so we accepted this challenge with great enthusiasm and the result has been a brilliant new (and long term) relationship with a client that fully understands the importance of user experience.

As with all projects, we started with a research phase. This included looking at websites for other churches from all over the world and spending time with the client talking about their problems and needs. Perhaps the best time spent of all the research was to actually attend the church on a Sunday to experience in person what they were hoping to communicate via their new website. It just so happened that the day we went along they were having a hog roast!

The original brand and website was dominated by shades of red and black, dark tones that tell a different story to the new version that was refreshed by our own fair hands. We started by refining the logo mark and used that as the basis moving forward. We introduced varying shades of blue as the predominant brand colour and white space which lightened the website, making it welcoming and more user friendly.

The new Christchurch website and refined branding

As well as standard information such as about us and contact, the site also needed several blogs, one for each of the core groups within the church (teens, students, everyone). To make the different types of users feel a part of the site, we created custom designs for each blog.

The new blog was separated into 3 separate areas, all featuring a custom design

One of the main areas of the site was the Media section. The church film each of their Sunday meetings and create films based on the teaching of the bible. Over the last few years this added up to hundreds of hours of video, audio and message information. The whole site is managed using WordPress and we built a custom area that could manage all this different media. We also incorporated a bible API (who would have thought!) which allows the media section to pull text from the books into the media section.

The new media section, which manages 100's of hours of video and audio

Christchurch is much more than a Sunday service. They have events happening every week throughout the year and these all needed to be represented on an easy to view calendar. We implemented the Event Espresso plugin to manage events. Linking this up with the WordPress membership manager we enabled the Church to create events that could be registered for and some that are reoccurring.

Beyond the information architecture and initial design, Christchurch wanted around 50 bespoke illustrations/graphics to be used throughout the site. We created each of these to ensure a consistent style throughout the website, they also added an extra layer to the Christchurch personality.

We created custom images and illustrations for each page to add personality

We hit it off with the guys at Christchurch immediately and they’ve very much become friends as well as a client. They trusted our professional opinion and expertise, which helps of course but they also had another string to their bow – a freelance designer at the Church who is an advocate for good user experience! We worked closely with Richard, particularly during the build and testing phases and his contribution was paramount to the final site turning out the way it has, a site we are very proud of.

The guys from Christchurch not only spoilt us with Krispy Kreme doughnuts throughout the project and a voucher for Game at the end, but Dan also had these kind words to say:

“Our site is designed primarily for the people who come to Christchurch week in, week out but we also have to ensure that it’s friendly and easily navigable for new visitors. These may be Christians from other parts of the country or world, or people who have no idea who Jesus is who live nearby. Bluegg did a great job of creating an easy to use site that incorporated great imagary to get across the different aspects of the church.

“Over the course of the site development different challenges appeared but it was great to work with a bunch of people who stayed level headed, adapted easily, received critique well, offered great suggestions and were most importantly great to get on with and great at what they all did.

“We’re really grateful for our new site and grateful for all of the hard work of the Bluegg team.”

We’re equally grateful for having clients that are passionate about their brand, website and personality. It really shows that from a client side, you get out what you put in – client involvement and enthusiasm has had a key impact on the outcome of this project.

You can check out the site at www.christchurchnewport.org and we’re planning to add the project to our work area and create a case study for it – make sure you follow us on Twitter, find us on Facebook or join our mailing list to be the first to know when it’s added. We’d love to know what you think, so please let us know in the comments below.