What we graphic designers have gained and lost in the digital era After 23 years, we’ve been remodelling the agency. Though our new space is smaller, it feels sharper. You wouldn’t believe the truckloads of stuff that went, much dating back to a primeval, pre-digital epoch. I wanted so badly to be unsentimental, brutal even. Strip the whole thing down to essentials and be re-born as a new, lean, future-ready BB&P. But as we emptied the agency attic, vestiges of the early BB&P kept being discovered. Turns out we still had virtually a full set of the tools that equipped a typical pre-Ma ..read more

Back in the day as a cub art director, and desperate to prove myself, I’d make myself physically sick with the effort of trying to crack a creative brief. The deadline, the creative director, the client, my peers in the studio – they meant nothing compared to my own horror of failure. My creative problem solving strategy in those days was beautifully simple. It was a go-straight-at-it, full-frontal assault on the problem, no cease fire until the solution had been blasted out into the light. Day after day, night after night of brain-bleeding graft. And, God knows, it was a painful, stressful a ..read more

I’ve been a professional developer/software engineer/programmer for 15 or so years now, 22 years if you include college education and typing in Basic programs from magazines into my Commodore 64. So many job titles and some of them, let’s be honest, are irritating. I still don’t feel comfortable with the Technical Architect one, sounds bumptious. Can’t think of your own wanky job title? There’s a tool for that. Regardless of the job title, one thing I’ve had to do is stay current. If you don’t stay up-to-date then you get left behind; if you get left behind you’ll struggle to further your car ..read more

With website design and user experience constantly evolving, how do you possibly keep up with everything that’s going on in the space? The key is to always have your eyes open, always on the lookout for what’s new, while never forgetting the fundamental principles in good design and user experience that are true regardless of the medium. That being said, here are 15 sites we check regularly for inspiration when it comes to website design and user experience. The Webby Awards – always a nice collection of sites, categorised by digital type and sector. Chrome Experiments – constantly pushi ..read more

Perhaps more than any other profession, lawyers are fixated by rankings. Firms devour the annual lists of rankings put out by the legal industry media. Visit any law firm’s website and you’ll invariably find, right there on the home page, where the firm places in this this or that publication’s recent ranking. It will have been ranked on metrics to do with the number of lawyers, or global offices, or types of completed deals. Recently, however, we wanted to look beyond the metrics and understand how firms are perceived and what factors are important to forming that perception. This in turn wou ..read more

Not too long ago, there were predictions of the death of email. Social media was going to rule they said! Long live Facebook they said! More recently, services like Slack promised to free us from the tyranny of email. Until people got tired of Slack too, and went back to email. There’s no doubt of email’s staying power. Amazingly, it’s now over 45 years old. And for marketers, a crucial tool in their toolbox to talk personally and directly to their customers. Understandably then, marketers want to know “how do I get the most out of email?” Some have heard Tuesday afternoons are the best time t ..read more

Whether you’re launching a new brand, or rebranding an existing company, you want to make sure to have a comprehensive list of everything you need to do. Let’s assume you’ve gone through a rigorous brand development process complete with a comprehensive set guidelines; you’re fully aware of the upcoming challenge of rolling out your new brand into the real world. You’ve picked a go-live date when the new brand will roll out. If your enterprise is on the smaller side, it’s possible to do the whole switch in a day, assuming everyone is organised. If you’re managing a larger brand – say even for ..read more

There’s a pretty standard conversation we have with our clients. Often they come in and ask “should I be on Facebook?” That answer is usually yes. “What about Twitter?” they say. “Sure” we typically answer. “LinkedIn?” they ask. “Maybe.” “Instagram, Snapchat, Google+, Tumblr, Musical.ly, Messenger, WhatsApp, YouTube, Pinterest, Periscope? What about those?” That’s usually where we stop the conversation and ask them to take a breath. Look, the social media space is mind-bendingly huge. Want a sense? Take a look at the latest Social Media Landscape by Fred Cavazza. Asking if you should be on Sna ..read more

When you live your life in social media like we do, you run across a few tricks of the trade that become second nature but aren’t particularly well known. Some of these are newer, some older, but all are a bit hidden. 1 – Post an image first on LinkedIn, then link to the article in the image description. It will make the image take up the full LinkedIn timeline width and a larger height, giving you more real estate compared to the paltry amount you get when you post the article first. 2 – Paste your article link on Facebook then delete the URL once Facebook brings in the article information. Y ..read more

Converting visitors on your website can be a tedious and difficult process at times. You want them to take a particular action, but for some reason they keep leaving the site without ordering your product or even making contact. How can you improve these low conversion rates? One approach is to take a lesson from Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion and apply it to the design of your checkout or landing pages. That lesson focuses on commitment and consistency. Essentially, commitment and consistency states that once an individual has made a commitment (either small or large), they will do e ..read more